Poor Shepherding

Where do the lost sheep go?

Before David was king, he was a shepherd. He protected his flocks. They were probably more important to him than his own life. Why else would he have killed a lion and a bear just to protect one or two sheep? If any one of his sheep strayed, he went and searched for the lost one until he found them. Then, with joy and rejoicing, he brought them back to the flock again.

What an example for the Church today. Sadly, what a difference, too. It seems the norm nowadays that, if folk don’t fit into our narrow vision of how church should be, or if they don’t fit into the social strata we have set up in our church, then we simply throw them away. More likely, we hurt them and they leave – but we never seek them out to reconcile with them. Much more likely, we might wonder vaguely what happened to them, then we snub and disown them as if it was all their fault for not fitting into our requirements.

I have said it before and I will say it again. The church is the only army that kills off its own wounded. They do not seem to care what happens to them. They either leave them to wither away and die, or worse still, they shun them and destroy any faith they may have had. How we must grieve Holy Spirit whenever we do this to our blessed brothers and sisters. Perhaps we should try harder to remember that they may not be precious to us but they are precious to Jesus and we, as His representatives, are doing His cause no favours at all by letting them go.

There needs to be a movement from and by the church to, once more, seek out our lost sheep. To find them; to tend their wounds; and to bring them back safely and lovingly into the fold once again.

I hear the cry, “But they are so hard to get along with.” Listen, my friends, if we don’t learn to get along with them, the Lord will keep sending people like them to us until we do learn to handle and get along with them. Only when we learn that lesson will our churches move on to bigger, better, and higher things.

Only when the church learns to actually care for its flock will she prosper in God’s sight as well as in man’s eyes. Every church needs a reconciliation ministry team who will seek out the hurt and the backslidden, pull alongside them, and love them back into the fold. In some ways it is the ministry of planks – those who acknowledge the planks that exist in the churches eyes but who also recognise the motes in the eyes of everyone, including the hurt and wounded. It is, essentially, a ministry of selfless love from those who try to love as Jesus does, to those who have been let down and hurt by the lack of love in others.

It is time to bring the lost sheep, the wounded sheep, back to the church with love, joy, and thanksgiving. Just like David did when he was a shepherd.