Video: Transcript: Knowing the Sheep

Elders Course — Session 6: Knowing the Sheep

Opening: What Elders Do — Know the Sheep

Bruce:
We are back in this elder course. We’ve been talking about quite a bit, and as we go into session six, we’re continuing on. What elders do? They know the sheep.

Abby:
Yeah, there’s a movement among many churches that the elders serve more of like a board of directors in the church, and who is the shepherd? People would say, “Well, it’s the pastor. Pastor—” when anything in the Bible that says something about shepherds are the pastors.

And as we’ve seen, when God designed the governance and the care of the church, He assigned elders to that job however they are chosen.

Two Basic Divisions: Shepherding & Oversight

Bruce:
Now, later, we’re going to look at the fact that there are—you know, among the things that we do as elders—there’s two basic divisions. One is to shepherd the sheep, to care for them, and the other is to rule or be an overseer.

Now, in some churches, they divide those two functions of elder, and they have shepherding elders and governing elders based on the giftedness of the people. The requirements are the same. But, you know, people with spiritual gifts in leadership and wisdom and that sort of thing would become a governing elder, and shepherding elder.

What we’re going to be talking about here is primarily that role of shepherding in this session and in the next couple of sessions, actually.

So we’re going to see that it’s not a board of directors—that you just go to a meeting once a month and make some decisions. But as a shepherd, you’re called to be engaged with the sheep.

Psalm 23 & John 10: What Shepherds Do

Bruce:
And so the first one is: What do the shepherds do? They know their sheep.

Psalm of David: “The Lord is my shepherd.” Now, what does that Shepherd do? Jesus—God—is our Shepherd. “So I lack nothing.” What does He do? He makes me lie down in green pastures, leads me beside quiet waters, refreshes my soul, guides me in the right path. Even when I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil. You are with me. Your rod and staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Well, Psalm of David here—he knows what it is to be a shepherd, because that’s what he was when he was a boy. He was a shepherd of the sheep. And when he compares his shepherding of the sheep, he pictures God with him. God with him.

Now, Jesus says a very similar thing in John chapter 10. Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd,” and what does that mean? “I know my sheep, and my sheep know me—just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep,” etc., etc., etc.

“I know my sheep, and my sheep know me.” One of the requirements for being an elder—effective elder—is to know your sheep.

Resource Note: The Shepherd Leader (Whitmer)

Bruce:
Now, here is an excellent resource, by the way: The Shepherd Leader by Timothy Whitmer, and he says in a chapter on “Knowing Your Sheep”: The foundation of any shepherding relationship must be the establishment of a relationship of trust and caring… system of regular, dedicated contact with members.

Practical: Systems to Know Your Sheep

Bruce:
So in today’s world, if you’ve been appointed an elder, and you have a group of sheep… Now, churches do that differently. Some will have a district—in the larger churches—that, “Okay, you’re responsible for these families.” Some will just have it generally that everybody’s responsible for everybody.

But when you are in a church, and whatever the size, and you’re given a group of people to know and to lead and to shepherd—how do you go about doing that? How do you go about connecting?

I found that picture—I like that. How do you connect with other people? Well, my goodness, it’s a whole lot easier than it used to be to—

Abby:
Right. Devices, computers—

Bruce:
—person to person. I know that used to be the elders would make calls in their homes—people’s homes. That still happens.

In one church I know of, each elder is part of a group of people that meet on a regular basis together for a Bible study—and encourage them there to be a house church. In other words, within the larger church, they have all these—what they call—house churches, and the people get to know their leader, their shepherd, very well.

Abby:
Telephone is marvelous. Email, texting—who knows what else? Social media, you can definitely connect.

Bruce:
Right—so many ways. There’s got to be a system for doing this. How do you do this?

Example: A Working District System

Bruce:
Now, I am, right now, witness to a very effective, I think, system of knowing sheep, because my wife has become an elder in the church that I attend, and she has a district of people. And she has a means of keeping track—some of it done through the office—but keeping track of who are the people who need a little special attention; who are the people who need regular… there’s a regular attention that’s given.

She meets with the whole group every once in a while, or invites people to it. But shut-ins—people who can’t get out, who can’t come to church—you know, every… she has a responsibility to contact the shut-ins in her district every month. She makes a telephone call and offers a visit, and often visits people in the house.

What about the sick—people hospitalized? What about family challenges? Special needs? There’s a family with a disabled child that she just keeps regular, regular attention to, because they need things.

What about wandering people? People are wandering? I have a very, very close person in my life who unfortunately fell victim to the schemes of the devil. He ended up having an affair. At that time he was a deacon in the church. It became public, and he ended up—as many do who have fallen—withdrawing from people.

Talking to him recently—if not many years after that—and he and his wife got divorced and ended up remarrying or marrying someone else. But when we were talking recently, we were out hiking together, which is something we enjoy doing. And he said to me, “You know, when that happened… no one from my church contacted me.”

Abby:
Treated him like the black sheep—right, right?

Bruce:
“And ignored me.” Well, wait a minute, where were the elders? You know, where were the elders of the church?

When Jesus portrays Himself as the Good Shepherd, He says, “Ninety-nine I’m going to leave, and I’m going to go to the one that’s wandered off—maybe injured somewhere—and bring him back, and say, ‘Rejoice with me, I found my sheep.’”

Thankfully, my friend found his way back to church as well. But elders get to be knowing people so they know where they are; they have gained the authority within a person’s life—not just given from on high, but given because they know their sheep.

You know, that’s the one story—nobody contacted from the church. Another one: about an alcoholic who’d lost his family, lost his home, lost everything, and the church was going to excommunicate him. They had maintained some contact—kind of semi-officially—sending him letters and that sort of thing.

So the Sunday was set where they were going to read the formula—it’s called—for excommunication, because he was not responding with repentance. And what a sad day. And so Sunday’s coming; he’s been informed this is going to happen.

On Saturday, his elders show up on his porch. The man opened the door, and the elder broke down weeping. He said, “I don’t want to see this happening.” And the man repented. And he ended up being restored to church membership. He ended up dealing with his alcoholism. But it was because an elder knew him. And when this elder came and wept, the man knew that it was not a put-on of some kind.

Abby:
Everybody cared about him and didn’t want to see that—right, right?

Bruce:
So knowing—knowing your district, knowing your sheep—is important.

Feeding the Sheep: Ensuring the Word

Bruce:
Second thing that we’re called to do is feed your sheep—or, in many cases assuring—in our today’s world, in the United States at least—assuring that the sheep are fed.

Now, this can mean the teaching/preaching elders in your church—that Paul says that elders in your church are worthy of honor, double honor for those whose calling is the teaching and preaching.

But feeding goes beyond that. We generally understand feeding to be: we’re being fed with the Word of God—that we are understanding the teaching of God. So how does an elder assure that they are fed?

Peter is one of my heroes, because he was such a dimwit in so many ways. He denied Jesus—three times. And in John 21 we’re told that Jesus appeared on the shore again and restored Peter, asking him three times, “Peter, do you love me?” And Peter says, “Lord, you know that—love me.” He says, “If you love me, Feed my sheep… Feed my lambs.”

Peter was going to become one of the major shepherds in the church, and sees as his responsibility to feed these people—to feed these members of his flock. His flock was going to be broad and large—we know he started in Jerusalem, we know (by tradition) he died in Rome, crucified upside down.

But he heard this charge from his Lord and Master: Feed my sheep.

How do you do this? Here are some suggestions:

• Connect individuals to appropriate Bible studies, Sunday school classes, other educational and discipleshipopportunities. Within your church, what are the options?
• Help individuals identify and plug into a home/community group or other fellowship group on a weekly basis for study, prayer, encouragement, and accountability.

Once that’s done, it can have powerful effects in the spiritual growth of people. I met the other day with somebody who hadn’t gone to church for the first time in over 10 years. But during those 10 years, he’s been part of a small group that meets every month—and they continued to love him, care for him, look at the Word with him—and eventually he took the opportunity to say, “I’ve got to go back to church.”

Now, all kinds of context around why he left; he continued to watch church online when that was possible—but it was because he was with a group of people.

I pastored one small church in which we had to create groups kind of on the fly—so everybody was invited to become part of almost everything, educationally. Second church I served became a very, very large church, and there we tried to break groups down. We had what was home church.

How do you do that? Many ways to do it—by interest. We chose to do it by geographical area. And so, within certain neighborhoods, the people met once a month on a Sunday night. And they met—this was your house church. These are the people who are going to care for you. If you have sickness challenge, they’re going to be the first level of caring for you.

Abby:
So how do you do that as the elder?

Bruce:
Well, you encourage your people to be engaged.

My one person in my wife’s elder district—has a lot of health problems, doesn’t like to be out in crowds—but he’s identified one group that he will go to. And so my wife… they don’t meet on a regular basis, so my wife calls him every time they’re going to meet and says, “It’s coming, it’s coming. Need transportation? We can get you there,” etc.

So—helping them identify, and then teaming up an individual with a spiritual mentor who can teach them, care for them, help them grow and mature as a fully devoted disciple of Jesus.

One church I know does this with kids in middle school and high school: they find somebody older who will meet with them regularly, care for them, and shepherd—has a responsibility for that happening on a regular basis.

The Gate, the Voice, and the Thief (Shepherd Imagery)

Bruce:
Wow. Intimidating stuff, right? What does an elder do? Well, he guards—protects. He shepherds and gets to know his sheep.

When Jesus described Himself as the Good Shepherd, He said everybody else is coming as a wolf or a thief; He describes the nighttime care that He has in knowing His sheep—that He becomes the gate. That’s one of the metaphors He uses of the sheepfold.

In dangerous territory, where there were wolves, they would often get the sheep into an enclosure at night to protect them, and then the shepherd would sit in the entryway to make sure that no wolf, no other wild animal, no thief gets to them—except going through the shepherd.

And in the morning, if you were in a large area, many shepherds would put their sheep into one of these enclosures. In the morning, the shepherds would go out to pasture, and they would call their sheep. And remember Jesus saying, “I know my sheep, and they know me.” In other words, sheep would know the voice of the shepherd—the different quality of the voice somehow—and they would follow their shepherd.

Now, one of the books I read—we’re going to look at this a little bit next time when we talk about overseers as being an overseer—but the story about a tour guide talking about the fact that in Israel, shepherds always lead from the front.

And, well, they were going along in the tour bus, and they saw a shepherd—what they assumed was a shepherd—behindthe sheep, not in front. And so, when they got to the next stop, the tour group comes to the shepherd—comes to the tour guide—and says, “I thought you said shepherds always lead from the front. There was somebody behind.”

And so the guy said, “That’s odd. Gotta go check that out.” Came back: as it turns out, that guy was a thief. He was trying to capture a sheep to kill.

But the sheep know my name. They know me. Do your sheep know you? Do you know them? If you’re going to be an effective elder, you’ve got to know your sheep.

Closing & Next Session

Bruce:
So next time we’re going to look at — maybe the most, most challenging of all — and that is the task of overseeing the church as elders. And so we’re going to look at that next time. Invite you to come along with us.