VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Ben Kreps:
Hey everyone and welcome to the Mark Prater podcast, where our aim is to connect our global family of Sovereign Grace churches with our Executive Director. Mark, before we started recording here, you were telling me about how you've been studying a topic that's of vital importance when it comes to pastoral ministry. That of the biblical motif of shepherding, applied to the role of a pastor. Talk to us about that.
Mark Prater:
I have been studying that imagery and it's affecting my heart, my soul and mind, yet again. I can't believe we get to do what we do as pastors. Isn't it, isn't it amazing? That God would call us to care for his people. That's one of the net effects of this study. I can't believe I get to do what I do. And it's such a joy to be a pastor who gets to shepherd God's people. As you know, throughout scripture, the people that are called to lead God's people are referred to as shepherds. You see that in the Old Testament. In fact, through Ezekiel, you see God commend the good shepherds and condemn the bad shepherds in Ezekiel 34.
And we get to the New Testament, and Jesus says, I am the good shepherd. He refers to himself as the Good Shepherd. Peter calls him the Chief Shepherd in 1 Peter: 2. And 1 Peter 5:2 he calls pastors, he's speaking to elders, to shepherd the flock of God among you. And one of my favorite verses in scripture: Acts 20:28, a verse that just very dear to me, he says, pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. So the people that we're called to care for as pastors, to oversee, they're called a flock. And so by implication, we are shepherds. So just to study this in scripture has affected me.
Some other resources I wanted to recommend: Tim Laniak's book Shepherds After My Own Heart, which is in the Gray/Silver series that most of us are familiar with. Just a wonderful biblical theology of shepherds in scripture. There's also the Shepherd Leader by Tim Witmer, which is a really helpful book. There's another book that I don't have right here in front of me, also by Tim Laniak: While Shepherds Watch Their Flocks. And it's broken down into a 40 day devotional that is the result of him spending part of a sabbatical, I think about a year, with shepherds in the Middle East, just interviewing them and getting to understand what they do to enrich his understanding of the shepherding imagery throughout scripture. So I would commend that book. One other resource we've both listened to recently is the Ordinary Pastor podcast that has devoted a couple of episodes to the Pastor as Shepherd. So, those are all wonderful resources that you can check out.
And, as pastors, I think it's important that we remember that we are shepherds first of all, because Christ is the chief shepherd. He is the good shepherd, and we labor on his behalf as his under shepherds. But it does shape, it does affect our hearts and dispositions and our mindsets towards the people God has entrusted to our care when we understand ourselves and think about ourselves as shepherds.
Ben Kreps:
Yeah. I would also recommend CJ's class at the Pastors College on a pastoral ministry. It's a wonderful, unfolding metaphor for what we do as pastors. And I aim to get back there someday. It's been a while and I could be refreshed. It's a great class. So why do you think it's so vital that we keep this in front of us as we go about our work as pastors?
Mark Prater:
I think it's vital because it does shape what we do and how we think about the people we are called to care for. In the Acts 20 passage I mentioned earlier, 17 - 38, Paul has obviously gathered the Ephesian elders in Miletus, as our listeners know, and he's speaking to them for the very last time. And he begins his speech, the only speech in the book of Acts given to Christians, actually the elders, the pastors from Ephesus. And he begins the speech by saying, you know how I lived among you? And so there's that lived among you language that you find. Then later he talks about shepherding the flock that God has entrusted to your care. You do that by living among the people. I think that's important for us because it keeps ministry from being professional.
We have to be careful of that subtle drift in our hearts as pastors, that we don't become professionals and we're somehow detached from the people that we're called to pastor and preach to and care for. And the other thing is that it allows us to make ministry very, very real. Because when we live among our people, we're aware of the issues that they're facing daily in their lives. And that not only affects our pastoral counseling and how we help them apply God's word to what they're facing, it also affects our preaching because right in the application in particular, we're able to bring specific application for a specific flock, for specific issues that they're facing. And that's gonna be different from church to church. So it's so important that we live among our people and not just live among them but know them. One of the things that Tim Laniak talks about in his book, While Shepherds Watch Their Flocks, he interviewed a desert shepherd called Amir who said there's a difference between village shepherds and desert shepherds. Desert shepherds, we spend time with our flock out in the desert. We know exactly what they're facing. And I thought that that's what we want to be in Sovereign Grace. We want to be desert shepherds who know exactly what our people are facing.
I think shepherding imagery is important because we are called to teach them, preach to them, and as I mentioned just a moment ago, we'll do that more effectively if we know the flock and the challenges that they're facing. And the wonderful thing about shepherding imagery, it highlights the fact that we're called to protect our people. Paul says in Acts 20, beware and be watchful because fierce wolves will come in amongst the flock. And we do that primarily by protecting our people from false teaching. Shepherding imagery causes something to rise up within a pastor and say, I'm gonna fiercely protect my people from false doctrine so that they don't go astray. It becomes personal, I think. In Tim Laniak's book, he talks about how shepherds know their sheep by name. He tells this one story of a shepherd who had a flock of 2000 sheep, and somehow seven got lost. And he knew there were seven missing because he knew each 2000 of his sheep by name. Now, that was stunning to me when I read that. Now that doesn't mean as pastors, as our church grows, we're gonna know just everybody by name <laugh>, but on a pastoral team, we should know collectively the people in our church. And so it is just very personal in that sense, and warms the pastor's heart to love his people, when you think of yourself as a shepherd.
So just some of the ways that I want to continue to call us in Sovereign Grace, as pastors, to think of ourselves as shepherds and to shepherd the flock of God that is among us.
Ben Kreps:
Yeah. Excellent. Thank you for that encouragement. I mean, it is amazing grace that any of us have been converted by the grace of God through the gospel, but then to be called to be under shepherds, under the Chief Shepherd. That's enough for a daily wonder as we go about our work. So thank you for the encouragement, Mark. Thank you all for watching or reading. We'll see you here, Lord willing, next week. Bye for now.