What people need and what people want are frequently two different things. In ministry, the observation “That’s not what the sheep want” gets used to justify all kinds of defections. “I’d love to teach more Bible, but it’s not what the sheep want!” “I’d love to have more prayer in our church, but that’s not what the sheep want.” “I’d love to care more for the poor, but that’s not what the sheep want.”
The sad fact is, these things might be true. But it’s the shepherd’s job to lead the sheep where they need to go, not where they want to go. They have their own will and they get to make choices, but that doesn’t relieve us of our responsibilities. If they’re headed the wrong way, we chase them down and turn them toward what they actually need. If their desires are disordered, it’s our job to help them want the right things. Let’s get to work!
I have to admit, leading the sheep toward what they need is a lot harder than giving them what they want. Bright-eyed guys coming fresh out of seminary and hoping to just be good shepherds and make a living wage at it may well be disappointed, and it’s discouraging to see ear-ticklers prosper while good shepherds struggle. But remember Who we’re following: foxes have holes, etc. While there’s nothing wrong with making a paycheck in pastoral care, that’s a relative rarity across the sweep of history and cultures.
Even in our prosperous times, shepherding work is mostly not what churches pay for, at least in my experience. My pastor father was a great shepherd, in a place where they certainly had the means to pay him. He got paid for teaching Christian school and media distribution; the shepherding he did–which was a lot–he did on the side, for free. I once served a church for two years with the title “Pastor of Discipleship and Ministry Logistics” and got zero support for the discipleship side of things. Nobody above me on the org chart ever asked how discipleship was going — not my boss, not any of the elders, nobody. My spending request for curriculum (a whopping $60) was turned down; I ended up buying what I needed out of my own pocket. I got plenty of support and accountability around making sure the bulletin got done and we didn’t run out of copy paper, though. Part of the answer here is to adjust your expectations; churches, like sheep, don’t always want what they need. Helping them want what they need is the job.
That particular church is where I learned this lesson the hard way. They’d hired me because they knew they didn’t know how to disciple or shepherd. They wanted me to bring those skills to the church, and I did. I expected them to support me intelligently in the task. I look back at that now and think, “Well isn’t that cute!” Of course intelligent support is a reasonable thing to want, but it’s very naive to expect people that don’t understand your job to support you well. Of course they didn’t know how to support me, for the same reason that they needed to hire me in the first place — they didn’t understand discipling or shepherding! The wise course of action would have been to actively train the leadership in how to support my work. Instead, I was struggling to do my job in spite of them, and was therefore constantly frustrated at the lack of support. As I say, that was the place where I learned this lesson. Feel free to profit from my error: go thou, and do un-likewise.
But mostly, that’s not a problem shepherds have. Most of the shepherds in Christ’s flock, most of the time, support themselves. Even Paul did, sometimes — if he’s not too good to make tents, who are we to balk at it? I can tell you, self-supporting ministry comes with a certain kind of freedom. If you’re self-supporting and you have a small network of godly men who will provide wisdom and accountability for your work, you don’t need anybody else’s approval. Just go forth and shepherd, and be glad you have the time to do so! During a big chunk of that two-year stint I mentioned above, I was tracking my time in 15-minute increments. Since I found the practice helpful, I continued it for a while after I left that position. Fun fact: in the weeks after I left, I spent *more* time shepherding than I had when I was on a church payroll, ostensibly being paid to shepherd and make disciples. Fewer distractions, you see. No marathon staff meetings. No copy paper to order. No bulletins to make. Just people who needed pastoral care. So I cared for them.
Effectiveness comes from focus. Focus is mainly about what we don’t do.
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