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About Jesus Steve Sweetman My Journey Through The Ecclesiastical Maze Part 20 Some
Practicalities of Shepherding Shortly
after we first got acquainted with shepherding, I headed off to Elim
Bible Institute in There
are a few important highlights for me from my Bible college days, not
the least of which was meeting my first wife, by whom I have two great
sons. Beyond this, I
benefited from the variety of students I met who had different
backgrounds than me. Of course we all held the basic tenants of faith in
common, but when it came to secondary issues, there was room for
disagreement. One group I
gained respect for was those with a Mennonite background.
They were well grounded, humble and sincere about their lives in
Jesus. The
variety was apparent among teachers as well. This might have been
confusing for some, but not for me.
I thoroughly enjoyed hearing something taught by one teacher and
then hearing the opposite taught by another.
This gave me the opportunity to hear both sides on an issue so I
could come to my own conclusions after much thought and study.
This seldom happens in our churches.
It’s often the “embrace our teaching or move on” mentality
that prevails in many modern churches, and for this I was once
“deleaderized”. Among
the subjects that fostered differing opinions at While
I was at college my friends back home decided to submit themselves to
shepherding leadership. This
meant that a man named Jim Covert and his family moved from In
June of 1977 I returned to So
this is the question. What
did “being placed under someone’s care and authority mean”?
The term “submission and authority” was well used back then.
Our pastor, or shepherd was seen as God’s man to “speak into
our lives”, another well used phrase.
If this man was God’s choice to lead us, then we should
seriously consider what he had to say.
That meant a good measure of submission to our shepherd on our
part. This is what scared
many critics of shepherding. Let
me say this. For the most
part, I experienced no dictatorial abuse from anyone I was placed under.
I’m not saying that abuse never happened within the movement
because it did. Problems did
arise because of leaders with little maturity and Biblical
understanding. A
Biblical fact needs to be made at this point.
In the New Testament, the words shepherd, pastor and elder are
used interchangeably. This
means that an elder is the same as a shepherd or pastor.
Inherent in the word “elder” is the idea of an older, mature
man. Thus when thinking of a
shepherd or a pastor, part of his qualification is to be an older,
mature man, or at least the emphasis should be on “mature”.
I’ll let you figure out how old an “older” man is.
In many cases this qualification was overlooked in the
Shepherding Movement. It’s
also overlooked in the church at large. The
one over us would not merely teach us Biblical precepts.
In my opinion, many of the younger leaders weren’t qualified to
teach anyway. Most Bible
teaching was done in public meetings, and as often is the case in
churches, there was more preaching than teaching.
What the shepherds did do was attempt to care for us in personal
life issues. This is another
area where critics had problems with shepherding.
These
life issues could include such things as, family finances, children, and
husband and wife relationships, including sexual issues. Some
of the input we received was valuable, yet sometimes it crossed the line
of privacy and was intrusive, resulting in other problems.
Although the critics often pointed out that we needed permission
from our shepherds to buy a new couch, that never was the case in my
experience, but I do know such things happened in some places.
I’m
not discounting the claims by some that they suffered mental or
emotional abuse at the hands of an over-authoritarian shepherd, but I
didn’t suffer such abuse.
As I said earlier, the important thing for me was the “horizontal
relationships” I built with people. I admit that I did experience some
subtle, and even not so subtle pressure to submit at times.
That seemed manageable for me back then.
I might not feel the same way today now that I’m older, wiser,
more vocal, and of course, more set in my ways.
One
not so subtle time of pressure for me was when we lived in Speaking
of We
packed up our possessions and moved south.
That was a sad day for me. The
three things I missed most upon leaving were, my city, my friends, and
Montreal Expo baseball. At
least I got to talk baseball with my good friend Bill Freeman, who was
also my boss at work in I
didn’t fully anticipate the sadness that swept over me as we left We
left As
I think back on these things, I’m not convinced our move to the U.S. was the will
of the Lord or the will of man, and uncertainty can certainly cause
problems at times. The
important thing to remember here is that some day we’ll stand before
our Lord Jesus Christ and answer to Him, and not our pastor.
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