Jesus tells us two things. One in Matthew 28, we must spread the good news and make disciples of people and secondly he tells Peter, in the Gospel of John, to feed his sheep.
In the fields and on the hills that surround my house you will see many sheep. They eat the nutrient rich grass, on which they grow fat. They have their lambs in spring and like all herd animals they bleat. For the most part they have a rather placid, quiet life.
The sheep dog on the other hand is a working animal. It has a job to do. At the command of the shepherd, this lean mean working machine rounds up and directs the fat docile sheep and takes them in the direction that the shepherd wants them to go.
In my mind this is a perfect picture of the church. The sheep are the congregation. The sheep dogs are the leaders and the shepherd, as always, is Jesus. While this may be a perfect picture of the church, is it a true picture of the church in the 21st Century?
Let me try and equate this to many of the churches we see around us. Firstly though let me say this is not a condemnation of any particular church, as I said in the past, we are flawed and imperfect human beings. What I want to do is measure ourselves against what Christ has asked us to do.
Christ has asked us to make disciples, how do we do this? We spread the good news, we tell others about what he has done for us. In other words we multiple, in the same way as sheep have lambs. We then feed the sheep by teaching, exhorting and edifying them. We give them good grass and pasture to feed off. Like good sheep dogs we guide and lead the sheep where the master wants them to go.
So what do we see in the modern church? I see a lot of fat, over weight obese Christians, ( in the spiritual sense that is). I see a lot of pastors from small churches to large mega churches feeding and feeding and feeding and feeding the flock. I see few churches that have strong outreach programmes, making disciples of people and telling them the good news.
To rectify this we have to learn to hold the two truths that Christ has imparted to us, in tension. In other words we have to learn to successfully provide both outreach and feeding, and not let one unbalance the other. By doing this we will have sheep that produce lambs, we will raise up a new generation of leaders and more than anything see the world has Christ our king sees it. Instead of lost undernourished people without true leaders and with true vision to guide them, we will see sheep ready to listen to their good shepherd.