Dear pastor: You call yourself a shepherd. I wonder…
I love cats. I’ve cared for well over 50 at various times. They aren’t all mine; if I see a cat that is hurt or hungry, I take care of it. That’s who I am. Would you do the same for people who attend other churches or don’t attend at all, unless you thought you’d convince them to come to your church? I can’t imagine a real shepherd seeing a lamb caught somewhere and not taking it with him back to the fold, looking for its shepherd and returning it to its flock. But many pastors won’t do that. Those that do… I also can’t imagine a shepherd realizing that lamb had been abused and sending it back to an abusive shepherd. There are pastors who would.
I love cats. But the neighbor has a dog. The dog loves to chase the cats, but I don’t hate the dog. He’s doing what comes naturally to him, and though I’ll try to deter him from the cats, I wouldn’t hurt him. Most pastors I’ve known quickly label people “goats” and push them away, even deliberately hurt them, saying it’s “for the safety of the flock.” Goats have their benefits, though, and tend to get along fairly well with sheep from what I’ve seen. So many pastors who call themselves “shepherds” unfortunately don’t know sheep from goats, and kick the ones they label goats away. I’ve never known someone who cares for animals to only care for one type of animal and be mean to other kinds. How can a pastor do that to people?
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Author: Through Grace
I was raised in a somewhat unhealthy church group within the Nondenominational Christian Church. After graduating high school, I began attending a United Pentecostal Church (UPC). I've been a member of four UPC churches and visited many others. Of the four of which I was a member, I was "encouraged" not to leave the first and then later sent to the second; attended the second where an usher repeatedly attempted to touch me and the pastor told me I should not care about the standards of the organization and was wrong to do so; ran to a third at that point, which threw me out after a couple years; and walked out of a fourth. For these transfers and because I refused to gossip about my former churches, some called me a "wandering star, a cloud without water" (Jude 1:12).
I love the fact that when the blind man was healed, questioned by the Pharisees and temple rulers, and expelled from the temple, Jesus went and sought him out. He very rarely did this once someone was healed, but for this man, he did. I believe God has a special place in his heart for those who are abused, wrongfully accused, or condemned by religious leadership. I believe He loves those who are wronged by churchianity--yes, churchianity, not Christianity, because those who do these wrongs follow a church, not Christ.
1 John 4:7-8
7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
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