Elders are shepherds and their primary role is to shepherd the flock (church members)
Elders are to engage in relationships with their church members
Elders minister with the goal of growing church members in Christian maturity.
Elders easily gravitate toward the machine rather than the members, the trellis rather than the vine, giving more conversation and effort to fine-tuning logisitics rather than laboring over the development of people.
Elders must resist the drift toward being mere organizational managers and instead keep the congregational compass pointed toward maturity in Jesus.
Elders have a particular obligation to be on the lookout for straying sheep
Shepherding is hard work: Jacob recounts his toil of watching Laban’s flock (Genesis 31:38-40)
Negligent shepherding (Ezekiel 34:2-6)
“Feeding themselves” (v.2)
Not seeking and bringing back lost (v.4, 6)
Biblical shepherding requires some clear way of defining the flock: membership
Membership means mutual accountability and concern within the whole body but elders should take a lead in this and model it.
Five Species of Straying Sheep
Sinning Sheep
Wandering Sheep
Wandering sheep slowly meander out of the church, drawn away by other activities or interests. The drift might result from a busy travel schedule, from unwise choice about kids’ sports that takes the family away from Sunday worship, or from purchasing a fixer-upper house that consumes the weekends.
Limping Sheep
Acute hardship can overwhelm even the stoutest saints with despair and sap their ability to maintain normal links with the church.
Every little bit counts. As the Lord brings wounded members to your attention, reach out.
Fighting Sheep
When members become embroiled in conflict with one another
When the NT describes actual elders functioning in churches, it speaks about them in the plural (Acts 15:4,6; Acts 14:23;; Acts 20:17; Phil 1:1; Titus 1:5; 1 Peter 5:1; James 5:14)
If church membership has been increasing and pastor needs are multiplied, how do I effectively minister to a growing flock? More shepherds.
Elders need pastoral care just like everyone else. They can give in to temptation, succumb to depression, become embroiled in conflicts, grow weary in church ministry, or lose loved ones.
The shepherds must shepherd the shepherds.
Other elders can’t pastor you well if you pretend to be Superman.
Constellation of dangers for shepherds: pride, control, heavy-handedness, unapproachability, and even abusiveness.
How does a heaven-born, spiritual infant grow up into Christlike maturity? It involves a number of factors, such as receiving nourishment from God’s Word, but also learning by example of others how to walk with Jesus.
A healthy local church provides a rich matrix of relationships for mutual modeling and copying.
We need not only solid teaching and preaching about obedient Christian living; we also need to see holiness in practice.
Elders should be men worth imitating.
Know your soul and your disqualifying propensities (1 Corinthians 9:27)
The church needs to see the gospel still transforming your life. The sheep need to know that you too regularly repent of sin. They need to hear you crying out in prayer for Jesus’s resurrection power in your soul. They need to know that you read the Bible and pray everyday, not because you are the church’s designated super-saint, but because you have learned that without a daily serving of manna you don’t have strength each day to resist temptation or to serve the Lord.
