Shepherding Through Change

My heart’s musing these days often involves looking back over my experiences to see what can be culled from them for the next generation.

I have a few thoughts about change.

A soul once complained to me, “Our church is no longer the church I came to years ago!”.  My first thought: “Good thing!”.  Churches that never adjust (or change) are usually best described as ‘stagnant’.

God Himself doesn’t change, but people do.  Change is built into us as a part of life.  We aren’t born with an innate ability to navigate the world.  We grow and learn.  Learning involves adaptation to our world.  Learning is always change.

We change, and God works with our changing.  Just as we develop physically, mentally, and emotionally over time, we also grow spiritually over time.  We aren’t transformed immediately.  We change over time.  That’s what sanctification is – a process of change over time.  As Paul told the Philippians:


Not that I have already obtained this [i.e. becoming like Christ] or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me His own.  (Philippians 3.12)


Paul freely confessed that he hadn’t arrived.  He was living out a process that flowed from Jesus making him one of His own.


When you are part of a church, you are part of a group of people who are all changing.  Each soul is at a different place in its journey.  Each soul learns, grows, changes in different places and at different rates.  No two of us are identical.  No two of us are at the exact same place at the exact same time.  Our spiritual lives, if we are healthy, are always moving.


Shepherding (pastoring) is managing this group of different and ever-changing people and their different and ever-changing perspectives – keeping them working together and moving forward together toward the goal of likeness to Christ.  That involves, not control of their lives, but wisely managing the circumstances surrounding the life of the flock – a constant need to manage change.


God may know how to do that perfectly, but I sure don’t.  After over 40 years of trying to lead, I can tell you things that I’ve learned – usually through mistakes I’ve made and places that I’ve failed in shepherding – because shepherding itself is a process of learning and change as well.  After an adult lifetime of living out this calling I know only one thing for sure – that I am not the Great Shepherd of the sheep (Hebrews 13.20)!


One is humbled by the enormity of the task of being a still-changing shepherd who is seeking to shepherd a flock through inevitable and necessary change.