Shepherds Ought To Have The Smell of Sheep On Them.
I was tooling around on the web lately and found a message on Building a Relational Community from Sovereign Grace Ministries. This was a good message to hear, they also do a very helpful Q.A. session at the end of the message.
So what does this have to do with, “Shepherds ought to have the smell of sheep on them?” A wise gentleman made this comment about, “The Proximity of the Body.” So I put this in the context of me first, and what am I doing to have the smell of sheep on me. The message points toward having the smell of sheep on you, living amongst the brethren and doing life with them.
In listening to the message, they discuss small groups, and small groups often start out being “another meeting” not that another meeting is bad but people do not view it as life on life, or true Christian friendship.
It can seem somewhat insincere, if you come to someone simply to receive teaching, and never being able to be taught by those whom you surround yourself with in Christian friendship, in these groups.
If the goal is training up into Godliness, let us do this, but do this living life with one another. Not that we stop all teaching times, but that we do the teaching while doing life as well as having those regular meetings.
This can be challenging when people have small children, yet at the level of the heart these hard times when people have tight schedules, and crunched lives are when the bonds of shepherding, not simply from the leader but from the Holy Spirit impress on our lives the the doctrines and teachings that we learn on Sunday mornings, and put them into practice, even and often “evangelism” as a group which also binds hearts together around truth.
One of the main takeaways for me is that we do not have to do shepherding group the same each week, and we do not have to schedule getting together with your group only on “Scheduled Times.” It is ok and preferred that you meet with your group or individuals from your group more often than simply the scheduled times.
I would encourage anyone and everyone to have a listen.
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