How Do Pastors Show They Care?

Life can be hard on your heart. Most of us grow up protecting our hearts, not wanting to allow people too close. Have you ever gone through a season of recovering from a broken relationship – your heart needed attention, but by who?
Jesus’ solution is that we should care for one another’s hearts. Before saying a final goodbye, three times Jesus asked Peter if he loved him. Peter responded “yes” and Jesus said, “feed by sheep.”
Like Peter, almost all of us who follow Jesus get to shepherd someone else. As we pay attention to their heart and care for their heart; we shepherd them.
Jesus shows us what that looks like, both with his example and with his words. When he saw the crowds, “He had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Mt. 9:36
Isn’t that the human condition? Forget the wars that we are always starting, don’t so many of the people you interact with seem harassed and in need of a good counseling session?
Jesus described himself as a “good shepherd.” He described his relationship with his sheep – how his sheep know his voice and listen to it. John 10
In Matthew 18, he gives us a protocol for taking care of lost sheep. All of us as his sheep start out lost and periodically on life’s road, we lose our way. We need his shepherding. We need those who are called to follow him to look for our hearts. Mt. 18:12-14
He gives us principles in Matthew 18 that help us understand how to search for and fight for sheep. For example, there is the principle of the 100th sheep that says A shepherd’s commitment to the flock is as strong as his commitment to an individual sheep.
The other sheep intuitively understand that the same love the shepherd feels for the one lost sheep is the love that he feels towards them. Were they to ever be lost, he would love them in the same way. The greatest way for a shepherd to communicate love is to assure that those sheep that are closest to wandering are brought back into the fold.
How do we care for sheep?
A shepherd’s caring is not passive. A shepherd looking for a wandering sheep fights for it. He does so with these four characteristics:
1. Compassion
Compassion hears the bleating of the sheep that’s fallen down on the ledge when it’s too far off to hear. That’s us when we find ourselves estranged from God or one another. Perhaps we need to forgive and don’t know how.
Compassion feels the terror that pounds within a sheep’s breast when it knows it is hopelessly lost. Compassion drives the shepherd to search. Compassion is the yearning that a mother feels to protect when her children are in danger.
2. Searching
We search for a lost heart when we take the time to clarify meaning. You say something like, “What you said hurt your friend – were you aware of that?”
While a shepherd looks in bushes and on ledges for a lost sheep, we’re in the business of trying to find out where people have hidden their hearts. People don’t leave a church because they have a wanderlust. They leave because in some way or another, they feel as though they haven’t been understood. They leave because they have an itch that hasn’t been scratched.
Figuring out where they’ve hidden their hearts and how to scratch their itch is hard work. Sometimes the searching process involves clarifying so that they really do feel understood.
3. Risk
Searching is not safe. When the thunderstorm is rolling in or the wolf is on the prowl, it can be dangerous, risky work. When you go after a friend whose heart is bruised, you sense that it may end poorly. They may reject your attempts.
It is risky to go where the footing is treacherous. It is risky to try to sort out misunderstandings when the only outcome may be getting hurt.
4. Perseverance
When I worked in Cambodian refugee camps in 1980, we saw a lot of desperate people who needed help. We were motivated to help by our compassion. But we became familiar with a term called “compassion fatigue.” After a certain amount of time, it is common for those who want to do good to burn out and lose their motivation. Perseverance overcomes compassion fatigue.
If you are a shepherd, how many sheep have wandered from your care last year? Was it because the process of caring for them wore you out? How many people have you known were offended, but you allowed them to wander?
The key to the Great Commission is unity, and the key to unity is the principle of the 100th sheep. If we really loved one another like the world expects us to, then most sheep wouldn’t wander. And those who did would be compelled by our love to return to the flock.
Bottom line: We are all God’s sheep. Jesus is our great shepherd. His commission to us, his under-shepherds, is to look for lost sheep. It can be hard, dangerous work. It’s much easier to just leave them behind. But that is what Jesus did and it’s what he calls us to do as well.
Questions to consider
How is your heart? Are you hiding it from others?
Who tends your heart? Who asks the hard questions?
Whose heart do you tend? Do you feed Jesus’ sheep?
Comments (13)
Leave a Reply Cancel reply
More Posts
Compassion is at the root of much of the beauty of God we see amongst the poor. It is the underlying power behind healing prayers. (Note: Not that it is a formula for healing, as there are indeed battles and mysteries beyond our own understanding, but this much is clear: compassion is vital if we are to pray passionate healing effective fervent prayers that are not merely prayers of desperation.)
I love compassion in action and desire more of it in my life, so thank you for these reflections.
If you ever get the chance, you might want to listen to Jim Weber’s song, “God of Compassion.” It is old and simple, but I used to sing it in Reynosa all the time: “God of Compassion, teach me to be…as full of compassion, as you are to me. Let me love, as you love….”
You do a great job of giving Jesus a platform to show his compassion for lost sheep there in Mozambique, Melinda.
Seth, just when I thought I had read everything on this subject, here you come with some deeply convicting and original thoughts. And true to God’s nature and character.
It seems like “Pastor” is the most used title in American contemporary Christianity. But one of the least understood and practiced. Many believers have never met one, who was living out what you lined out.
Your writing just keeps getting better and better! I am so glad we met.
Thanks for the encouragement, Jim! I’ve actually been thinking and refining these thoughts for about 20 years – wish I could say that I just figured it out yesterday. You’re a great encourager!
Seth, all I can say is that I wanna be like you when I grow up!
Powerful quote from IJM founder Gary Haugen regarding compassion:
“You know, from the hindsight of history, what’s always most inexplicable and inexcusable are the simple failures of compassion. Because I think history convenes a tribunal of our grandchildren and they just ask us, “Grandma, Grandpa, where were you? Where were you, Grandpa, when the Jews were fleeing Nazi Germany and were being rejected from our shores? Where were you? And Grandma, where were you when they were marching our Japanese-American neighbors off to internment camps? And Grandpa, where were you when they were beating our African-American neighbors just because they were trying to register to vote?” Likewise, when our grandchildren ask us, “Grandma, Grandpa, where were you when two billion of the world’s poorest were drowning in a lawless chaos of everyday violence?” I hope we can say that we had compassion, that we raised our voice, and as a generation, we were moved to make the violence stop.”
http://www.ted.com/talks/gary_haugen_the_hidden_reason_for_poverty_the_world_needs_to_address_now
That will preach. And beyond the accountability we have for living lives that count, there is the opportunity we have to access that deep resources of a kingdom founded on the principle of abundance. So many choose to live according to the model of scarcity that we’ve inherited instead.
Very heartfelt message! It brought me to tears.
I pray that Jesus dries them in a way that comforts you, Tanisha.
I loved this, Seth. Partly it hits close to home because of how much this model of pastoring impacted me and Derek on the Race through the leaders we encountered at AIM, and I know that only became the leadership culture with lots of careful heart cultivation.
But it also has me thinking… Derek and I have a huge heart for seeing our generation (which has largely walked away from the Church) reconciled to the Church. Your comment about people not leaving church because they have wanderlust but because they feel misunderstood has me asking a different question: what is it about the heartbeat of our generation has the Church not heard? I don’t have an answer to that question, but thank you for prompting me to ask it as we mull over moving forward into the future.
Thanks for the encouragement, Sara. You and Derek get it. That’s why I’ve followed you this past year.
Prayers for you as you contemplate your next steps. Will you be at PSL? If so, let’s hook up there.
We actually won’t be at PSL – we’re about to move to LA to be with my sister and needed to spend the time with our various families before we’re gone again (LA then G42). I’m sad we won’t be able to connect there though!
Dad, I’ve read and reread this piece, inspecting my heart… answering the questions asked with deep thought. It’s risky to be truly vulnerable, both as the sheep and as the shepherd. May God help me reciprocate the grace I receive from Him daily, to those I follow and those I lead.