Leaders Are Shepherds

https://www.shepherdleader.com/

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, welcome to the Table Podcast. My name is Bill Hendricks. I'm the Executive Director for Christian Leadership at the Hendricks Center. It's possible there's no other passage of scripture that is more cited than Psalm 23, and what a wonderful Psalm it is. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. And when we hear those words, many of us tend to think and associate them with a bucolic painting of a lovely meadow and a flock of sheep. And we may even hear strains of Beethoven's pastoral symphony in the background, and that's not bad. But in thinking that way, we actually probably misunderstand one of the central images of scripture. And in the process, we also miss out on some of the key insights about leadership that the Bible has to offer. 

And I've invited today Dr. Tim Laniak from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, formally with Gordon Conwell, now with our Daily Bread Ministry, and its Global Center for Outreach, but he also runs something called the Shepherd Leader Ministries, of which he's the director. And this is a ministry focused on equipping leaders who think biblically about leadership, and where you're going to see the tie in with Psalm 23 is the name of a book that absolutely began to transform my own thoughts about leadership, shepherds after my own heart pastoral traditions and leadership in the Bible. Tim, welcome to The Table Podcast. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Thank you, Bill. It's good to be with you and with all those that listen to you. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, thanks. let me just start with your own story here. How does the Bible and leadership and shepherds and sheep all coalesce into a consolation for you that's become almost like a life message? Walk us back through that journey. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Okay. Well, I grew up in a Christian home with a lot of great Bible School, Bible church, Bible in the home. And I felt my life was really transformed by scripture when I was in high school. And I also felt called in to missions, and it wasn't long before I had a chance, as a college student, to make a trip to the lands of the Bible as part of a Bible program. And I really had my first cross-cultural experience then in the Bible itself. I had my culture shock. I had in some ways, my first mission trip into the Bible, and that made it possible for my two twin passions of scripture and culture and missions on the other side to come together, and for a lifelong interest and cultural difference. 

And has just always been interesting to me as not only the ways in which people live out the gospel in various ways around the world, throughout church history and the global church, but also the way the Bible itself has been revealed in cultural context and how a certain amount of cultural competence is really necessary to make sense of a world of diversity, but also to make sense of the Bible. Those twin passions fueled a lot of Bible education that eventually led to a doctoral degree. They also fed a sabbatical in the lands of the Bible where I studied among shepherds. And leadership in particular, to get back to your question, wasn't something I was even aware was that much of a topic for study. 

But it turns out that my own journey and ministry, my own career in a sense, has begun around the era when people were starting to pull leadership out from management and some of the early works on servant leadership and transformational leadership that came out in the '70s and following. Those were starting to create another field of its own. And as you know now, you can do a search on leadership and see millions of resources. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yes. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

It didn't touch me, it didn't affect me, but I was at Gordon Conwell Seminary in Charlotte when we had a Lily Grant to fund three years of round tables with seminary presidents who would be enriched with Bible study as they also did research projects on leadership. It could be anything from administrative faculty to running satellite programs and to focus on the leadership dimensions of it, but I eventually became the biblical theologian for the actual Bible content we were doing together. Now, having lived in Israel before then, taking groups to Israel, including some from Dallas I remember one summer, I knew that everybody was fascinated with the world of the Bible. 

That was a Christian who made their way there for any kind of pilgrimage or study program. And I knew that everybody always wanted to stop the bus if there was a shepherd or sheep, and you couldn't tell them we had plenty of pictures. You can get them, we get home. Everybody wanted their own pictures of sheep and shepherds, and… 

Bill Hendricks: 

They wanted the authentic experience. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

It is, and it tends to be one of those moments in the lands of the Bible, especially Israel, where people go the most, where they look at outside the bus and they think it's like time has been flattened. And all of a sudden, I'm in the land of Abraham, I'm in the land of Jacob and David and Jesus. I couldn't help, but assume that most people that were in pastoral ministry had lots of resources that explained shepherding, because it's just so prevalent in scripture. Interestingly about the time I was doing this work with the Lily funded round tables, I was eligible for a sabbatical. And I had to do a sabbatical proposal for our trustees a couple years in advance. 

And I made a proposal for a Hebrew exegesis manual to do with a colleague in South Africa. I put that aside and started working on it, while I was doing these round tables thinking, "Okay, we're going to bump into stuff on shepherding." I started to get more intrigued by what seemed to be a lack of resources for pastors that were deeply exegetical. There were certainly people who had titles in books, they smell like sheep, things like that. And even Escape from Church Incorporated, Glenn Wagner wrote with a good chunk on Ezekiel 34, but I spent about a year looking for shepherding resources that were truly biblical and biblical theological. I thought that was really the important thing. 

And what I found were some deep dives on passages like Psalm 23, Ezekiel 34, John 10, but to my surprise, not more. And then I did another year of research before I ever went on sabbatical on metaphor, and the power of figures of speech and how central they are to semetic thinking and writing, and how central they are to scripture, and to the actual theological fabric of scripture. So… 

Bill Hendricks: 

Now let me jump in and ask that obvious question- 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Yeah. 

Bill Hendricks: 

… just for the sake of some of our readers. We talk about a metaphor, just simple definition of what you really mean by that. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

A metaphor is a comparison between two things that is described in direct language. For example, in the Middle East, someone might say, my throat is a desert, rather than saying, I'm thirsty. And a simile technically would be my throat is like a desert. But when you make that flat direct comparison, it's very graphic and concrete, and it triggers your imagination. And as one of many figures of speech, we actually find the Bible when we discover how rich it is in analogies and metaphors, figures in speech, we realize that it's actually triggering our imagination all the time. And metaphors in some ways are like little explosives that pack all kinds of associated meanings all at once. 

If you say, the Lord is my shepherd to someone in the ancient world, they would've thought of a lot of things. They wouldn't have thought of one thing, they would've thought of a number of different dimensions. I like to think of them as micro narratives. We often talk about the meta-narrative of scripture, but I think in some ways, some of scripture's greatest themes are really captured and compressed. You might think of them as zip files in these metaphors. 

Bill Hendricks: 

That's a great analogy. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Yeah. 

Bill Hendricks: 

A great metaphor. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Exactly. I can't help, but think analogically now. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yeah. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

I ended up writing my book on Hebrew Exegesis before I ever left on sabbatical. And I went to the Albright Institute for archeological research as their annual professor to do research on Bedouin and on ancient shepherding practices and texts. I didn't just go live with Bedouin, I didn't just interview Bedouin, but I was doing something that you can call ethnoarchaeology, which is when you take modern cultural practices and you use them as a guide to help fill in the gap between ancient practices and modern ones when literature sometimes is an archeological remains themselves are somewhat limited. People that live in the desert often don't leave a lot of ruins and remains. 

And the texts are often very scanned and often written by outsiders. I had a modern insider's view and I put it together with an ancient outsider's view. 

Bill Hendricks: 

It's not just a translation there, it is a translation, but it's a contextual bridge you're trying to build? 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Right, right. Geography is what stayed the same, and geography has a lot to do with traditional lifeways. How people raise sheep and goats relatively unchanged until the modern era, which gave rise to political boundaries, which limited people for migration, grain and water trucks, which also actually compromised some native skills. Machine guns, AK-47's and Uzis populate most tents, that changed thing. I had to show some Bedouin on how to use a slingshot. Just when you think the Bible was right there in front of your eyes, these guys don't know as much. And also some of the fabric production, it used to be that they could make something out of every part of a sheep or a goat. 

And now they're more commercially driven, but I was able to interview people that had lived prior to some of those realities, or they at least knew the stories and had some collective memory. 

Bill Hendricks: 

What were some of the fascinating things that you discovered about that way of life? 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Well, I learned that shepherds were talented in a multidisciplinary way. They were desert experts. Even to today, they have certain better one that are hired. It's called the Baheth when you're a guide in the desert. Some of them are hired by the Israeli army, for example, in Israel because they know how to work desert's a complex place even in the daytime. But for them to be able to figure out where you, are at night's amazing, but they're also veterinarians. Again, back before the days of veterinarians with specialization, they really had to be able to save a flock from an epidemic. I mean, imagine what we're facing with COVID-19. They lived with that peril. They were really also geographical and climate experts. 

You could be in a canyon, and you could have your flock washed away if you didn't understand the seasons. And also what soils that you were in and what would be the impact of a flood. They're fighters. I've often had Bedouin that I was trying to get me to tell stories about sheep and goats, and they'd rather tell me about people they killed who were marooned out in the desert. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Oh man. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

They are poetic. I mean, when people think about Psalm 23, they think maybe quite often of David sprawled under a tree in the shade with his liar, with plenty of time to write poetry. I mean, I never met shepherds who had much time for anything. They're just farmers and shepherds anywhere in the world. They work day and night. However, they are poetic people. I had one day when I went out with shepherds where I said, I did not want to translator. I just took a yellow pad of paper, and I wanted to write notes on my own observations. Early on in my time, I wanted to have some unpolluted by even my own questions. I didn't want to have- pollute any input. 

And just, as you probably have heard, shepherds will have their own flocks, but they'll bring them together. The flocks will follow a shepherd by a sound, and they can combine them. And then they'll goat the end of having coffee or tea, they'll leave together. Well, we had a bunch of shepherds all come together. They all started making coffee, and then one of them took a little flute that he made out of a broken broomstick, a little plastic broomstick started to play, and the guys were just dancing and singing. And it was just natural. And I studied some Arab poetry, and there's just lots of poetry about the desert, about women written by men, about the stars, about sheep and goats. 

What you read in the song of songs about these flock animals and fruit trees and all, there is something in that Semitic psyche that often expresses itself in Proverbs and in poetry. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Let me ask a pair of questions here. On the one side, what does a sheep mean to a shepherd? The shepherd looks at that sheep, what's going through his mind and what's his attachment? And conversely, if I could put it this way, what does the shepherd mean for the sheep? I mean, I've been told it's… I don't know if it's true or not, that sheep are very dumb. But to the extent that they even think about it, even if they don't think about it, what's the importance of that shepherd to the sheep? 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question, Bill. For the shepherd, I think it's important to regulate our sentiment down into pragmatic reality and to realize, we're talking about people for whom flock animals are their livelihood. There is a merchant… 

Bill Hendricks: 

It basically means their bank account in other words? 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

It is, it's a mobile capital account, and it's at risk in an environment that has a lot of it… that's not very hospitable, and it's also hostile. They care about the flaws, making it through pregnancy to good quality, healthy births. They'd love to have twins. They'd love to have births twice a year. The animals need to be in good condition, so that they have good milk products and they have good fiber products. They look at them that way. I think one thing that maybe is important to realize is that when the Bible reflects the intimacy that is there between sheep and shepherds, there is a fundamental assumption in their world that this is a commercial enterprise. 

And you could say that the affect side of it is a bonus. One of the things that I learned was that there's a difference between an owner and the hired help, the owner and the owner's family and any hired help. They actually try to hire people that are related to them. And if they're not related, I even met someone who was adopted as an adult. I asked a guy what his name was, and he told me his name. And he said, "That was given to my father by the family that we work for now. We're part of that household." I also learned that there are shepherds at very high levels of ownership, where there are thousands of flock animals. And in biblical times, in Abraham's time, there were shepherds in this old Babylonian period that numbered in the hundreds of thousands for the temple. 

For the palace, and the temple, huge, huge numbers of animals. There is this commercial underlay. And the only reason I emphasize that is not because I think that that should dominate the way we view our relationship with God, but I think we ought to appreciate the fact that the ownership is a given. The intimacy is the bonus. And I think that God's sovereignty, God's ownership over us ought to be understood as a given, it's a fact. And whether or not we get the intimacy we want is it's like a negotiable in a grace environment. I mean, that's not something that you can expect. And also… 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, that's a fascinating insight. To me, it gives a new layer to the saying of Jesus where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Right, right. 

Bill Hendricks: 

And if that treasure happens to be a sheep, that's just an interesting thing to think about. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Yeah. Well, I also tend to think that in the New Testament, there's a welcome into the family business. We're all working for the chief shepherd. We're under shepherds working together. And there is a sense that these are the assets of the kingdom, and they require the same level of sacrifice that Jesus made as the good shepherd. The assumption is that the sheep value the most in this business, and that we have been adopted not only as sons, but we've been adopted to work in the family business. And sometimes, I think we often separate the two. We want to get our justification separate from our sanctification and our service, but God doesn't just set Israel free. He sets them free, so they can be in a covenant. And in that covenant, they have a mission. I see that- 

Bill Hendricks: 

There's a stewardship. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

… all that wrapped up together. 

Bill Hendricks: 

A stewardship, yeah. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Exactly. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Now, what is the shepherd represent to the sheep? What is the shepherd made to the sheep? 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

It's absolutely everything. A sheep and goats are raised typically on the margins of subsistence economy, agriculture. Right at the point when there may be enough rain for barley and maybe enough for wheat, you're out there. And that's partly because if you have enough rain for a really good wheat crop, for example, you might then choose to farm your grains, and also even vegetables. And you might even raise cows, like they do up in the northern parts of Gilead and Buchan. And you see the poetry in the Bible about them. They're already in this liminal space. They can manage to survive with the heat, but they literally need water every day. It's they do not survive. 

Their body is not really made for the desert the way camels are. And then you add to that, they don't have any defense. They're out on the perimeter of any settled life where you have a lot of the predators; the hyenas, the donkey, the wolves, the and the biblical times, even tigers and bears. And throughout history, there have been a lot of these large predators that have been there, but this is a nightly affair that these animals that move in that are nocturnal predators. They're going to move in on flocks that are often just simply sleeping around a shepherd. There's no such thing as in the ancient world of having this nice pen, where you have a gate and fences. 

This is just finding a little enclosure sometimes, or else, I've seen a big circle of sheep. And they're literally in concentric circles around a sleep in shepherd in the middle, and that's how they go through the night. And they have some guard dogs around the edge. They need help. They need help with any disease. They need help with any predators. They need help to find food, to find water. And even when they have it, I mean, it's terrible to say. But if they find a water source, and certainly if they find a cistern, they'll push each other in and drown. They need to be managed and completely. And they'll walk off a cliff too. I haven't heard any shepherds say they were stupid. 

I hear lots of people in pulpits say that we're just like sheep, because we're stupid. I don't think so, Bill. I think the key is that we're dependent, and that we're prone to wander, to use the words of the hymn. Those are things that are typical of them. They follow the tail in front of them, they follow the trail in front of them. They don't have good vision. If they hear a shepherd, they'll move, but then they're looking the ones around them to know exactly which way to go. They are easily victimized by the environment and by their limits. 

Bill Hendricks: 

When the gospel says, "Jesus looked on the crowds with compassion because they were like sheep without a shepherd," yeah, there's the illusion to the Old Testament is equal, but that's a real statement of the vulnerability of the people spiritual. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Yeah. It also rips off of something that's pretty common in the prophets, and that is people that have bad leaders are often described as people without leaders, or people without shepherds. Jeremiah and Ezekiel go back and forth between, your shepherds didn't do this, or they'll just say, you didn't have shepherds, so you wandered. And when you wandered literally says Ezekiel, then you became prey for the wild animals. I'm sure Jesus was at least almost every time shepherding language is used in the Bible, it's obliquely at least referring to bad leaders. Jesus and John 10 has all the leaders in John nine in mind, I'm sure when he tells talks about himself. 

These are all people that don't care enough and consequently people are really just leaderless. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, I want to move to applying all of this to the topic of leadership, particularly leadership today. Before I do that, I must ask you to touch briefly on one of the aspects of your research that just floored me was how you brought out the idea that this image of leader is shepherd, this isn't just a biblical thing. I mean, it'd be fine if it was, but you show all the way back into recorded history that we have, all the way into not only the scriptures, but the surrounding cultures from which those scriptures in which they were written. And then projecting into revelation in the future, this motif of the shepherd is just everywhere. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Mm-hmm, yep. When I do consulting say about leadership in a secular or a business environment where people are not all believers, I just simply refer to ancient wisdom, because I can give you examples from ancient Babylon, ancient Assyrian sources, Egypt, Greece. I mean of all things in Greece, they use shepherd for warriors, military leaders. And right through to today, where I had Jordanians tell me that they not only called the king, the shepherd of the people, but they also call someone who's a classroom teacher, a shepherd with a classroom and a business person, a shepherd. It's just absolutely pervasive. 

And I would say there's a reason why servant leadership has become a widespread assumption as the go-to for biblical leadership, because it confronts the standard human tendency to take advantage of one's leadership position and authority to serve oneself. So, that makes perfectly good sense. Jesus said, "Look, Gentile's lorded over you." But if you were to step back and to say, "What is the biblical baseline for talking about leadership? What is the go to?" And certainly if you get beyond scripture to say, how would any ancient person have thought about leadership? Metaphorically, they would always say shepherd. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Mm-hmm. Then let's start with the pastor, and the word pastor obviously just as a English word dates from pastoral images. And of course, Peter makes a big point that the pastor is the shepherd of the sheep. When you talk to pastors of congregations, what's the message that you try to link to for them to say, "If this is the biblical model of leadership, what are the implications of that for what you're doing here in this church?" 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

There are a number of them. One of them is I'm afraid that because we did this little journey through Latin to pastor, and then it came into English rather than shepherd, we just kept the word pastor. We somehow seem to think that a pastor has many things to do, and shepherding might be one of them. And that's just redundant. It's just to be a pastor is to be a shepherd. I think one other thing that happens is that pastor sounds a lot like a title, and Shepherd carries a lot more of the freight of a role. And the role has to do with taking care of people. It's being responsible for their wellbeing, their welfare, the direction of the congregation and all. 

And you can look at a congregation, there's always shepherds. The singularity of the pastor's role, that the sense that the title is only reserved for one person, I think it creates some unnecessary conflict and confusion. We have some large churches here like you do in Dallas, here in Charlotte, where I am. Pastor of a large church here said, "Look, I have 70 elders." And he said, "I gave them a copy of your book, While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks." And he said, "I told him, I want them to move towards viewing their role as shepherds." And he said, "You wouldn't believe how many of them said, I'm out" 

Bill Hendricks: 

Wow. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

"It's not what I signed up for." They were successful business people in a megachurch who said, "We've been here to consult with the CEO to make sure that you make wise decisions to keep you out of legal trouble. We did not sign up to care for people." 

Bill Hendricks: 

Wow. It's very transactional. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Exactly. And ironically, the word elder is just as dynamic and relational and non-official like shepherd is. But anyway, so that would help. The other thing I would say is in the book, While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks, I divide up the different tasks of the shepherd as really as all coming under different roles, providing compassionately, protecting courageously, and guiding with wisdom. I would say that shepherding is the most multidimensional, multimodal, multifaceted kind of role that you could have in a church setting. And actually in our society, we don't prize generalists. We prize and reward specialists, and we desperately need generalists. 

Here we are in a form of human service if you just think of the sector we're in. We're in a form of human service where people don't know what to make of the title. You're often in a church where everyone in the church has their own idea of what your job is. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yes. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

And then you're trying to look inside, or you're trying to look in scripture to see what your job is. And it is, it's a big job because it does involve providing, protecting, and guiding. And you can't just simply delegate all these things out. You need to general contract and some of those things together with the other shepherds that are in the mix. And one of the things that I feel like God's called me to do is to affirm and encourage pastors for being those unique generalists in the kingdom that are actually representing God with the only institution on earth that has a perpetual lifespan. 

The church is going to survive, not necessarily every local church, but every parachurch ministry could rise and fall, and that would be okay, but the church of Jesus Christ is going to be around. And that means this is one of those roles that needs to be healthy, robust, and intact. And I see a lot of people buffered around. I encourage people to take a journey you can actually do it every day. Ask yourself, how am I doing at provision? How am I doing at protection? How am I doing guidance? Because provision tends to come easily for people pleasers and helping type people, but protection doesn't. And then protection comes good for people that are more like watchdogs and people in the military and police. 

And sometimes, nurture doesn't come well to them. And I think God's stretching us in pastoral ministry to be able to oversee a healthy environment that has all of those features to it. And I would say if you're doing daily inventory, before you ask yourself how you're doing on those three areas, there's a prior question. And that comes right out of Psalm 23 verse one. If the King of Israel bows down to the king of heaven and says, you're my shepherd, then he gets one thing that we have to get right every single day. And that is, is God the shepherd of this flock? Is he my shepherd? And do I take my cues from him as the owner? I've been adopted into the family, I've been giving a task, but do I presume to be the end of the food chain, so to speak, that people report up to me and that's where it stops? 

Or am I actually showing people the real shepherd as someone who will come and go, not because I don't care, but because that's the way humans are? It has a lot to do with even succession for me. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, I can see that this way of thinking about one's pastoral responsibilities in essence calls for maybe a different scorecard for success than we've come to honor. Because really, I would think for a shepherd, the question is, well, how well are your sheep doing? Are they healthy? 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

That's right. That's right. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Are they provided for? Are they protected? 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Exactly. Right, right. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Are you are stewarding them well? 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Exactly. I'll put in the best possible light. We've done a good job in the West, especially in the US, of analyzing ourselves. We're infatuated with ourselves. We take every possible personality test there is. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yes, yes. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

And we take a job and there's a disc, and there's something else to help us know ourselves better, but we often will work on the assumption that I ought to only be doing what I'm called to do. And I certainly, having run a DMin program, I know a lot of a doctor ministry program. There's a lot of pastors who feel like I know what I'm good at, I know what I'm not good at, and what I'm called to do. And I understand the value of that. I know God's gifted us, and he doesn't expect all of us to do everything all the time. I get that. If you agree that I get that, listen to the fact that no shepherd I've ever met would hire someone who had a union mentality. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Right. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

I had shepherds who said, I said, "What are you looking for?" I asked a lot of shepherds, what are you looking for? And what I heard was, "We need someone who do whatever we ask him to do." I remember, just like it was yesterday, 9/11 happened, George W. Bush had become president, he announced his agenda. He was going to make friends with Mexico, use his Spanish, all kinds of things he talked about, but you know what, on 9/11 is job change because the nation changed. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Absolutely. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Some pastors have taken a church, they had a suicide and a miscarriage and terminal health all in the same month. Who gets to say what I do and what I don't do it? It's just what you said. The flocks become- 

Bill Hendricks: 

It's what the conditions… 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

… your responsibility. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yeah, it's what the conditions presented your flock with. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Right, right. 

Bill Hendricks: 

I love the word you used earlier, multi multidimensional or multidisciplinary. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Yeah. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Generalist has a bit of a pejorative tone in our culture, but multidisciplinary, I think probably captures it in a positive way. And that's what you're talking about. The question is not whether you can do masterful work when all the conditions are perfect. The question is, can you do passable work under very difficult conditions that may present themselves, but you've got this higher vision of, I got to answer to the over shepard for the condition of these sheep. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

And do you keep yourself involved, I like to say selectively and symbolically in most aspects of the ministry, so that you can be a good general contractor? 

Bill Hendricks: 

Mm-hmm. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

I had one pastor, I just loved it. He said, "You know, when my church was finally big enough," he said, "I realized I'm a terrible counselor." He said, "I finally just hired a counselor, it was perfect." He said, "But you know what, I still counsel once a week for one hour." And I said, "Why?" He said, "I can't get too far removed from what happens in that setting." 

Bill Hendricks: 

Absolutely. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

"I don't want anyone to be harmed by my incompetence," but I think he was being humble. And I really appreciate his willingness to say, "If I only get reports about youth, if I only get reports about worship, if I only get reports from the counseling center, I'm actually getting the worst side of specialization." 

Bill Hendricks: 

I only get the good news. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Well, but also supposedly, I can teach and preach well. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yes. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

I'm not preaching and teaching with any firsthand experience in all the aspects of the church's life that would otherwise helpfully inform me. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yeah, it loses the relevance and it loses the engagement, the personal engagement that I'm with you in your situation. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Right. 

Bill Hendricks: 

One of the points that you bring out on your website there at the Shepherd Leader Ministries, Tim, that I think deserves just some emphasis for a moment, is the challenge that shepherd pastors, church leaders, they need to be in dialogue with others who are doing similar work. And you've actually created various forms of means online by which pastors can do that, so that they're not… if I could use the term lone rangers out there. They're sharing best practice, they're sharing needs, they're sharing prayer. Talk about that fellowship of the shepherds. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think shepherding is, it's an art, and I think ministry in general is often more about the art than about an artifact. You go through seminary, you can write an exegesis paper and get a grade on it, and it's done. You put it in your file, but ministry has moments when you are often at your best and the spirit moves. And there are times when you're at your worst and the spirit moves. And there are times when you make a mess of things, and there's that dynamic that we're in. In a way, it's like playing in an NFL game. You need to be a part of a team. And there's a lot of give and take, there's a lot of feedback sources along the way. 

And you're not always performing at your best, but you need to keep a lot of the basics in mind the whole time. And this is one of the ways to anchor someone to the basics. 

Bill Hendricks: 

That's great. Let's take a moment and apply the leadership model. There are many Christians who are leaders out in the work world, CEOs and other bosses as it were, or just middle of a manager in a company or a supervisor over a work crew. Typically, we don't apply that shepherd motif to those jobs. But I think having looked at your research, that's something we need to revisit. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Yes. I would love to introduce you to a major manufacturing company that you would recognize the name of in the Midwest, who introduced in a voluntary basis, discussion groups around While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks. I think they probably had a hundred different groups go through it. And I was just amazed at the way in which the… and actually they went overseas with one of their affiliates did the same thing there. Absolutely no boundary at all, no barrier, no sense that this is something quirky, but I had a tour during one of my breaks of one of the buildings that had a manager of one of several of the processes took place for their equipment and manufacturer. 

And everything he described about himself, his own journey, his own role as a leader, he framed in terms of shepherding language. I would think it's an HR dream come true- 

Bill Hendricks: 

Absolutely. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

… to have people think about their role in that way, because it is certainly comprehensive enough for anyone in any role. The only thing that changes is, and we all have to be culturally competent with this. When you're a parent, you have more to say in the lives of your children, for example. It would be viewed as invasive in some other settings if you were an employer or boss, you can only do certain things. But if your instincts are to be thinking in terms of providing, protecting and guiding, then at least you have some a gyroscope to help monitor whether or not people are being taken care of. And like you said, to judge yourself on the wellbeing of the group, that takes humility, but that seems to be the important outcome. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, there's an inherent ring of authenticity and life giving quality to what we're talking about here. I mean, who doesn't want a boss that is looking out for them, that's there to provide what they need to do a good job, protect them from various problems and guide them when they're trying to figure out what to do? I mean, that's a dream boss. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Yeah. I was in a meeting one time where I was the boss, and I was with a leadership team. We were talking about how to get some people's morale higher and whatever. People made some generic suggestions. Sometimes, it's like a financial incentive, someone else wants a day off. And I said, "You know, from what I know of so-and-so, I think their love language is really public affirmation." And I said, "But you know, for this other person, it's just money. Just give me the cash." I was leading this conversation about how to give everyone really what they needed. And one person said, "I have never been in a place where anybody ever talked about the love languages of their employees." 

Whatever we do is going to be good, because just that level of interest, but- 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yes. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

… I mean, people's morale is definitely based on whether or not they're cared for. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Absolutely. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

And one of the things that I noticed about shepherds is it's this epic level of knowledge about their animals. And again, back before they had veterinarians and they had all these other things, they knew their flock animals well enough that they would know if there's a problem and a problem can spread if it's a health related one, but they also know if they were afraid. I have stories in the book of some of these shepherds, even in the middle of the night, they can feel a goat and they know which one it is. 

Bill Hendricks: 

And wow. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

And a father who's sick in the 10th who says, "Go, go, go, I want you to get the ewe." And he describes it in certain way, and his sounds so… 

Bill Hendricks: 

You know exactly who it is. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Yeah. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Wow. We got a couple of three minutes left. One final category of shepherds that you talk about are parents, and that almost deserves a whole podcast under itself. Maybe we can come back and do that. But just briefly, what would be some implications, obviously for parents as they think about that task? 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

I think parents actually have the most opportunity to apply every aspect of the shepherding metaphor. And I would also say that parenting is the first context for all of us to learn to be as adults. It tends to be the first context to learn to be good shepherds. And a lot of what I wrote in the book came as a result of realizing my shortcomes. As a parent, it's a job that it's very hard to feel successful at, but it does require to keep stretching in all those areas. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yeah, it certainly does. And you've mentioned the word humility earlier, and I think parenting is something that by its nature encourages humility. And sometimes that's painful, but you realize the day that you have that baby, you're in a whole new game of service and sacrifice. And how you acquit yourself there has a massive bearing on the condition of that, that little lamb that you've brought into the world. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Yeah, yeah. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, Tim, I just want to thank you for not only writing the book, but again the massive research that you've done, and the fact that you went out and talked to shepherds, and it's helpful to realize, well, they're not exactly doing it as they did it 3000 years ago, just because even though the landscape hasn't changed, conditions in the world have changed, but it's clear that there's a deep reservoir of insight from this whole motif of shepherding that we can learn about leadership. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

Well, thank you, Bill. I encourage everyone to read the Bible with this lens on. And there are some other ministries that are starting to focus on shepherding, and I suspect that God wants to renew the interest and awareness of it for some pretty significant reasons. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Absolutely. And I do want to encourage you as our listeners to check out Dr. Laniak's website there at Shepherd Leader Ministries. Again, just a boatload of resources around this whole theme. You'll be a better leader as a result. Tim, thank you… 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

It would be shepherd… Yeah. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Go ahead. 

Dr. Tim Laniak: 

I'm sorry, it would be shepherdleader.com Bill. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Shepherdleader.com. Excellent. Thank you, Tim, for being with us today. And I also want to thank all of our listeners for being with us today. Be sure and subscribe to us on your favorite podcast service. For The Table Podcast, I'm Bill Hendricks. Have a great day. 

Speaker 1: 

Thanks for listening to The Table Podcast. Dallas Theological Seminary, teach truth, love well.