John Wilson on Shepherds

Speaking to the church’s crisis of identity and crisis of leadership, John F. Wilson made the following statement at the annual Restoration Quarterly Breakfast in 1991:

“...the very word ‘shepherd,’ though we hear it from time to time in the church, sounds contrived. This is because the ‘flock’ does not consider itself thus—especially in well-educated or upwardly mobile churches. We feel more comfortable drawing our analogies from the corporate world. We are not sheep, following our shepherds to the fold. Rather, we are individuals who belong to many communities, among them, a church. This church is not our primary group, though it is very important to us, of course. The leaders of this group are not in any sense the shepherds of our lives. Instead, they are the volunteers one tends to find in any organization, who are willing to give some time and energy to keeping the church program going, handling the money, supervising the staff, and so on. They would be quite uncomfortable actually acting like shepherds—and most of us would be very uncomfortable if they were to try.”