Today, we hear that familiar passage where Jesus compares sheep herding to spiritual leadership. In both the Old Testament and New Testament, God is often pictured as a shepherd and the people as his flock. Here Jesus refers to a sheepfold and its door.
At night, Palestinian
shepherds co-mingled their flocks of sheep into a walled enclosure for protection.
It was called a sheepfold. A sheepfold had only one door for entry in and out.
In the mornings, shepherds would take turns calling their sheep and they would
separate into different flocks behind their own shepherd. They would follow
their own shepherd just by hearing his voice because they had spent so much
time with him and he knew them each by name. They would not follow a strange
voice. Jesus compares himself to a “good” shepherd who knows his
sheep by name, knows where the grass and water is located, has the skill to
keep the flock safe from wandering off and knows how to protect the sheep from
wolves and from thieves.
This idea is confirmed in
Jesus’ teaching on “the Good Shepherd.” In that Greek text, there are at least
two possible words for “good,” agathos and kalos.
Agathos means “good” as in “morally good,” while kalos means
“good” as in “good at” or “effective at” something. The “Good
Shepherd,” in the gospel” is said to be kalos, “good at
shepherding.”
When it comes to spiritual
leadership, Jesus implies in this teaching that personal holiness and goodwill
alone in a designated spiritual leader are not enough. A designated
spiritual leader must also be effective if he or she is to
be a real spiritual leader. In other words, today’s
“good shepherds,” must not only be personally holy, they must
be personally effective in their leadership roles. They must
not only appreciate and value green grass and flowing water,
and have their own supply of it, they must be able to seek and find it
for others and be able to lead their flocks to it!
Back when I was teaching
soon-to-be priests about "spiritual leadership," I realized that there
were no Catholic text books readily available to use in class, so I decided to
write one. It is called "The Spiritual Leadership of a Parish Priest:
On Being Good and Good at It." Using this gospel, the main point of
the book is that one's own personal piety is not enough for being a pastor. One
needs to be "good at" leading others to holiness. I am still selling
a few copies on Amazon Books.
I was watching TV one
night when it dawned on me that there are at least two very different ways to
herd sheep - the Palestinian way and the Australian way. The Palestinian way, as
we see in today’s gospel, is to walk in front of the sheep, gently calling them
with a convincing voice, while the sheep willingly follow the shepherd to where they need to
go. The Australian way is to bark and snap from behind like sheep dogs, chasing
and intimidating the sheep into going where they need to go. Good shepherds
lead their flocks by invitation. Sheepdogs lead their flocks by intimidation.
It is no surprise to me,
that in a time when we are losing more and more credibility as spiritual
leaders, the barking and snapping style of leadership seems to be growing
louder and louder and gaining more popularity, especially among those newest to
spiritual leadership. I heard this from a woman just last week who complained
about her young pastor always preaching about sin and damnation! Whenever we
cannot influence people, with convincing voices that our people want to follow
in the style of the Good Shepherd, we end up becoming barking sheepdogs.
Sheepdogs may be able to drive some sheep into the pen,
but more and more will, no doubt, run away from us or simply
become more irritated by our barking and snapping, as was that woman who
complained about her young pastor's spiritual leadership style.
I define “spiritual leadership” as the ability to influence people to move from where they are to where God wants them to be through invitation, persuasion and example. The focus of “spiritual leadership” is on an internal movement to deeper discipleship. A good pastor must certainly be “good at” that! Along with “spiritual leadership” abilities, a good pastor must be “good at” “pastoral leadership”- the skillful use of the Church’s external rites, rituals and rules, as well as the ability to coordinate the charisms within the community.
Spiritual leadership, the
ability to influence people to move where they are to where God wants them to
be, is critical today. Surely, there is no doubt that organized religion has
lost its ability to impose unquestioned rules of behavior on our people and
that one of the most pressing needs facing Catholicism today is the quality of
its priestly leadership. No amount of ranting and raving about how we ought to
be listened to will change this situation. We simply must get better at our
ability to influence and persuade instead of
blaming the sheep for their lack of faith and the culture for its secularism
and moral relativism. Nor can we merely create good tools (write new editions
of the rule books), we must be able to use those tools effectively to influence people
to want to follow those rules.
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