Episode 65: Smelling Like Sheep

To the Ruled Church podcast.

This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas? You see that one in Pechote, Mexico?

Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy.

It's a monarchy.

Christ is king.

You can't be Christian without a local church.

You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus in a local, visible congregation.

It's all over, Eddie.

All over?

Yeah.

Christmas is over.

I know, it's so strange. It's actually not over, but it will be by the time people hear this. Actually, we'll be into January by the time people hear this.

I think this is coming out January 10th. So, did you have a good Christmas?

Oh man, it was great.

It was just wonderful.

I'm saying that prophetically.

Whoa, all right. You heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen. Eddie Ragsdale has the gift of prophecy. Welcome to the Rural Church Podcast. Your co-host, Allen Nelson, pastor of Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, or I almost said Kentucky.

Why would I say that?

You have lived in Kentucky before.

Yeah, but not Perryville. Perryville, Arkansas, and with me is my brother, friend, co-labor in the ministry, Eddie Ragsdale. Say hello, Eddie.

Hello, everybody. I hope everybody's having a wonderful start to 2024.

Wow, how are you people of the future?

Yeah.

We're just lowly bums from the past speaking into your life.

Right.

Why Believers Should Be Joined to a Local Church

All right, I got a quote for you. I believe, I believe that every Christian ought to be joined to some visible church that is his plain duty according to the scriptures. God's people are not dogs. Otherwise they might go about one by one.

They are sheep and therefore they should be in flocks. If I meet a man all by himself, snapping at everybody, I may be called uncharitable, but I should hardly think that he was a sheep. I would be afraid that he was a dog.

But when I see a man who consorts with his fellow men, feeds with them, takes delight in their company and with them draws near to the great shepherd of souls, I say to myself, I think he must be one of the sheep for that is the way in which the animal always acts.

So beloved, you should go in flocks or companies. That is to say you should be joined to some Christian church, Charles Haddon Spurgeon. What do you think brother?

That is a great quote. That is exactly right. As a matter of fact, I was speaking with one of the brothers in our church just before we started recording. And we were kind of talking about that very subject, just the importance of being a part.

And here's really the thing that people need to understand. There's no value in some sort of formal membership if you're not going to have actual life in the body of the church.

Yeah.

I mean, what good is it? What good is it to the person to be able to say, I have my name on the membership role of such and such Baptist church, if they're never in attendance? And what good is it for a person even who's gonna be, even what we might call regularly in attendance, if they're not going to spend any time getting to know and talking with and building relationships with brothers and sisters.

The reality is if we're not formally, formally bound to a body of believers, and then actually in the body life of that body of believers, why would we consider that we're a part of a flock?

Yeah, that's very good. It's not either or. It's like some people I've heard before, like, well, we don't care about formal membership. We're just involved and connected. And then you have the other side.

It's like, we care about formal membership, but we've got people on our roles that have been there for 40 years, hadn't seen them. It's like, no, it's formal membership and involvement.

That's right. Both are necessary, right.

So a sheep should look, act, smell like a sheep. And what we want to talk about in today's episode is what a shepherd should smell like. You wearing Axe body spray?

I am not.

Shepherds should smell like sheep. Of course, we're talking about the pastoral duty, the office of pastor. Read to you a passage that we read last night in family worship. Jeremiah 23, woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture, declares the Lord.

Therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel concerning the shepherds who care for my people. You have scattered my flock, they have driven them away and you have not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for your evil deeds, declares the Lord.

Then I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I've driven them. And I will bring them back to their fold and they shall be fruitful and multiply. I will set shepherds over them who will care for them.

And they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed. Neither shall any be missing, declares the Lord. And then of course, in the next couple of verses, you have the prophecy of Christ, the branch that will come.

But what we see in that text, Eddie, is God cares about his flock and he cares about the way that his flock is shepherded. Any comments from those verses?

I think we have to remember that it is a important and a grave task that a man takes when he enters into the work of shepherding souls. It is not a low thing. You know, there's a reason why James says that not many of you should be teachers, my brothers, because there's going to be encouraged stricter judgment.

We want to remember that it is a big deal to God that we would treat his sheep appropriately.

Pastors and church members need to hear that, what you just said. It's a weighty thing to be a shepherd. You said, well, you know, Quadra, you just read an Old Testament text. Okay, but what does 1 Peter 5 say?

I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed, shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you, not for shameful gain, but eagerly, not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.

It's, in other words, you say, well, Jeremiah 23, that has nothing to do with the church. I would disagree with you, but you can't say anything about 1 Peter 5 that that has nothing to do with the church.

Right, right.

And it's the same language that Jeremiah is using, the same language Peter is using, and that is God has, in the same language that we heard from Spurgeon, which of course is not scripture, but the idea is God's people are sheep, and the local church is a flock, and over the flock, God has appointed, qualified God-called men to shepherd the flock.

Right.

So let me ask you this, and we'll start out the conversation maybe a little bit this way. Why doesn't Peter say CEO the flock among you?

Yeah, yeah, because he's not telling us just to be managers of the flock, or promoters of the flock. Not that there's not some of those things involved in shepherding, but yeah, the idea is to shepherd, which really speaks to the fact that we're supposed to be intimately connected to the flock, right?

The shepherd's gotta be out there with the sheep, and the shepherd has a responsibility for the welfare of the flock. And I think a lot of times we have, especially in the modern church, the American church, we've taken worldly, worldly paradigms, worldly ideas of what growth is, what success is, and we've set those on the church, and we've said, well, the CEO would only be considered successful if his business was growing at X rate.

So pastor, if the church isn't growing at X rate, then you must not be doing your job, because we're defining it in a different way than what God is defining the church, the sheep, the flock.

And let's just be clear, because you say, well, if Peter was alive today, he'd use a different analogy. No, Peter had a lot of different analogies available to him. He could have used a military analogy, Captain, the troops in your charge.

He could have used, look, there was systems 2 ,000 years ago of being a manager. You know, Jesus teaches parables with managers and such. So Peter could have used that analogy, but he uses this specific analogy of overseers as shepherds, not as people that are distant, that come into the flock.

You know, hey, I just come in, I check on the flock on Sundays, and then I'm out. And honestly, I'll say this, I think, and I'm not gonna name any names, because I don't care about stirring up controversy, but I think even in our realm, solid, biblical, conservative, godly men are not setting good examples in this.

And that is, hey, I'll see you got, my main thing as a shepherd is not, I'll just, I'll shepherd you on Sunday mornings, which again, you and I would not minimize that.

No, no, no.

We must feed Peter, or Jesus tells Peter, feed the sheep. We must feed them. We must feed them good food. We must do our due diligence to study and preach and teach. But there's so much more than that.

We need to pray. Something I was convicted, I'll just be a little bit transparent here about something I was convicted, like I finally did this now. I printed out all our members, so I can make sure I'm actually, that I'm not missing anybody.

And I'm actually praying. So I have one, I have three of them, one in my Bible, one in my sermon binder, and one just taped in a wall in my office, so that I can see the names. And when I see their names, I see their faces, I remember who they are, and I pray for them.

And you say, well, and I doubt anybody like that that's listening to this podcast, but you say, well, there's way too many people in my church to do that. Well, then you need more elders.

Yeah, that's right.

Because if you don't know the sheep, how are you gonna shepherd? And there's something else about preaching too, like I was kind of in an argument the other day on Facebook about it, it was like, preaching is not just explaining the text, though that is priority, and that's like, we put that up there.

But you've gotta explain the meaning of the text. And then you've got to say, okay, this is how it applies. And I can do that, and I have, I've come to your church,.

You've come to my church,.

I can come to your church and preach and do that. You can come to my church and preach and do that, praise God, I'm grateful for that. But you can preach to your people better than I can preach to your people.

And I can preach to my people better than you can, why? Because I also know the specific thing. Now there's similarities, obviously, because we're 90 minutes apart, but things culturally, things going on in the community, things that you know about going on in homes, you're able to appropriately apply the text in such a way that people who don't know the sheep can't.

Something else, I'll say this and I'll pitch it over, you have been talking a while. In order to do that well, you have to know the sheep. You have to know what is going on in their life. So back to you.

Well, yeah, just this last week, the reality is that we do live in a day and age when if we were just talking about the transfer of information or even entertainment in as far as speakers go, listen, people can find better teachers and preachers than me, for sure, 100%.

They can go online and there are solid, biblical and better teachers and preachers than me, for sure, that they can find. They can listen to hours and hours. I have a brother in my church, love him. And he listens to tons of R .C. Sproul.

He's like Ligonier guy, listens to tons of R .C. Sproul. And he's been helped by R .C. Sproul.

And that's good, I love R .C. too.

And that's great. But here's the thing, R .C. Sproul's with the Lord. R .C. Sproul's not talking to my brother. He's talking to just an audience teaching and it's helpful and it's good, just like what you read from Brother Spurgeon a while ago, that's helpful and it's good.

But Brother Spurgeon wasn't speaking directly to you and me because he didn't know us because that was a long time ago. Whereas, like you said, we're able to speak to our congregations where they are and apply the truth of the scripture to where they are.

Just this last week on Wednesday night, two or three different conversations that I'd had with different people that were gonna be in that Wednesday night meeting had led me to think about a certain subject.

And so I went to a passage of scripture that dealt with that. And we walked through that passage of scripture. It wasn't what was in the teaching plan for what I was doing on Wednesday nights or anything.

But I just, because of the conversations I had, because of things that I knew that were happening, it was something that needed to be addressed. And so we were able to address it. And several people mentioned how helpful it was.

I don't think it was helpful because I handled, we were in 2 Corinthians chapter four. Well, I don't think it was helpful because I handled that text better than, list your A-list preachers and teachers that you could find because I handled the text better.

But rather because I knew that it was something that our people needed to refer to on that given Wednesday. And so I do think that there is this idea that we know the state of the flock of God in this place amongst these believers.

Yeah, that's good, brother. And practically then, and this can be overdone. There was a time in my younger ministry where I was like, it's Deacon's job to visit people. And there actually, there is some truth to that.

I do think Deacons should be more involved in taking care of physical needs. You can't always be calling the pastors by, okay, a ditch needs to be dug, food needs to be supplied. Like that's good. I mean, and by the way, pastors shouldn't be above doing those things.

And you and I have both done those things. One time I got called to pull a calf, but thankfully by the time I got there, it was already pulled, so.

You sound like a real backwards Baptist.

Yeah, yeah. So pastors should not be above those things, but Deacons should help alleviate that. Okay, but now here's the other side. If you're too busy to visit someone in the hospital or to go over and check on the flock, you shouldn't be a pastor.

That's right. You know, one probably pretty classic work on this, and there's different views on it, but the Reformed Pastor by Richard Baxter, really convicting. And you don't have to agree with everything that Baxter says in order to allow that book to probably change some of your thoughts about pastoral ministry.

You should know what the inside of your people's homes looks like. And now I don't have, and there's not a command in the scripture like thou shalt be in everyone's home this amount of time, but you should know what your people's homes looks like.

And for, I'll tell you something, maybe I hadn't told you this, but Pastor Jacob and myself, at the time of this recording, we're still working on this, but we're trying to work it out where every person in our church will have an in-home visit from either Pastor Jacob or myself once a quarter.

That's good.

So again, this is something we're trying. So we've divided it all out. We're still at this point trying this out, but between us, we want to make sure that we're in their home. And when we do that, we're going to add, the plan is to ask, to read the catechism that we're going through at that point.

Whatever week we're on, we'll talk about that, to check in on the memory verse, to ask, to not just come over and say, hey, we're here to just be your friend. That's important, but we're here to exercise oversight, to make sure that your soul's okay, because one day we'll give an account before God for how well we cared about your soul.

And so we're coming over to pray with you, to read the scriptures with you. You know, like I said, read the catechism with you and to check in on you. How are things going? How can we love you better?

How can we counsel you? Anything that we need to know, that kind of stuff. Well, any, anything you can.

Well, I think something you said there, you said, you know, if you're too busy to visit someone in the hospital, you're too busy to be a pastor. I completely agree. The flip side of that is, listen, brother, if you're so busy, and listen, I can say, because I also am a solo elder at this point, and I feel this way sometimes, so busy in the ministry, that should point us to why the wisdom of having a plurality of elders.

Because you look at, even in a small church, man, that's a great thing that you and Jacob are seeking to do, to quarterly, but even in a small church, I mean, even yourself at Providence, without Jacob, oh, that would be a, that'd be a big task to be in everyone's home.

But if you, if just Alan had to do that.

Yeah, even with that, it's probably gonna be almost once a week, you know, which it's not that big a deal. And, but it's just, you've got to prioritize. You know, I was reading, it's funny, we're sitting here doing a podcast, but I was watching this little clip from, oh, who was it?

It was from Sinclair Ferguson. And he was just talking about all this stuff you do, blogging and stuff like that, like, that's not your call. And I understand, here we are podcasting. I guess the one defense I'd say of that is, we do this on a routine, a schedule, a time we both are able to, but if this gets in, but there have been plenty of times that we have not recorded, you know, because of ministry.

And if this does get in the way, we ought to cancel this, you know.

That's right.

But the idea is God has called you, God has called me, God has called pastors to shepherd the flock of God. I don't have it up anymore. Yes, I do, it's right here. Shepherd the flock of God, 1 Peter 5, 2, that is among you.

So I'm not responsible to shepherd your flock. You're not responsible to shepherd my flock. I'm not, it's God's flock altogether, but the flock among you, you shepherd, the flock among me, I shepherd, that's our responsibility.

Right.

And we've got to crucify any kind of desire in our life to be known or famous or pastor. All the people on the interwebs, we're called to pastor the people among us, to spend time. And so the idea of smelling like sheep, you spend time with the sheep.

Now this is a lot, I get it. And you can't sacrifice like, okay, so we have to study, we have to pray, we have to be with our families. We have to do our own personal reading, like outside of study for sermons, we have to feed our soul like that.

We have to do all these things. On top of that, we have to be with the sheep. But I'm just convinced probably a lot of guys doing too much extra. There's some things you just got to cut out. It's not bad things.

It's not like a sin to do certain things as a pastor. It's just, you don't got time for that.

Yeah.

And me and my wife, we've had that discussion before where she's just like, you can't do something else. And even like we have a recovery meeting that happens every Monday night. And for the first few years that I was here, I didn't have anything to do with that.

And then there was a period of years where I've had a lot to do with it. But a few months ago, I told the brothers that were kind of leading that. I said, you guys have got this and I'm not going to be here.

And so I did go this last Monday is the first time in about three months that I went. Cause I told them I would come by and see them every now and then. But yeah, we've got to be willing to say, you know what?

Sometimes you need to let somebody else do things. You know, I think a lot of times pastors don't actually let other people do things. They won't call on a deacon or another brother in church to go make a visit or something like that because they're concerned that maybe they're a little bit arrogant and concerned that nobody, it won't get done right.

If I don't do it, it won't get done right.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, we'll, the Lord will meet the needs of his people. So we both, the pastor needs to, he needs to not be neglecting the sheep so that he's not smelling like the sheep. But at the same time, he needs to be willing to let the whole flock minister to one another too.

Not feel like I've got to be the one that makes every visit. I've got to be the one that teaches every time, preaches every time. Like nobody else can, if I don't do all these things, then it won't get done.

I think that's what leads a lot of pastors to not want to have a plurality of elders is because they've got it in their head that the only person that can do this is them. And we want to guard against this idea that nobody could do this but me.

Yeah.

Yeah, let me give you another practical tip here. I do think you should be in each other's homes. I think most pastors listening to this need to think about that. If you're not a pastor and you're listening to this, do your pastor a favor.

Like this would be a huge favor you could do your pastor. Invite them to your home. It doesn't have to be a meal. It could be coffee, could be dessert. If your pastor has kids, you don't have to do the whole thing.

I mean, that could be, I understand. It's a big thing to invite my whole family to your home. That's eight of us. I get that. But it's something to just consider. Another practical tip I give to pastors is include people more with the stuff you're doing.

So you like to hunt. Okay, there's nothing wrong with hunting, but it can take away too much time from the flock. Well, here's one way to think about that. Hunt with some people in the flock. And so you're spending time with them.

You've got to go make, you've got to go do something. You've got to run to the store. You got to do a task, whatever. Take somebody with you.

Spend time with them.

The other day, my wife and I were out doing a little Christmas shopping and we were going to grab a bite to eat. And we're like, you know what? Let's call this one person and see if they'd like to eat with us.

Turns out we wound up going over to their house. Just kind of happened that way. I mean, it's just thinking, I understand you're busy and you only have so many hours in a day. So just thinking through some practical ways.

But again, the whole point of this episode, shepherds should shepherd God's people well. And you're not gonna do that if you're never spending any time with them. I know that we have this idea of ministry.

I'm gonna lock myself in my study for 80 hours a week. I'll come out and kiss my children, hug my wife, and then I'll preach on Sunday. But that's not a healthy model. You say, why? So-and-so does it.

Okay, there are some men who we see do it, but it's not healthy for the vast majority of pastors.

Right, well, and I think sometimes too, we have to recognize, and this may be a little blunt what I'm about to say, but I think a lot of guys, they look at what's sometimes the pastors in really large churches are able to do.

And they say, well, I'm gonna do it just like that. And it's like, well, okay, your church has 70 people. That guy's church has 7 ,000. You can't do it just like he's doing it. Because just the fact of the different size of church, they're having to go about some things differently.

And I think sometimes they see these people that have this big platform and they think, well, I'm gonna do exactly what they're doing. And it may not even be that those guys are being unfaithful. It may be that they're being faithful with what God has given them, but you can't do that with a smaller church.

You've gotta be more in the lives of your people than what those guys are doing.

Yeah, and people's like, well, I just wanna preach. Okay, then resign from being a pastor and go start your itinerant preaching ministry. It's probably not gonna sustain you because you probably can't preach very well.

So you can't just preach. You've got a pastor. Well, I'll just pour into the group right around me and then they can pour into everybody else. That's not pastoring. That's not shepherding the flock, not part of the flock, the idea is that the elders shepherd the entire flock.

Well, I'll just be like the chief elder and I will shepherd the elders and then they'll shepherd. No, there's already a chief elder. That's Christ. Christ is the chief shepherd. So you are called, and it's gonna look different, I understand, but you're called.

And let me say this again, we kind of wind this down. I mean, we've already gone through this whole episode, really, but let me say this again. God cares about his flock. They are the apple of his eye.

They are very near and dear to his heart. Shame, shame, shame on us as pastors and shame on myself and Tom's Passa if we don't take this with the utmost seriousness.

And

Let me throw out one more element.

Yeah, go ahead.

That might help us think about this too. So I think we've been kind of talking about this from the perspective of the pastor. Pastor, you need to be in the lives of your people. But we also do need to think about it from the perspective of the church because I think oftentimes what has happened, and really it's because of the low bar of what we call Christianity in America, what we call Christianity in the church is that a lot of our churches, they expect a holiness among the pastor.

They expect him to be a certain kind of man, but they really don't want themselves to be that kind of man. So they don't want him to be among them.

Yeah.

They want to show up at the church on Sunday.

Some Sundays.

Some Sundays and use the language of their Christianese with the pastor, but they want him to be sequestered in this ivory tower Christian life, but they don't want themselves to live those holy lives.

But if we had a real biblical view of the life of all the believers that we ought to all be growing in holiness, then we wouldn't expect the pastor to be separate from that. One of the things, understanding the analogy, yes, we're to be shepherds, but shepherds are also sheep, meaning we are the same thing as the other sheep.

We're sheep too. And yeah, we should smell like the sheep because we are one, and they should be as much sheep as we are. And honestly, a lot of times you've got a lot of pastors who are shepherding a pen of goats.

And the goats are like, well, you're not like us.

Yeah.

And so you stay over there and be a sheep shepherd because we're really goats.

In probably many situations, it's a mixed bag. It's goats and sheep. And then all your time ends up being focused and worried about the goats. I've got to walk on eggshells because the goats are going to get mad and you never wind up feeding the sheep.

You never wind up shepherding the sheep like you should. So that's something else to consider. Sometimes you just got to put your foot down and just say, okay, no more. And that can cause a great deal of pain and difficulty.

But let me say this, because I do agree with that exhortation and those listening who aren't shepherds, be shepherdable. Be a sheep that is easy to be shepherded. Make yourself available. Know your pastor's schedule.

Know his time when he is, for example, me, Tuesday's a big day for me for sermon prep. Every other day, I kind of used to, I can be flexible and finish things up and all that. But I like to give a lot of my time all day of my Tuesday, really.

And so if that's how your pastor does it, well, make sure that you help guard us Tuesday. But other days, maybe ask, invite him out to lunch or see if you can have coffee, just check in. Hey, check in on your pastor.

How's he doing? How can you pray for him? Anyway, it's just be shepherdable. And here's like bottom rung of the ladder. Show up to the meetings. You know, so, I mean, because there are seasons that are so busy in pastoral ministry that you don't have a lot of time outside to visit.

But man, if all your sheep are coming to all your meetings, boy, that's a huge help because you're able to kind of keep checked in anyway. Maybe ramble a little.

Well, and even the check-in idea, you know, I've got a brother in my church who, you know, when he is gonna be, just this last Sunday, he wasn't here. And he shot me a text Sunday morning. Hey, here's what's going on.

This is why I'm not there, you know? And it's like, yeah, I'm glad to get that text, you know? Because he's, you know, they use the phrase today as ghosting, right? A lot of people just kind of ghost their church.

And you'd be doing your pastor a real service just by you not making him come and find you. You know, I don't know much about sheep in terms of actual the animal sheep. I've never been a person that had sheep, but I have had cows most of my life.

And you know, some of them, they'll go hide, right? And you gotta go find them. You go out to feed and you're getting a count on the cows. Well, they're down in the thicket somewhere and you gotta go find them.

And you like those ones that, when you go out to put the feed out, they just come right on to it because you can get a count on them real easy. We all ought to be the sheep that are showing up at the feeding time because it's easier for a shepherd to know us.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's good. You know, when you let your pastor know why it is you aren't able to make a meeting, it saves him some time. You know, number one, he can pray for you. Number two, it saves him time throughout his week to check on you because he knows, well, I know this is what's going on.

You know, those are just little things like that. So I guess probably the mainstay of the episode is encouraging and challenging pastors, but sheep have something to play in this too. And back to the Spurgeon quote from the beginning, this is Christianity.

This is what it looks like to be a Christian, to be an involved, plugged in member of the flock, of the local church. This is Christianity. I don't like this. Well, this is Christianity.

Right.

So this is what it looks like. And if you're a true believer, pray to the Lord, take it to the Lord, continue to study the scriptures. God will show you these things and he will bring you to this position because this is what it looks like.

You got anything else?

No, man, that's really good.

And you're right.

The life of the local church, this is Christianity because that's what eternity is gonna be too. It's gonna be all of us sheep together in the kingdom of God. And we see that in microcosm in local churches like Providence and First Baptist Marshall and churches all over the world that are these little flocks of the household of God spread all over the planet.