"Why I speak up: . . . farm hands for the Shepherd"

I read it last night and enjoyed her take on it. Even before my faith transition I found myself at odds with the parable of the lost sheep and our interpretation of it. I understand the analogy, especially in the holy land. I love the idea of rescuing a lamb in distress and hosting a party upon it’s return. What I couldn’t find was a life example in Jesus Christ. I know he ministered to the outcast, the over looked, and rejected – but as his ministry is recorded – we never see him rushing after people and begging them to return. We have no record of him sending out groups of disciples to bring back the 4000 who ate bread and fish for free until they were filled. No where does he promise to heal some one with the objective of getting them as a follower. Yes, he did use words such as “go thy way and sin no more”, but that is different than – now you are bound to me because I did you this favor.

I fear the parable has been taken to a place he never intended. Or maybe it was written and translated in a way that makes it different from what he said. Either way I like this interpretation very much.

Wow. I don’t know what to say about this one but I certainly appear to have read it differently. I’ve got a lot of conflicting thoughts running through my head. Let’s get my rough stone rolling so I can smooth it out by relying on some of your comments.

While I haven’t directly said “We wouldn’t want those sheep anyhow” I have thought that perhaps the sheep are more content without the fence and any attempt to corral them will either be fruitless or drive the sheep even farther away. I think the analogy in the article is probably referencing the holier than thou attitude more than anything but I don’t believe that there’s much room in their analogy for the sheep that wants to leave. In the analogy there’s still the undercurrent that the sheep must be prevented from leaving or at the very least the act of leaving is a terrible thing. Perhaps I need to reframe the analogy, not see it as church/member and see it as spirituality/spirit.

I’ve run headlong at this wall a few times so help me out here. Ministering/retention: I’ve been in small units where this issue is only exacerbated, there are too few shepherds and too many sheep. We have a good shepherd, at least in the sense that they are willing to reach out all the day long, but there are some sheep that don’t appear to want to make any effort to return. When is enough enough? In small units these sheep can drain the shepherds, burn them out. I understand that you can’t give up on a lost sheep but then there’s reality. There’s only so much that can be done and talks like http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/10/true-shepherds” class=”bbcode_url”>http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/10/true-shepherds are used to browbeat the weary shepherd into attempting more and more. Sorry for the tangent but this part:

He asks why they didn’t work hard at their jobs

stuck out like a sore thumb. I’m really starting to resent the “you didn’t work hard enough” attitude that prevails in every less than desirous outcome of a church program.

I do get the point of the article though and I do like it. Just this past Sunday I kept my mouth shut where I should have opened it. I was simply too weary to fight the fight. Today I regret not saying anything.

So what’s the course of action here? I think it helps to identify what the holes in the fence are. The holes are not the issues that cause the sheep to have a FC. There’s nothing anyone can do to change church history for instance. IMO the hole is:

1) Not understanding what makes people leave the church.

2) Suppressing open discussion about the things that make people leave the church.

Which leads to

3) Not having a program in place to help people that are leaving the church.

I would love to see the church have a special support group or class dedicated to people that have undergone a FC. I’ve stuck my neck out and talked directly with a few leaders about helping them in their efforts to minister to people in that situation and I hit that first hole. They don’t understand. At each attempt to offer up help I’ve been met with a leader restructuring the help I was offering into something they understood, making the service I wanted to provide something completely different.

I say “stick my neck out” because of hole #2. The instant you doubt is the instant you get relegated to the corner of the fence and at that point you might as well slip out. I understand the desire of the leader to not want to talk about these things in public, that public discourse may only expose people to the issues and only create problems. Still how healthy are the sheep, even the ones safely in the confines of the fence, if they are in constant fear of bleating in a way that displeases the farm hands? But yee-haw, when the shepherd shows up the farm hands can point and say that the sheep are safely in the fence.

And when I say a program in place to help people leave the church I don’t necessarily mean that the only goal of the program is to convince the sheep to stay. If all the program does is help the sheep transition to their life outside the fence in a way where the sheep isn’t bitter or resentful and that the sheep can roam the free world with a focus on finding the positives in everything then the program would have served its purpose.

Too many words already, so I’ll end it there.