As a shepherd of this flock I want to care better. As we are doing house church ministries, my main caring is for the shepherds as they are caring for their sheep. That does not mean I only meet up with shepherds, but I mostly meet up with the shepherds for care. I am realizing I need to provide better care for them. We have a total of thirteen house churches (eleven from the English side and two from the Korean side) and God is teaching me that this is one of my areas of growth.
I didn’t realize how much Covid has affected everything and everyone. Locked down at home, worrying from catching covid, on-line school, and the habits we have formed bring challenges in caring for people. Looking back, I did not provide enough help to some of the shepherds during this time, even helping them to start their shepherding.
I see many new parents faced with challenges, too. Kids being sick and training them are hard. It is great to have many children at church and I am looking forward to seeing them grow physically and spiritually. We need to provide some parenting classes. I know they do have this kind of class during the house church conference. I will learn about it and teach it to our shepherds.
Shepherds are like pastors for their house churches. They are not helping me to do my ministry, but they are doing their ministry and I am helping them to do as best as they can. This is fundamentally different from other models of church. As our shepherds are doing ministry, they need help and I must be sensitive enough, prayerful enough, and knowledgeable enough to provide the help they need. I fall short in this area that is why God is teaching me. I had to appropriate the gospel to myself for me to come out of a place of despair to a place of hope where I can rely on God’s fresh power to help one shepherd at a time.
One way to support and care for our shepherds is that I pray for them. I have a prayer journal and record their prayer requests and record how God answers them. As I pray, God fills me with such a gratitude for all of our shepherds that God has placed in our church for us to do ministry together to experience God’s power and grace to accomplish His great commission for the glory of Jesus Christ. I am so grateful that I get to serve here at Journey Christian Fellowship and I pray that to grow to better care for our shepherds.