The Church Needs More Trustworthy Shepherds: Wholehearted Lovers of People as well as of God

As I continue to ponder the current state of my part of the Church, i.e. the charismatic movement in North America, the scandals at IHOPKC and now at MorningStar come to mind frequently. I think often of Ezekiel 34:1-10 (NIV) which reads:

"The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. They were scattered over the whole earth, and no one searched or looked for them. 

“‘Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, because my flock lacks a shepherd and so has been plundered and has become food for all the wild animals, and because my shepherds did not search for my flock but cared for themselves rather than for my flock, therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock. I will remove them from tending the flock so that the shepherds can no longer feed themselves. I will rescue my flock from their mouths, and it will no longer be food for them.’”

As I ponder these things I wonder to myself how these ministries and ministers became people who mistreated God’s sheep. Surely this doesn’t just happen by accident? I constantly think of how desperately the Church, not just the charismatic movement but the whole Church, is in need of trustworthy shepherds, that is, spiritual leaders who take good care of God’s people rather than mistreating them. How might I myself become the kind of Christian leader who treats God’s people well?

I have been preaching since I was 18 years old, so for roughly 15 years now. Throughout these years I have often been drawn to what has become my favourite Bible verse: Jeremiah 2:13.

Jeremiah 2:9-13 (NIV):

“Therefore I bring charges against you again,”

declares the Lord. “And I will bring charges against your children’s children. 

Cross over to the coasts of Cyprus and look, 

send to Kedar and observe closely;

see if there has ever been anything like this:

Has a nation ever changed its gods?

(Yet they are not gods at all.)

But my people have exchanged their glorious God

for worthless idols.

Be appalled at this, you heavens,

and shudder with great horror,”

declares the Lord.

“My people have committed two sins:

They have forsaken me,

the spring of living water,

and have dug their own cisterns,

broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”

In the surrounding context within Jeremiah, God is rebuking his people primarily for the sin of idolatry, as well as for relying on sources of strength and protection other than himself in the form of other nations. For almost 15 years now, I have been fascinated with God’s depiction of idolatry here as abandoning a rushing, gushing, luscious fountain of water in exchange for a cracked cistern that cannot hold water. Why does God choose to describe the sin of idolatry with this kind of metaphorical imagery?

I don’t know about you, but when I think of the major biblical commandments given by God to his people against idolatry, e.g. Exodus 20:1-5, I normally think in terms of God’s people being urged to obey God. I think in terms of our external actions - doing what God tells us to do and not doing what we tells us not to do. But Jeremiah 2:13 and the specific imagery God uses there to describe idolatry tells us that there is more going on than only external decisions and actions. 

To refresh our memory, in the NIV the verse reads “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” What is water symbolizing here metaphorically? Well, if we think in literal, physical terms, water is humanity’s most crucial need, alongside oxygen. Humans can survive over a month without any food, but only a few days without water. The fact that the water in this text is described as “living” means that it is indicative of our greatest and most crucial spiritual needs. What are humanity’s greatest and most crucial spiritual needs? I would suggest things such as: being valued, having a sense of purpose, affection, joy, hope, peace, intimacy and love. Our spiritual needs are not only internal and psychological, however, we also need external protection, provision, guidance and community. So in Jeremiah 2:13 the sin of idolatry is being described not so much as a failure to obey certain external commandments, but as a decision to seek out what we ultimately need, internally and externally, in sources other than God. So idolatry is certainly about external actions and inactions, but at its core it has more to do with the question of human need and desire and the practical sources of these things in our lives and communities. 

In one sense, this all seems rather obvious and quaint, doesn’t it? Most Christians have heard the idea that humans often try and ‘find love in all the wrong places’, or that we all have a ‘God-shaped hole inside our hearts’. Or as Augustine so famously put it “You made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” As I said, this all seems rather simple - get what you need from God and what he gives us and not from sinful sources. But if it were this simple, why do all of us struggle to actually do this consistently? 

Most English Bible translations of Jeremiah 2:13 obscure an important hint here. Most translations describe the twofold sin in question in this verse in this way: “They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” Notice the “and”. Despite the fact that all modern English translations other than the NASB here use “and”, a more accurate translation would be “to” or “in order to”. The Hebrew grammar denotes what we call a purpose clause. If you are skeptical here I understand, I am after all not a professional Bible translator! But I would point out that in most recent, major scholarly commentaries, when the biblical scholar does their own translation of 2:13, they opt for the “to” option instead of the “and” option (see the commentaries by Goldingay, Craigie, Allen and Lundbom). I am actually not sure why so many English translations opt for “and” but I suspect that they are attempting to clearly present the twofold nature of the sin being described ‘they did this wrong AND this wrong’.

But what is the point of all this scholarly jibberish? As it turns out, one change of word can be very meaningful. If we translate the phrase “They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters in order to hew for themselves broken cisterns”, what might this suggest? The Lord is saying that his people have forsaken Him, the ultimate and perfect source of all that they most deeply need and desire, and have gone to other sources of these things (I.e. foreign gods) because they were seduced, enticed away from Him by their corrupted desires. This phenomenon is at one and the same time the most profound of mysteries and the most everyday of facts: why do you and I as human beings oftentimes choose to do things even when we already know and understand that they are bad for us? The children of Israel knew that God was their trustworthy source, but they were enticed away from him by other sources that promised so much even though they already knew that they would not deliver what they promised - cisterns unable to hold water or provide true spiritual nourishment. 

What does all of this have to do with moral scandals at churches and the moral failings of ministers/pastors? Martin Luther, the instigator of the Protestant Reformation, was very fond of Jesus’ parable of the good and bad trees in Matthew 7:18 (NIV) where he says “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.” Luther was also famous for describing the human plight apart from Christ in much starker terms than most in medieval Christianity had done: he believed that, apart from Christ, human beings were so sick with the cancer of sin that they were incapable of even desiring to choose and please God rightly. In true Augustinian fashion (Luther was an Augustinian monk before his ‘reformation breakthrough’) the problem of sin was a problem of misdirected and corrupted human desire. Again you may ask, why is this relevant to the Church’s current dire need for trustworthy shepherds, that is, spiritual leaders? It is my conviction that spiritual leaders don’t just become the false shepherds of Ezekiel 34 by accident, and nor do trustworthy, Christlike shepherd just end up that way by chance. I think that we have to heed God’s word to Israel in Jeremiah 2:13, we have to, by the power of the Holy Spirit killing the old us and bringing the new Christlike self to life within us, choose to find our deepest needs and most profound desires in God and God-ordained sources rather than in false sources, the cisterns that we all find so desirable even though we know they won’t give us what we want them to give us. Good trees are good trees because their roots are being filled with good things, bad trees are bad because their roots are planted in bad things. 

But with the Mike Bickle/IHOPKC situation, part of what made the scandal so hurtful for those affected by it (myself included) was that Bickle seemed externally to be as righteous and holy as they come. After all, who spent longer in the prayer room, fasted more rigorously, memorized scripture more passionately? Again Luther can help us here, and the other reformers. Luther went against the grain in late medieval Christianity because he scandalously taught that even people’s acts of piety, fasting, prayer, giving to the poor, etc. can in fact be expressions of deep sin. Externally they may seem like wonderful acts of devotion to God, but inside they may be motivated by sinful desires. What externally seems like hardcore self denial for the sake of loving and glorifying God wholeheartedly, inside may be sinful self-indulgence. Both Luther and Calvin pointed to the example of Paul here prior to his encounter with Christ on the Damascus road. In Philippians 3 Paul makes it clear that prior to Christ he believed himself to be a fully God-pleasing adherent of Torah. In Romans 7, however, he reveals that even as the most law-abiding Jew one could imagine, he was filled with covetousness - there we have it again, the Augustinian misdirected desire. 

We need spiritual leaders who do not only claim to love God wholeheartedly, but who treat their flock well. If a spiritual leader claims to love God with all their heart, but behind them in their wake there is a trail of relational destruction - broken, hurt, disillusioned, wounded people, then they are not who they believe themselves to be. We need shepherds who, by the power of the Holy Spirit, choose to get what they most deeply need and profoundly desire in God and the good things he gives us rather than in bad or questionable sources (such as self-indulgent false piety). Good sources produce good trees who treat people well, bad sources produce bad people who treat people badly. I for one am endeavouring to choose and cultivate my sources well, and to constantly ask myself ‘where am I getting what I need in life right now?’, so that I can be the kind of spiritual leader who loves people well, rather than simply claiming to love God and damaging his people at the same time. 

Thanks for reading this blog post! I have been thinking about these kinds of things for many years, especially Jeremiah 2:13, and have put all my thoughts together into a teaching booklet/course which I have called Wholehearted. My good friend Belinda Love Lee did some artwork for it a while back, which you can see in the image for this blog post. 

A final but incredibly important thing to mention - although I am lamenting some untrustworthy Christian leaders in this blog, I am incredibly grateful for the abundance of good, trustworthy spiritual leaders I have found in my various Christian contexts - Alberta Bible College, Vineyard Canada and the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ in Calgary - you know who you are! You may not be making the headlines, but God sees and many people (like me!) appreciate your work immensely.