The Role of Shepherds and Teachers: (I Think this is) A Word of Wisdom

The Gospels include a parable known as the Parable of the Sower, or the Soils, where Jesus describes a man who tosses seed that lands on four different types of soil. The seed that lands on three of the soils, in the end, fails to produce fruit. The other seed produces fruit abundantly.

I've always found this truth to be daunting and grim. Left to itself, it offers no hope for most people. And, believing in a Lord who came not to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many, I have always been uncomfortable with the seeming coldness of Jesus' teaching.

And, I've also wondered how the Body of Christ fits into this teaching now that the death and resurrection of Jesus is an accomplished reality.

Lately, without a conscious effort to understand it, I've been having insights about this teaching of Jesus.

---------------

Here's how I understand what the Spirit has been saying to me:

Apostles, prophets and evangelists are all gifted by the Spirit, in one way or another, with the, to use the image of the parable, spreading of truth--to the world and to and through the Body.

Shepherds and teachers, to use the image of the parable, have been placed by the Lord to farm--to tend, to nurture and care for the souls who have received the truth.

---------------

The problem, then, with institutionized Christianity, is that it doesn't function in the plan and power of the Spirit.

The institutionized church has its own way, disconnected from the will and way of the Lord.

The institutionized church doesn't empower apostles, prophets and evangelists to pursue their callings in the way the first disciples did. Nor, in fact, does it empower shepherds and teachers to walk in the Spirit.

In the institutionized church, a hierarchy, topped by people often functioning in a CEO role and bottomed by people working as parish priests, provide religious products and services to be consumed by the laity many of whom are essentially passive consumers of the institutional spiritual product.

The hierarchy assumes the role of the Holy Spirit and confines APESTs. It doesn't empower them.

The result is that soils that might have produced fruit, through the nurturing of shepherds and teachers, produce nothing.

---------------

We must repent.