Don’t Go Alone: Why Ministry Leaders Need a Good Shepherd Too

I have the immense privilege of leading Watermark Health, an evangelism outreach ministry in Dallas. In any given year, we have the opportunity to share the gospel and provide acute, prenatal, and dental care to the uninsured in our city. We often see God write amazing stories through our patient’s lives, with many responding to the gospel, connecting to local churches, and having their lives transformed—and it all begins with a simple medical visit.

Early in my ministry, I operated from an unhealthy view of who was in charge. I believed the ministry rose and fell on my shoulders, so I overworked myself. Instead of trusting God with the work, I looked to my own accomplishments and the applause of man to fuel my ego. After a draining eight-hour day of providing care and making leadership decisions, I would let everyone go home while I stayed up until 11 p.m. or later, working. No one asked me to do this, except my false belief that it was up to me.

Six months in, I crashed and burned.

I imagine I am not alone.

Many go to school for years, dedicating countless hours to learning, and all out of a desire to enter ministry and care for others. But once they set out, the role’s logistics and demands start to drown out the reasons they pursued the calling in the first place. You set out to provide biblical counsel to hurting individuals, but instead you find yourself answering emails and worrying about business plans. You enter school with a vision to exposit Scripture for others, but instead you spend your time on metrics like recruiting the necessary volunteers and meeting budgeting demands.

Before we know it, we’re on a treadmill, trying to keep up with all the needs (and distractions) thrown our way. Or worse, we’re already suffering the ramifications of burnout.

I’ve now been in my current role for ten years. The Lord has used it to mold me and teach me many lessons since then. In particular, Matthew 9:35–38 has played a key role in reshaping how I perceive participating in God’s work.

And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

Although these verses are seen as a call to action, I believe their imagery provide an important framing for how we conceive of ministry efforts.

Ministering as sheep with a shepherd: 3 assurances

In our individualistic, self-reliant society, we likely undersell the gravity of a “sheep without a shepherd” (Matt 9:36). Maybe we imagine a lone sheep in a calm, empty field. At most we worry it might run the risk of getting lonely or lost. It’ll have to look out for itself, but it looks like it’s having a great time—that little sheep is having quite the adventure!

What the Israelites and agrarian societies of that time would have understood differently was that a sheep without a shepherd was not a cute, lone adventurer. It would be dirty, carrying extra pounds of unsheared wool, lucky to be alive given a variety of threats and dangers. A sheep without a shepherd would have been something they immediately knew needed to be tended to.

And humans are the sheep in this image. Multiple times in Scripture, we are compared to sheep.

So Jesus says such “sheep” are “harassed and helpless” (Matt 9:36). Other possible translations are “confused,” “wearied,” “cast-away,” “scattered,” “fainted,” “distressed,” “dejected,” “worried,” “worn out,” “troubled,” “bewildered,” “wandering,” and “downcast.”

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But importantly, these “sheep without a shepherd” aren’t believers. Rather, Jesus applies this description to the crowds who did not yet know him. Believers, in marked contrast, do have a Good Shepherd.

As Jesus’s audience would’ve known, sheep depended on their shepherds for at least these three things:

1. Provision
2. Protection
3. Preening

Sheep without shepherds then had no provision, no protection, and no preening.

Yet as those with a shepherd, believers have each of these in Jesus. Let’s take a brief look at each.

1. Our Shepherd provides for us

The shepherd leads the sheep to green pastures where they can find food, rest, and peace. They’re guided by his staff and nudged to move on so they won’t overgraze. The shepherd goes ahead of the flock to ensure places of rest are prepared in advance for them. He ensures the way there is safe.

Humans need a shepherd for the same reasons. We tend to turn to many alternatives (work, family, food, entertainment, relationships) for provision. But we have a Shepherd we must look to for our ultimate provision.

In John 6, after feeding the five thousand, people approached Jesus looking for more miracles. Jesus reminded them that he is the bread of life—whoever comes to him will not hunger and whoever believes in him will never thirst.

2. Our Shepherd protects us

A shepherd uses his rod to fight off his sheep’s predators. He sleeps near the sheep to guard them at night.

So too, we need our Shepherd for protection. We can become so dependent on and distracted by physical comforts that we fail to notice the spiritual war that’s happening around us. Yet Ephesians 6 reminds us that we are in the midst of a spiritual war.

In John 10, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays his life down for the sheep” (10:11). Although hirelings will leave their sheep to fend for themselves when wolves come (John 10:12–13), not so with Jesus. He has sacrificed his life for us.

No matter what comes our way, no matter what the enemy tries to scheme against us, our Shepherd can and will protect us.

3. Our Shepherd preens us

A shepherd cleans, shears, and anoints his sheep with oil to ward off bugs, soothe skin, and deter infections.

Likewise, in addition to external threats like wolves, we face internal threats. Our Good Shepherd helps us overcome temptations (1 Cor 10:13) and take thoughts captive (2 Cor 10:5). Our Shepherd invites us into a lifetime of sanctification where, like a good father, he disciplines and “preens” unclean things from our lives (Heb 12:5–11).

Don’t go it alone!

We have a Good Shepherd. He brings order and care to our lives. He has sacrificed everything for us.

Yet, even still, we are prone to wander. Our circumstances tempt us to go out on our own. In ministry, the busyness and logistics of it all can often lure us toward attempted self-sufficiency.

When we go it alone, we end up looking haggard and dirty, a bit like a sheep that has been left to its own devices. We begin to look like a sheep without a shepherd—all while claiming to be in the service of the Good Shepherd!

When we go it alone, we look like a sheep without a shepherd—all while claiming to be in service to the Good Shepherd!

Have the demands of ministry made you look like you don’t know this Good Shepherd? Perhaps the pressures of serving those around you have caused you to wander out on your own.

Matthew 9:36 reminds us that our Shepherd is moved with compassion towards the would-be-shepherdless. He doesn’t get grossed out by the dirt or the filth of sheep that have gone astray. The word for “compassion” here refers to the inward parts, giving us the image of his stomach churning with love and pity for us. He is ready to help. So consider how you might return to the care of your Good Shepherd.

Laboring in God’s harvest: 3 rhythms

Beginning in verse 37, Jesus uses another well-known image to an agrarian society—namely, a harvest—to teach what it’s like for followers of Christ to help gather people into God’s kingdom.

Again, our own context can cause us to misunderstand this image and what it means for us. When we think of a harvest, we might imagine hard, backbreaking work. Perhaps it’s isolated labor, up to us to make it happen.

Yet Israelites at that time would have lived around the harvest. And while it was indeed hard work, they would have known it wove important rhythms into their lives.

Let’s consider three rhythms and how they ought to shape our approach to ministry.

1. He invites us into rejoicing

The Jewish calendar depended on the various harvests—their beginnings and endings—including three pilgrimage festivals that brought Jewish men together in Jerusalem:

1. Passover marked the beginning of the barley harvest
2. The Feast of Weeks (Shavuot) marked the end of the barley harvest and the beginning of the wheat harvest
3. The Feast of Booths celebrated the final ingathering of the harvest

Harvest was associated with times of gathering. We likewise gather in similar ways to acknowledge the beginning or completion of something. Promotions at work, when kids do well on a project at school, our friends’ birthdays—we, too, celebrate with feasts.

Exodus 23:14–17 outlines some of these feasts. Deuteronomy 16 and Leviticus 23 expand on what the feasts should look like. Repeatedly in these passages, we find the word “rejoice.” When God gathered his people at the end or beginning of a harvest, it was to celebrate. We have a God who used the harvest to weave a rhythm of rejoicing into his people’s lives.

Despite the often harrowing circumstances of our world (and I encounter them often in my work), to focus our lives around the “harvest” means finding ourselves practicing rhythms of rejoicing. Even in our ministry at Watermark Health, where we often sit across from those facing abuse, loss of loved ones, or devastating immigrant journeys, we still find room to rejoice. We pop confetti cannons when someone hits a landmark moment; we celebrate whenever a patient meets Jesus; we laugh and marvel in the break room as we tell the God-sized stories we’re watching play out.

If you’re participating in God’s work, how can you weave rejoicing into your rhythms? If we’ve bought the lie that being on mission means drudgery, we’re misunderstanding Jesus’s invitation to participate in his harvest.

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2. He invites us into rest

Alongside these Old Testament passages about harvest feasts, we also find verses outlining the Sabbath. In Exodus 23:10–12 (see also Exod 20:8–11), God instructs his people to keep the Sabbath (rest) within the rhythms of harvest.

Although the command to rest is rather clear and straightforward, I’ve noticed American Christians are not very good at this. We live in a time when we are constantly connected to our work, and we’ve done a poor job of creating spaces and boundaries to rest. The God who created us knows our design and has told us to rest. But we continually go against this. Our culture can celebrate it under the guise of “work ethic,” but it is sin.

As I shared above, I succumbed to lies that kept me from accepting this invitation to rest. Yet once I acknowledged the harm this was causing to both me and those around me, a season of confession and repentance led me and my organization to make necessary changes. We built regular rhythms of rest into our ministry and set boundaries for ourselves. We found that when we rested, we actually proved more effective. We also liked each other more and did the work with more joy, not out of austere duty, but because we loved it.

Maybe you too have misunderstood that the harvest should be marked with rhythms of rest. If so, you have a God who is waiting for you to hand over that burden: “Come to me all who are tired and heavy laden and I will give you rest” (Matt 11:28).

3. He invites us into reliance

Finally, the harvest was a regular, tangible reminder to the Israelites that they were not in control—God was. As much as one person can work and do their part to sow, reap, and tend a field, at the end of the day, God determines if anything grows.

The harvest is a place of surrender. We’re not in control of the outcomes—God is.

Throughout Scripture, God uses both famines and plentiful harvests to accomplish his purposes. In Ruth, for instance, it was a famine that eventually lead to Naomi’s restoration. In Genesis, God used a famine to send Israel and his twelve sons to a country where they would grow into a great nation.

We are not responsible for the outcome. God is in charge of that. He simply asks for our faithfulness. Even in Matthew 9:37–38, we often read these passages with the lens, “Yes, harvest—go work it.” But no, Jesus invites us simply to pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest so he sends out laborers.

The harvest is not something we need to go try harder at. Rather, it ought to be a source of rejoicing, rest, and reliance. The harvest is a place of surrender. We’re not in control of the outcomes—God is.

Conclusion

Matthew 9:35–38, which is often used to illicit a call to action in Christian ministry, reminds us we are not shepherdless sheep simply being asked go work harder.

In my time with Watermark Health, the sheer volume of need in front of us has sometimes tempted me to veer off on my own. Perhaps you can relate to this temptation. But when we drift this way, we end up looking like a haggard sheep without a shepherd. And that is not true of who we are if we’re following King Jesus.

Can I invite you back to doing ministry his way? Rely on him for provision, protection, and preening. Partake in his harvest which results in rejoicing, rest, and reliance.

Resources for further contemplation

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