{"id":28236,"date":"2020-12-11T09:54:04","date_gmt":"2020-12-11T15:54:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=28236"},"modified":"2020-12-11T10:04:06","modified_gmt":"2020-12-11T16:04:06","slug":"shepherds-are-shaped-by-the-sheep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=28236","title":{"rendered":"Shepherds Are Shaped by the Sheep"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At our final evening prayer service before we left Shanghai to repatriate to the States, our church members took the time to tell us how thankful they were <em>for themselves<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Sounds a bit pretentious, doesn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n<p>OK, so that\u2019s not exactly how it went down. But, in a sense, it\u2019s true. I\u2019ll explain.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A SHEPHERD THANKFUL FOR HIS SHEEP<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>After <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/article\/4-lessons-loss\/\">a difficult 2019<\/a>, we prayerfully decided in May 2020 to transition from the church where I had served as the senior pastor for the past six years. This congregation is incredibly sweet, generous, and encouraging; I\u2019ve been so thankful to the Lord for the opportunity to serve them. I can\u2019t imagine a better scenario or a sweeter season for my first pastorate.<\/p>\n<p>As we were on our way out, our congregation really went over the top to encourage us, bless us, and serve us. In the aforementioned prayer meeting, another elder opened up a portion of the time for church members to share thoughts of thankfulness for me and my wife Kim. And then the church parlayed those categories of praise into a time of prayer for us and for the whole church.<\/p>\n<p>It all felt a little like one<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We are examples to the flock (1 Pet 5:3), but that doesn\u2019t mean we can\u2019t learn from those around us. It\u2019s a tragedy when pastors surround themselves with \u201cyes men\u201d or place themselves at the untouchable top of an org-chart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[793],"tags":[312],"class_list":["post-28236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9marks","tag-leadership","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28236"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28238,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28236\/revisions\/28238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}