"Shepherds after My Own Heart" by Timothy S. Laniak. A Brief Review

Shepherds After My Own Heart: Pastoral Traditions and Leadership in the BibleShepherds After My Own Heart: Pastoral Traditions and Leadership in the Bible by Timothy S. Laniak
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a focused look into the practice of "shepherding" drawn from ancient information and Scripture. Laniak spends most of his time interacting with Moses (the Pentateuch) and David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah, the four Gospel accounts, 1 Peter and Revelation. The author's approach was helpful in gaining a healthy perspective on how YHWH shepherds his people (and what it means), how our Lord Jesus addressed it, and then it's applications to the ministerial shepherds of God's people today (in contrast with bad shepherds who fleece and fracture God's people).

This book is both a corrective and a directive. It's corrective nature is seen in how the author faces the misuse of ministerial-shepherds: "Abusing others was an expression of the arrogant assumption that power is primarily privilege rather than responsibility" (149). It is directive in reminding us that shepherding is derived from God's shepherding his people. This is not our role that we can do with as we like, but a contingent role in caring for God's flock, for "human leadership is derivative of divine leadership and dependent on God's own Spirit for its effectiveness...Biblically speaking, a human leader is none other than God leading his own people through an anointed servant" (92). This final statement may raise a few eyebrows because of how the concept gets mishandled and mangled. But in the context of the book, it has everything to do with becoming a shepherd after God's own heart who will care for God's sheep, feeding them with knowledge and understanding - not fleecing or fracturing them (Jeremiah 3:15).

"Shepherds After My Own Heart" is a good study of Scripture on a pinpointed subject. Fellow ministers, this is worth your money and time to delve into. But also, if you and your congregation are between pastors and searching, this would be a good resource to discuss as you look, pray and listen. And if you found yourself in a situation where the leadership was abusive, maybe even downright narcissistic, and you're hurting, I think you will be aided by this volume. That abuse was not a display of God's heart. There are others out there who will deeply care for you, and spending time in this book will give you a criteria for discerning who they are. I highly recommend the book.


View all my reviews

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

“The Shift” - 2023 Movie. A Review

Image
  What do you get when you cross a dark dystopian storyline with sci-fi, alternative dimensions, theological and philosophical questions, and the biblical book of Job? You get The Shift , written and directed by Brock Heasley, produced by Ken Carpenter, and distributed by Angel Studios. This roughly one hour and 45 minute tale swirls around Kevin (Kristoffer Polaha) as he moves from one realm of life, with it’s happiness and heartbreak, to another dimension that is a dismal existence clearly governed by The Benefactor (masterfully played by Neal McDonough). A viewer will be asking questions all the way through, and picking up clues and answers that pull the story together bit-by-bit. The story bumps up against an infinite set of alternative possibilities, of time, space, and versions of one’s self that will likely stoke a viewer’s imagination. But the heart of the narrative - besides love, grief, loss, trust/distrust - is around the place of evil, specifically, personal or human evil.
Read more

"On Getting Out of Bed" by Alan Noble. A Review

Image
  When it comes to family members or friends going through a significant mental crisis, or suffering, we often can feel like we’re fumbling about to help them. Sometimes, we can become like Job’s friends, whom he had to call “miserable comforters” (Job 16:2). But very recently Alan Noble, assistant professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee Oklahoma, and cofounder and editor-in-chief of “Christ and Pop Culture” penned a deeply beautiful 120-page hardback that addresses mental affliction. “On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living” is written for those who struggle with mental affliction, but also pastors, teachers, parents, and loved ones, to “help them understand their loved one’s suffering. It is for anyone who ever struggles to get out of bed” (3). I finished this book earlier this week, and kept finding myself saying, “Finally! Someone gets it!” Eight chapters fill up this handy manual. They run through several subjects, like not sounding like Job’s f
Read more

Community?

Image
  (This is from my letter to my congregation I sent out today, 30 August 2023) As one of my elders was leading us through Carl Trueman’s Strange New World in our adult class , I appreciated Trueman’s emphasis on community. And our discussions, especially the last two Sundays, were very fruitful as we thought out loud together about this subject. Therefore, I thought I would share something from David Brooks, an Op-ed columnist that leans into this discussion.   Brooks published a book in 2019 titled, “The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life”. In that work he was taking a gentle punch at destructive trends he has been seeing, and giving some helpful correctives. And so, he notes that “Individualism, taken too far, leads to tribalism” (34). He then shows how the loneliness and spiritual emptiness of individualism taken too far have become more prevalent in our time and the ways that they lead to very dark social consequences. These darker social consequences foster the need t
Read more