7) Sheep pastors create a comfortable environment while leader pastors look for a "wow moment" every time they preach in order to create passion to fulfill the great commission. - What utter nonsense. The wow is found in the correct handling of God's Word. How many times has someone said wow about a sermon yet been unable to relate what it was actually about? Wow moments feed the flesh. The Gospel stirs the Spirit. This is once again man relying on man instead of on God.
8) Sheep pastors protect the status quo while leader pastors challenge the status quo. - Another worldly concept. The status quo merely means the current state of affairs. If you preach the Gospel and tend to the sheep, why would you need to challenge that? I know pastors who lead congregations of 200 people but the majority are growing in their walk. He will get a "well done my good and faithful servant." I know others who routinely use blessed subtraction and carnal gimmicks to keep their church attendance over a thousand but the majority are goats. The average time someone spends in a mega church is less than three years. Most never go back to any church. These hirelings will answer for every sheep they allowed to wander out of the pen. Acts 20 teaches us their blood will be upon the pastor's head.
9) Sheep pastors ask "what for" while leader pastors ask "why not?" - Here we find some more exceptional truth on display from the seeker friendly mindset. The question should never be "why not?" It should always be whether something is Scriptural. Why not has led to secular music being played during worship. It has led to the false signs and lying wonders movement. It has led to Star Wars sermons and a compromised Gospel. Why not? How about because God said no?
10) Sheep pastors desire stability and predictability while leader pastors desire fluidity and creativity. - Since when is stable a bad thing? The Bible is the most stable thing we have. We do not ascribe to fluidity but to black and white absolute truth. Here Mattera actually says that leader pastors do not want to be placed in a box. We hear this similar complaint from people like mike Bickle and Bill Johnson. It was a prevalent message in the wildly heretical movie, Holy Ghost. The box people do not wish to be constrained by is called the Bible. It is doctrine.
11) Sheep pastors protect the sheep against new ideas while leader pastors operate at the speed of light and taking the road less traveled. - Another completely carnal notion beloved. The Bible is not new. God did not forget to say something when He wrote the Bible. Why look for what is new, exciting, or hip when we already have the inspired Word of Almighty God? We do not need a "new way" of doing church. We just need to follow the directions already given to us.
12) Sheep pastors seek to limit change while leader pastors thrive in divine chaos. - Excuse me but what the heck is divine chaos? Is God a God of order? Of course he is. Who thrives in chaos? Who seeks to sow chaos in the lives of believers? That's right, the enemy. The Gospel works. The Bible is infallible. There is no reason to change it. There is no reason to make it relevant. Just preach it and let God do what he has said He will do.
13) Sheep pastors put their feet in the water while leader pastors intuit what God is doing and saying in the future so their congregation can ride the wave. - Beloved; God is not in the surfing business. We should not be pursuing intuition. The dictionary defines intuition as knowing based upon instinctive feeling rather than reflective reasoning. The Bible teaches us that our hearts are deceptively wicked. We ought not to be relying upon our feelings or intuition, especially when we do not need to! Just open the Bible, read it, preach it, and follow it!
14) Sheep pastors limit their vision to feeding their sheep day by day and week by week while leader pastors maximize their tomorrows by envisioning 5-10 years from now. - This sounds a lot like the rich fool who thought he could just build bigger barns but then his life was required of him. The Bible says that tomorrow is promised to no one. This reminds me of an article that Rick Warren did a few years back to pastors, giving them tips for how to see more of their Easter visitors come back the following week. One of the tips was to NOT preach the Gospel but rather start a series on how to make their marriages better or feel more significant. How naively myopic. What if someone died during the week of Easter and the next? Pastors are supposed to feed their sheep daily and weekly because no one knows the day or the hour.
15) Sheep pastors want to be loved and leader pastors do not care what the sheep think of them. - This is almost too insulting to deal with. Sheep pastors are motivated to love the sheep because the Bible commands them to. They genuinely desire that people grow in Christ. Mattera is right however about leader pastors. They seemingly do not care what their own sheep think about them because they operate in a model where they do not have to. The truly sad thing is Mattera refers to this as "respect" when it should be called what it is. Disdain.
Beloved; this is a breathtakingly honest article that highlights all that is wrong with the Purpose Driven pursuit of carnal leadership. The needs of the one always outweigh the needs of the many according to God. That is the point of the parable of the lost sheep. Star Trek theology aside, just look at what is revealed in this article. This is how the majority of pastors today are taught and how they lead. True shepherding is mocked. Holding people's hands, visiting them when they are sick, comforting them. All presented as negative compared to the brave brash leader pastor who is out there riding waves and casting vision. The problem is that the model of the purpose driven paradigm is wickedly carnal and results in pastors compromising the gospel to grow a church building. It leads to forgetting that their primary job is to protect and feed the flock. It results in using measurements for success from the world and seeking out the expertise of the world to grow as a pastor. That should be insane anathema but instead it is the accepted norm. Beam me up Scotty.
Reverend Anthony Wade - February 1, 2016
