It is still my opinion, and it has only grown stronger with time, that spending at least a year tending livestock should be a requirement for becoming a pastor. You don't really understand what it means to shepherd a flock until you've done it literally. There's a difference between a shepherd and a preacher. The preacher gets up into the pulpit every Sunday and spends an hour talking. The shepherd spends every day tending to the needs of their flock. The shepherd checks their water and food every day. The shepherd gets to know each one of them by name, their personalities, which animals tend to form a clique and which are left on the outside, which animals are the alphas and which are at the bottom of the ranking order. The shepherd observes who's getting enough food and who's not, who's taking too much, and who's being shoved away from the feed tin. Preachers observe none of these things.
The preachers who put on Sunday morning "shows" observe none of these things. Their job isn't to get to know and look after their charges, it's just to say a liturgy and preach for an hour once or twice a week. I just watched the film "Man of God" today about St. Nektarios of the Greek Orthodox Church. This man was a shepherd. He screamed "shepherd." Mother Theresa was a shepherd, too, regardless of her rank or status. I can think of others both real and fictional.
I myself wasn't a very good shepherd when I wore the collar. I didn't really understand what it meant. I loved being Jesus for people and giving Jesus to people in the Sacraments, but I didn't really get the actual shepherd part. I wish I had. I know I would have done things differently. If I had been able to relate to the people who came under my charge half as well as I find myself looking after and caring for the animals under my charge... Those goats, dogs, cats, and chickens have taught me more about pastoring than any of the courses I had ever taken in college, or many of the pastors I had ever seen.
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