Managing Cattle and Pastoring a Church  CLICK TITLE FOR AUDIO

Pastoring a church is very similar to managing a herd of cattle.  Like a ranch manager, the pastor must:

Provide Nutrition – Jn 21:15-17, Acts 20:28 and 1 Pet 5:2 tell pastors to feed the sheep.  The King James Bible is the very best food.  And it must be prepared, prayed over and presented just right in order to nourish the flock.  When you see highly nutritious food being fed to cattle that are tightly fenced, you are looking at a feed lot where cattle are being prepared for the slaughter.  Even so, we are to feed the flock but we are not to fence them in too tightly.

Manage the Range – Prov 24:27 tells us that we have to make it fit for ourselves in the field.  If a rancher lets brush take over his pasture land, his herd won’t be able to graze.  Likewise, if he doesn’t rotate pastures, he will destroy his range.  Thus, we need to maintain our range by maintaining a good reputation in town [Prov 22:1, 1 Tim 3:7] without compromising the gospel and we must keep sowing the word of God through tracts, Bibles and our personal witness.  Some of our churches, unfortunately, don’t manage the range; rather they exploit it and never build much of a church in their community.

Control Disease – 1 Cor 5:1-7, Prov 22:10 show us that you have to keep disease out of the church.  Sickness in a herd can cause death and diminished production.

Stimulate Production – Acts 2:47, 4:4, 6:7 show us that a healthy church is a growing church just as a healthy herd is a growing herd.  A herd can get inbred and production will be severely diminished.  Likewise, a church can get inbred and quit growing.  We have to keep winning souls and get them in the church where they can grow and reproduce.

As the Lord is leading us to begin training soul winners in April and to add more facilities, he is preparing our church to grow by these simple means.