{"id":36124,"date":"2018-07-31T06:00:26","date_gmt":"2018-07-31T10:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=36124"},"modified":"2018-07-30T14:36:45","modified_gmt":"2018-07-30T18:36:45","slug":"what-about-sheep-stealing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2018\/07\/what-about-sheep-stealing\/","title":{"rendered":"What about “Sheep-Stealing”?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Our recent post about proselytizing<\/a> has gotten me thinking about \u201csheep-stealing.\u201d\u00a0 One kind of proselytizing is really evangelism, proclaiming the Gospel to a non-believer, with the purpose of changing the person from whatever religion he or she has or does not have into a Christian.\u00a0 Another kind of proselytizing is trying to persuade a Christian from one church body into joining your church body.\u00a0 Among pastors (that is to say, \u201cshepherds\u201d), I am told, this can be ethically problematic, since shepherds are not supposed to steal other shepherd\u2019s sheep.<\/p>\n

\n

Now I had never heard of this until I became a Lutheran, so I don\u2019t know if this is another one of those Lutheran quirks, or if it is a principle in the professional ethics of all ministers.\u00a0 (Can any of you address that?)<\/p>\n

I had never noticed Baptists refraining from encouraging Pentecostals to join their church.\u00a0 Catholic priests were always trying to win over Protestants, and vice versa.\u00a0 The mainline liberal Protestants of my childhood never tried to proselytize anyone, as far as I knew, since in their ecumenism, they thought all Christians were already one.\u00a0 Actually, I never noticed them trying to evangelize anyone either.<\/p>\n

That Lutheran pastors were so hesitant to raid other sheep pens bothered me.\u00a0 I thought that this attitude hid the benefits of Lutheranism that I was finding so helpful under a bushel, preventing others who also needed these benefits from ever finding out about the.\u00a0 In inhibiting Lutherans from reaching out to non-Lutherans, the taboo against sheep-stealing meant that we were getting fewer converts from dissatisfied evangelicals, who instead were going to Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, unaware that there was a church that was both evangelical and sacramental.\u00a0 And this hesitancy to win over non-Lutherans, in practice, often carried over into a hesitancy to evangelize non-Christians.<\/p>\n

The problem with sheep-stealing, as I came to learn, has to do with Lutherans\u2019 fairly high view of the pastoral office.\u00a0 Also with their rather generous view of who counts as a Christian.\u00a0 \u201cWhoever\u00a0believes\u00a0and\u00a0is\u00a0baptized\u00a0will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned\u201d (Mark 16:16).\u00a0 That is, if someone has faith in Christ as savior and has been baptized, he or she is a Christian, even if there are confusions about other doctrines.\u00a0 Thus, Lutherans have no problem believing that Catholics, Orthodox, and the vast array of Protestants can be Christians.\u00a0 This is also why confessional Lutherans have little to do with any kind of ecumenical movements, since such efforts tend to water down doctrinal commitments and institutional church unity is not important anyway, since faith in Christ already unifies Christians in the only way that really matters.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, when a believer is a member of a congregation and under the authority and care of a particular pastor, that relationship deserves to be respected, even if the pastor and congregation have their doctrinal problems.\u00a0 So it\u2019s wrong for another pastor to steal those members.\u00a0 Now if the member decides to leave that congregation to join a Lutheran congregation, that is fine.\u00a0 But pastors should not actively go about trying to win over other congregation\u2019s members.<\/p>\n

I believe this is the reasoning behind it.\u00a0 Someone correct me if I\u2019m wrong.<\/p>\n

Consider the case of a big megachurch coming into town, offering all kinds of attractive programs and bells and whistles, one that grows by sucking members away from all of the small, faithful congregations in the area, forcing them to close.\u00a0 That is, indeed, sheep-stealing, and that is wrong.<\/p>\n

But the metaphor of the pastor as shepherd and the members as sheep reminds me of Milton\u2019s great poem Lycidas<\/a>, on the pre-mature death of a young man who had been preparing for the ministry.\u00a0 Milton thinks his late friend would have made a fine pastor, in contrast to the shepherds concerned only for their own bellies who refuse to protect their flocks from wolves.\u00a0 Meanwhile, \u201cThe hungry sheep look up, and are not fed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reality is that there are many church bodies that, whatever their official teachings, are not\u00a0<\/em>feeding their sheep with God\u2019s Word.\u00a0 There are many members of churches, including ones that would think are \u201cevangelical,\u201d that do not know the Gospel of salvation through Christ.<\/p>\n

To be sure, there are faithful Christians in a whole array of Gospel-believing churches.\u00a0 There is no need to steal them<\/em>.\u00a0 In other churches, a member may or may not know the Gospel.\u00a0 In other churches, the Gospel is no longer taught at all.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t stealing sheep to liberate a lamb from a false shepherd, from a \u201cthief\u201d who \u201ccomes only to steal and kill and destroy\u201d\u00a0 (John 10:10).\u00a0 The sheep don\u2019t belong to them.<\/p>\n

Try this:\u00a0 Just evangelize.\u00a0 Evangelize everyone.\u00a0 Don\u2019t worry about what church they belong to.\u00a0 Broadcast that Gospel like throwing out seeds (Matthew 13).<\/p>\n

When Lutherans talk about the Gospel, they cannot help but talk about the Incarnation, the Cross, the Resurrection, justification, Baptism, Holy Communion, and the Word of God.\u00a0 These are all of a piece for Lutherans.\u00a0 Other ministers can evangelize with their own distinctives.<\/p>\n

Those who hear but already have faith in the Gospel, if not the full Lutheran understanding, fine.\u00a0 But there will be others who have gone to church their whole lives but who have never heard about what Christ has done and will continue to do for them.\u00a0 Steal those sheep.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Photo via Pixabay, CC0, Creative Commons<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our recent post about proselytizing has gotten me thinking about \u201csheep-stealing.\u201d\u00a0 One kind of proselytizing is really evangelism, proclaiming the Gospel to a non-believer, with the purpose of changing the person from whatever religion he or she has or does not have into a Christian.\u00a0 Another kind of proselytizing is trying to persuade a Christian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":36133,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,11,34,47],"tags":[4656,790,5885,1674,7438],"class_list":["post-36124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christ","category-church","category-personal","category-theology","tag-confessional-lutherans","tag-evangelism","tag-pastoral-theology","tag-pastors","tag-proselytizing"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat about "Sheep-Stealing"?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"One kind of proselytizing is attempting to turn a non-believer into a Christian. 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