Real shepherds know the sheep, live with the sheep, and even eat the same sheep food. The shepherds  life demands both public engagement with real people and meaningful private moments alone with piles of books.

In churches we have code language that goes something like this. If the guy is warm and friendly but can’t preach to save his life, it is said of him that “he has a pastor’s heart.” Conversely, many wonderfully skilled expositors are nothing more than full-time conference speakers who drop into their congregations most Sundays and deliver a conference-like message. In short, if the shepherds vocation hovers anywhere near the end of Ephesians 4:11 (So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers) we need to embrace the full weight of what it means to be a pastor and the commitment involved for those who are called to teach the Word. What does a church need: a pastor or a teacher? The answer should be “both.”