Timothy Witmer:
The story is told about a group of tourists in Israel who had been informed by their Israeli tour guide, after observing a flock and their shepherd, that shepherds always lead their flocks from the front. He told his attentive listeners that they never “drive” the sheep from behind.
A short time later they drove past a flock along the road where the shepherd was walking behind them. The tourists quickly called this to their guide’s attention and he stopped the bus to step out and have a word with the “shepherd.”
As he boarded the bus he had a sheepish grin on his face and announced to his eager listeners, “that wasn’t the shepherd, that was the butcher!
—Timothy Z. Witmer, The Shepherd Leader: Achieving Effective Shepherding in Your Church (P&R, 2010), 156.
Dr. Witmer’s next book, The Shepherd Leader at Home: Knowing, Leading, Protecting, and Providing for Your Family, is due out from Crossway in September 2012.
