Herding Mess, Church Mess, and the Need of Training

A fiasco on the farm:  Good friends came to collect their sheep that had been grazing here for the past five months.

I offered to use my Max. He is well trained. He could easily have gathered the sheep and loaded them on the trailer so that they could be brought home to a warm barn and good feed.

But my good friend had a good young dog that he was sure could do the job.

But the young dog was not trained. Sheep scattered. Only with much chasing, and the dragging and hoisting of exhausted sheep was the job accomplished. The young dog had to cool off by jumping in the stock tank of water. I had a hard time watching all the needless pain.

This mess was a mirror of our political world.

Neither sheep nor dog nor shepherd knew what they were doing. Neither did they know what the other was thinking, nor how to get the job done without so much pain. Sheep want to be together and be safe, but where is safety? Dog wants to gather sheep to the handler, but where is the handler in such a big field and with so much going on? Shepherd wants to care for the animals by controlling the situation, but with sheep and dog scattering, how can he gain control?

But all that good instinct can’t come together in the midst of so much ignorance and so little stopping to listen to figure out what the other is thinking.

Shortly after this fiasco I learned of another. This time in church.

Good people who love God and love people and want to do good, had come to the conclusion that “outside groups” like Alcoholics Anonymous and musical groups were making a mess. They were losing control. People weren’t disposing of trash. Property was being damaged. Either outside people should be closely monitored, or they should be kept out.

But other good church members thought those who wanted to lock things up had lost sight of the mission of the church to the community. Did they not care?

All these people love God and love the church and want to share God’s love with others. But there was too much ignorance and not enough listening. The untrained don’t know what to do. The outside groups want to keep using the church facilities, but they aren’t trained properly about how to keep things clean, protected, and secure. Those who know must not only tell, but train.

We all want the same end result. To be together, to be safe, to have things under control.

But being untrained and being unable to listen to what the others are thinking makes a mess.

Thank God for time to pause, rethink, listen to what others are thinking, train ourselves and one another better, and then use the gifts God has given us to clean up our mess and do better next time.