So much effort is invested in protecting the clergy so that the ecclesiastics can lay down in green pastures. One of the most destructive ideologies embedded in the Church is the idea that sheep are supposed to take care of the shepherd _this backward ideology is akin to prosperity preaching and all its different narratives. Even good Church leaders who know what's happening within the Church know the actors in butchering God's Word and why these leaders do what they do. Just because one is a shepherd over a specific congregation doesn't elevate one's responsibility to the universal Church. Believers have to stop looking at the Body as segmental but as universal. These leaders have become so reprobate that they no longer see error or feel conviction of error but bask in it. They are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear or shame; like a reef in the ocean that put a hole in a ship, they puncture and sink the reputation of the Church as good leaders stand in cowardly silence of their evil deeds and agenda watching in silence as sheep are scattered. The Church has not just been flooded with bad leaders but good leaders who stand in cowardly silence of these self-indulgent, greedy leaders. They do this while they simultaneously maintain cronyism and fellowship with them as they call themselves protecting the institution of the clergy. Their silence and cronyism make them culpable of scattering and slaughtering the sheep and sacrificing them to these idolized leaders. They choose to protect an institution over protecting sheep. Because of this, it is as though they have done this thing as if they have committed such acts. Shepherds have led the Church into entertainment, celebrity status, fame, and wealth; they have taken the way of Cain and rushed for profit into Balaam's error. They have chosen Barabbas over Jesus, guided by greed and self-preservation, not by God's Spirit. These leaders travel over land and sea to win converts, and when they have succeeded, they make them twice as much a child of hell as they are. They breed and give birth to converts who grow to be and like them or worse. Some may say these are very harsh words, but how harsh must a shepherd be to protect sheep from being devoured by wolves, and how brave must they become?
I leave the Church with these words from the prophet Jeremiah:
"Woe to the shepherds who are destroying and scattering the sheep of My pasture!” declares the LORD. Therefore thus says the LORD God of Israel concerning the shepherds who are tending My people: “You have scattered My flock and driven them away, and have not attended to them; behold, I am about to attend to you for the evil of your deeds,” declares the LORD. “Then I Myself will gather the remnant of My flock out of all the countries where I have driven them and bring them back to their pasture, and they will be fruitful and multiply. “I will also raise up shepherds over them and they will tend them; and they will not be afraid any longer, nor be terrified, nor will any be missing,” declares the LORD."
Sheep Lives Matter.~Ray Mingo
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