Cows and Sheep

When I was growing up in Sunnyvale Tx., there was a family who lived there named Bassett.  Mr. and Mrs. Bassett  were one of the original big land owners in Sunnyvale.  Their daughter Beth, who was about the same age as my parents, never married and lived her parents and gave piano and organ lessons at their house.  Mr. Bassett made his money from cows and agriculture.  During the Great Depression, my grandfather, Conley Pilkinton (Papa pronounced "Pawpaw")  farmed for him.  Papa left that job sometime in the 40's and then he and his brother Pete started farming together in the 60's.  When Papa started farming with Pete, he also went back to helping his friend and employer Mr. Bassett.  

Mr. Bassett was really a complex man.  His family exhibited an air of southern aristocrat and at the same time had a love for people.   Mr. Bassett  saw my grandfather as a "common laborer" and at the same time considered him as a trusted friend whom he confided with.  There was one other major complexity, Mr. Bassett raised both cows and sheep.  Mr. Bassett became interested in sheep when as a young man he became a christian and started reading the Bible.  He noticed that the Bible talked a lot about sheep and so he started raising a small herd of sheep to help him understand the Bible better.  

When I was a kid, Papa thought that it would be a good ideal for me to go work helping Mr. Bassett out around his house, so He talked to Mr. Bassett and I started doing things for him.  I started out mowing and doing yard work, but I as I gained his trust I also starting taking care of both his sheep and cows.  During the Summer, I would go to his house and send the cows and sheep to their separate pastures and in the evening I would put them both back into the night lot and toss down some hay from the loft to feed them.  during the day, I would mow and make sure that the water was flowing from a well in the night lot through all the pastures to a stock tank (pond) in the cow pasture.  

The cows quickly associated me with food and so started responding to my voice as I would send them from pasture to pasture and back again.  The sheep never did.  The sheep only responded to one voice and that was Mr. Bassett's.  I asked Papa (who had worked with the sheep for a lot longer time than I did) if the sheep ever responded to his voice and he told me that they did not.  

There were two ways that I could get the sheep from pasture. One way was that I could just open the gates for the sheep and let them stay until Mr. Bassett called to them from the house.  As soon as they heard him speak, the sheep would immediately turn and go to the place that he wanted them to go.  The other way was for me to coerce and stampede them through the proper gates.  

I think back to that time a lot these days, especially when I hear Pastors talk about how they are to shepherd "the flock of God".  For you see there two ways of tending to the "flock".  One way is to usurp God and elevate the role of pastor to that of a boss that coerces his followers to do things as he thinks that they should.  The other way is to just hang out with the "flock" and to help them recognize the voice of God and enable them to follow that voice.  This position has no authority and can only happen when the pastor loves both people and God.  The first way, the Pastor is an office and the second way, he is just an example.