Stealing Sheep

Barna says, “The experience of mainline churches shows that growing a congregation is not a simple matter. There are three options available if you want to increase the size of a congregation: steal people from other congregations (unethical), have lots of babies (takes years), or attract people not affiliated with a church (bingo!)."

Every growing church will, at times, attract disgruntled sheep from a neighboring pastors flock. In the farming community, given the right environment sheep will knock over a fence to get to the greener grass. Over the years when a person has visited our ministry we have chosen not to pursue them if we knew they were from another gospel preaching church especially without discussing their status with that pastor. Indeed, another local pastor and I joke about how we trade families every once in a while. Sometimes it is a stylistic thing, sometimes people are looking for something different, sometimes there is offense involved, and sometimes they just need to change their spiritual diet. None of this is what we would call sheep stealing.

Sheep stealing is the intentional picking off of members of a congregation other than your own for the purpose of building your own ministry. It is unethical and I don't see how God could bless a ministry based upon sheep weak enough to steal. In agricultural life, the farmer breeds his strongest sheep for reproductive stock. When a pastor begins his role pilfering from another ministry it cannot invoke the blessing of God. Further, the foundation of that ministry will be the weakened stock of the pilfered sheep.

So why do church planters find themselves so vulnerable to this temptation? It may be because we value the appraisal of men over the appraisal of God. When another man says "success" do we really value that higher than what God thinks of us. Paul said he didn't want to build upon the foundation of another man's work.The enemy uses this to divide and hinder relationships between pastors, making more difficult to do kingdom work together in the future, filling hearts with distrust, and filling the body of Christ with strife. Often that strife lasts long after these sheep have stuck around-leaving a lasting hindrance for the kingdom of God in that locality. By the way, that transfer growth isn't real growth when you have a kingdom perspective anyway!

So don't compromise. Do the right thing and call the pastor of the church, tell him that you have one of his sheep that has wandered. Let him reach out to retain those folks and keep what he has invested himself in. And build the relationship with the local pastors. Once trusted you will have a lasting bond that effect your ministry in that place. And just maybe, the loyalty you sow will be paid back to you when others are trying to steal from you. Think about it!