by Mike Ratliff

3 Εὐλογητὸς ὁ θεὸς καὶ πατὴρ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, ὁ κατὰ τὸ πολὺ αὐτοῦ ἔλεος ἀναγεννήσας ἡμᾶς εἰς ἐλπίδα ζῶσαν διʼ ἀναστάσεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐκ νεκρῶν, 4 εἰς κληρονομίαν ἄφθαρτον καὶ ἀμίαντον καὶ ἀμάραντον, τετηρημένην ἐν οὐρανοῖς εἰς ὑμᾶς 5 τοὺς ἐν δυνάμει θεοῦ φρουρουμένους διὰ πίστεως εἰς σωτηρίαν ἑτοίμην ἀποκαλυφθῆναι ἐν καιρῷ ἐσχάτῳ. 1 Peter 1:3-5 (NA28)

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy having regenerated us to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable and undefiled and unfading, having been kept in heaven for you, 5 who are protected by the power of God being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 1 Peter 1:3-5 (translated from the NA28 Greek text to English)

First a short commentary. A few weeks ago in our small group we were discussing some recent pastoral actions by some of our pastors at our church which we all agreed were extremely godly. Then I overheard a very quiet comment from one of our long time members who stated how much she appreciated those pastors we have now compared to those from about 10 to 15 years ago. Her comparison went something like this. We have had a lot of “preachers” and very few “pastors!” No one disagreed with her. I firmly agreed. Yes, I know I lean heavily on the side of preaching deeply from God’s Word. You should not be surprised by that if you read what I post here. However, pastors are also shepherds of God’s sheep and that includes a lot more than just preaching and teaching. I will give one example and I hope you will tell me if I am wrong about my perception here. I was in the blast zone of the Oklahoma City Federal Center bombing. I was in my office in the Bank of Oklahoma building just one block South of the Federal building. Our building was damaged. However, I was not exposed to the blast since I was in the basement at the time of the explosion. However, I went upstairs right after to see what was going on. Our lobby area was the first floor in our skyscraper and that floor had glass windows that were over two floors tall. As I tried to go up the stairs to the first floor I had to fight my way through a massive wave of screaming people running down those stairs. I made it up to the first floor and could sense that something was very wrong. Yes, I had heard the explosion, but had not really seen any damage. However, when I walked out onto that floor I just could not believe what I was seeing. The bank tellers were closing their windows. They all had panicked looks on their faces. I looked to the North side of the lobby and saw that every other window pane was missing and just as I looked another one came crashing down onto the desks on top of the people there. I made way down there and found a loan officer laying on the floor of his cubicle with a huge glass shard sticking out of his side. A couple of other loan officers were trying to pull it out. I told them to wait for EMTs, but they pulled it out anyway. I found a friend who’s cubicle was covered in broken glass. He was sitting at his desk. His hair was full of glass fragments and his clothes were too. He told me that he heard the explosion and then our building seemed to flex and then the glass panes started falling inwards onto the desks. He saw the one getting ready to fall on him and he simply covered his head with his arms and began praying. The glass fell and shattered over his cubicle, but the weight didn’t really hit him. He told me he was forever grateful. I went back to my office, got my cell phone and my jacket and one of my techs who was also a veteran like me. We decided to go up to the Federal building to see what was what. The walk up to the Federal Building was short. I was stunned by how quiet it was. The first thing I did was go into the Federal Center Parking garage to check on my car since that is where I parked. My car was fine, but it had a new layer of dust covering it. Then we walking over to the corner of 5th Street. We stood there and looked at Hell on Earth. I saw a car blow up. I saw a man covered in blood walking slowly across the street. There was no crater in the street, but the wreckage of the truck that was used to blow up the building was there in the place where the front of the Federal Building used to be. Across the street, the Water Resources Board building looked like it had been hit by an airplane crash. Again, other than the approaching sirens, what I remember the most from those several minutes there was how quiet it was. Then I remembered how I had been in that building just the day before to make a deposit in my account at the Federal Employees Credit Union. Then it struck me, what if I had waited to make that deposit one day later? As my friend and I took all that in, my cell phone rang. It was my boss from Tulsa. She knew all about that blast and knew about the damage to our building. I was responsible for our Network and servers, etc. and she told me that executives had the rest of my day planned and I needed to get back to my office and just follow orders. I won’t go into details here, but let me say that because of decisions made by people that were not in our office I had to walk through that blast zone as a guide for executives from Tulsa so they could come into our Item Processing area in our bank so they could take those items to Tulsa to be processed. I took possession of the van our tech guys used to do maintenance on our remote branches since my car had been impounded by the FBI. Those same executives from Tulsa got me a Police pass to get through the police lines to the blast zone so I could be that guide. However, it was useless the next day when I tried to park that van in the parking garage where we parked it everyday. A National Guardsman pointed his M-16 at me as I tried to enter our parking garage the next day and he told me I needed an FBI level pass to enter my own building. I called security who told me to go park at a free parking garage that was a few blocks south of our building then enter our building through the Underground Tunnel. I did that. I had to do that for a whole week until I got an FBI pass.

Okay, so where is this going? I became stressed beyond measure. I was still dealing with the bombing and now I had to deal with management micro-managing everything I did. The next Wednesday evening I found our Pastor at church and gave him a brief synopsis of what I just shared above and how I was not dealing with it very well at all. What was his reaction? He made some clicking sound with his mouth and told me that I would be fine and gave me this look of pity then walked off. I have shared here before that I was a bundle of anger and resentment until God drew me out of that into learning to be a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1-2) in 2004. That awakening was how this ministry began. God knows what he’s doing. In any case, yes, I have had my share of pastors who were more preachers than pastors.

The first chapter of 1 Peter is extremely pastoral. If there is anything the sheep in our time desperately need in great measure it is spirit-led shepherds (pastors) who are bound to the Word of God who obey Him in the pastoring of their flocks as our Lord commands. It is tragic that so many of those the world sees in our time that claim to be Christian leaders do not in any way shape or form meet that criteria. No, instead they are celebrities or they are apostates or heretics on the way to being apostates. God has his church, ἐκκλησία (ekklēsia), and he will continue to build it and no power can destroy it (Matthew 16:18), however, we are warned throughout the New Testament that wolves in sheep’s clothing, false teachers and prophets would come in to the church and lead many astray. This has continued until this day.

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