Scattering The Flock

I’ve never had sheep but I have had chickens. When we first got chickens I thought my fence was good enough… it wasn’t. Some coyotes got in and slaughtered all our chickens. It was a crime scene. So I did a lot of work and built a much better fence. Of course the fence stopped the dogs and coyotes but could not stop the Bobcats and Hawks.

We had not had a problem for about 20 years and then two dogs found an imperfection in my fence the other day. They squeezed through and started slaughtering our chickens. They killed 7 of them. They wouldn’t leave when I waved my arms and hollered at them but they did leave when I started shooting at them.

Dogs are different than coyotes… they kill for fun not for food. I’m sure if I was a dog that chasing and killing chickens would be a lot funner than chasing a thrown ball in the back yard for instance.

That night we could only find three live chickens in our pen. I figured that some must be in hiding. One of the first chickens killed was a crippled (from birth) rooster named Willie. He was born to be a victim because he couldn’t run. Our other rooster was Woody a large and beautiful bird and I suppose he was my favorite and he was among the missing. Woody and Willie.

It was so traumatizing to Julie and I that we decided we wanted to get out of the chicken business.

We knew that we wouldn’t get an accurate count of the survivors until the next evening when they came in to roost. That next evening 13 of them came back including Woody the rooster. But they were terrified and wouldn’t leave the roost for two days. Over the next three days three of the wounded hens died.

What to do… what to do… Of course I could protect our chickens if I locked them up all the time but that wouldn’t be much of a life for them it would be like being in prison. The chickens like to free range during the day and they make more nutritious eggs scratching for insects and eating vegetation.

In the end we decided to continue with our chickens. I apologized to them for not making them safer.

The church and its leaders have been compared to a flock of sheep with shepherds. The shepherds have been warned about wolves slaughtering and scattering the flock and to be careful and be watchful.

Shepherds can be so careful with the flock that the flock are like chickens… confined to a jail cell instead of being able to be free and productive in society. Shepherds can also be so lackadaisical that they allow any and every improvisation into the assembly that poisons the flock from within and slowly strangles it.

Shepherds have a responsibility to have a healthy productive flock and not be so restrictive that the flock withers on the vine… so to speak. That’s requires great judgment and great patience and great confidence in the Lord God almighty.

In our flock of chickens the ones we lost were the oldest and the crippled (Willie). Let’s do our best as shepherds to make all of our members so spiritually strong that they are immune to the attack of Satan. Of course that’s impossible because churches are dynamic. Always taking in the weak and building them up.

I like to think that Woody the rooster fought for his hens. I did think he was dead because we found a lot of his tail feathers but he survived to fight again. Fight as he might have he was no match for a German Shepherd… but I was and Shepherds are more than a match for German Shepherds.