Hi, everyone. I want to welcome you today to the Emotionally Healthy Leader podcast. Great to be with you.

I'm excited for today's podcast. Our title is names before numbers, the dramatic shift. True Shepherds must make.

You can't shepherd numbers. You can only shepherd names. We're going to unpack that today. So the number of people today without shepherds is overwhelming.

I'm talking about people who are, of course, not in the church, but then folks who have left church

altogether and folks in our churches.

In fact, it can be so overwhelming the number of sheep without a shepherd. It can look hopeless.

People are, as it says in the message version, Matthew 9, they're mangled, they're helpless,

they're cast down, and they're harassed. It's a lovely list due to the deceitfulness of the promises

the world makes of what life can be, as well as just poor spiritual leadership. And so people

need a good shepherd. And the good shepherd is Jesus. I mean, he is the good shepherd. And he needs

good shepherds sent by him whose hearts break for sheep, just like it says in

the message, not that he had compassion, his heart actually broke as he looked at the sheep

without a shepherd.

So folks with, shepherds with a passion to see people live a spacious life, a life where

their sheep who are well fed, they're nourished,

they're strengthened, they're not fearful or terrorized, but what's going on around them.

They're actually living life at its best. It's called the abundant life that God promised.

And so shepherds, we'll talk about shepherds. I'm talking about more than just caring and being

tender towards people, which is what folks tend

to think and we think of shepherd. I'm referring to shepherd leaders, much like David is referred to

in Psalm 78. He was a shepherd leader. He was taking people somewhere because sheep by their very

nature are dumb. Being called sheep by Jesus was not a great compliment.

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