This Flocking Family

Why I think the church is both a flock and a pride

For the last few weeks, I’ve been trying to figure out how to describe the kind of church that fosters becoming. (Click this link to read about how I define becoming.)

I’ve landed on this phrase: Flocking Family.

Let me explain.

We are a flock of sheep following our Shepherd, Jesus. But we are also a family that becomes tight like a pride of lions under the rule of the Lion of Judah. (Think less Mufasa and more Aslan)

Flock + Pride = Flocking Family

The phrase does two things.

1. It communicates that we are sheep who need a Shepherd to guide us.

2. It reminds us that, as we grow toward acting more like Jesus together, we become bonded like a pride—learning to survive and flourish as a communal “y’all” instead of isolated individuals.

If you’re skeptical of my illustration, let me explain.

Self-Destructive Sheep

Jesus moved in and around a deeply agrarian culture. Often the illustrations he uses made perfect sense to those first-century farmers and ranchers, but don’t always translate well into our modern urbanized context.

You won’t believe this, but I actually have an undergraduate degree from Texas Tech University in Agricultural Economics. As an Ag major, I took a wide range of classes from “meat judging” to “price theory,” and was a paddle-carrying member of FarmHouse, the Ag college fraternity. (“Paddles” are a thing in Texas, I can’t really explain it.) I had visions of becoming a prosperous horse trainer. (An oxymoron, if there ever was one.)

Now, I have never raised sheep, but I have kept horses, and I currently have goats. Sheep, goats, and horses function similarly enough as herd animals that, for the purposes of this illustration, they’re basically the same thing. Tomato, tomahto.

Let’s use horses as our illustration.

Horses live with a herd (or flock) mentality, and that means a few things.

1. A herd’s only defense is to run away from danger. When one horse sounds the alarm, the entire herd immediately stops what it’s doing and stands at attention to assess the danger gearing up to flee. One nervous system becomes everybody’s nervous system.

2. Left to their own devices with free time on their hooves, horses are looking for creative ways to hurt themselves. They are good at many things. Self-preservation is not one of them. They need a shepherd to keep them safe.

Illustrative story time.

One day I walked out to check on the horses in the paddock to find one of my horses attempting to reach a patch of grass growing just outside his paddock fence.

He had bent down onto one knee, giraffe style, and craned his neck under the bottom rail, twisting his head sideways to reach farther with those weirdly articulate lips horses have.

The fence creaked under the pressure.

The noise scared him.

At that point, he attempted to flee the terrifying danger he himself had created, forgetting that he had twisted his head sideways to fit under the rail. His head got stuck. He panicked, ripped his head free with enough force to tear down the entire fence line, launched himself over the fence carnage, and sprinted down the road, seemingly congratulating himself for surviving the ordeal.

When I finally caught him, he needed stitches in three places.

(The grass is always greener and all that.)

That disaster aside, as their shepherd, I spent hours trying to create an environment where they could safely flourish. I planned ahead for heat waves with extra water and box fans. I prepared bran mash and blankets during cold snaps so they’d stay warm and hydrated. I searched stalls and fence lines for anything they could hurt themselves on.

And honestly, after a day of riding them, feeding them, grooming them, cleaning stalls, and checking legs and hooves, there are few feelings more satisfying than hearing them contentedly munching hay, satisfied and settled in their stalls. You shut off the lights, close the barn door, and pray they don’t discover a new and inventive way to injure themselves before morning.

And there is no better way to start the day than by pulling the barn door open and calling out,

“Good morning, my happy horses! How are we doing today?”

…and hearing the whinnies and nickers answering back because they recognized the voice of the one who fed and cared for them—their shepherd.

And this is precisely why the shepherd-and-flock imagery in John 10 matters.

Right before Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd, he heals the man born blind in John 9. The Pharisees are outraged. They interrogate the man and his family because they cannot accept that someone who violates their carefully constructed Sabbath rules could possibly be from God. Jesus didn’t fit the mold.

Jesus points them toward the multiple prophecies he is fulfilling as proof that he is who he claims to be. But they cannot accept it.

They are more comfortable living in the constricting rules they believe honor God. (Sound familiar?)

Meanwhile, Jesus is trying to lead them into a spacious place of becoming. He wants them to see that if the rules prevent a sheep from flourishing—as in the blindness of the man—the rules do not align with the Shepherd who cares for his flock.

So, in John 10, Jesus describes himself as the Shepherd. He leads his sheep away from thieves and robbers who place their rules over the flourishing of the flock. Jesus cures ailments and sickness that prevent the flock from flourishing. He brings the flock into a spacious pasture so they can become.

And his sheep recognize his voice when he calls out:
“Good morning, my happy humans! How are we today?”

Jesus the Shepherd does not burden the flock with rules. He gathers them, protects them, tends to them, and ultimately lays down his own life so the flock can live.

And so, under our divine Shepherd, we learn to function together as a flock—assessing threats, watching out for one another, and helping each other follow the voice of the Shepherd so we avoid hurting ourselves.

But flocks create messes.

Stalls get dirty. Fences get broken. Sometimes stitches are required.

The Shepherd cares for the flock through whatever trouble the sheep have managed to get themselves into. Under our Shepherd the flock can flourish.

Locked-In Lions

But church is more than a flock. It’s also a close-knit family, just like a pride of lions.

So, what does a pride of lions teach us about the strange, beautiful, chaotic machinations of church family?

Quite a lot, actually.

A pride of lions thinks in terms of “us.”

Or, in Texan:
“Y’all.”

That communal mindset is what allows the pride to survive.

Lions use their collective strength so the entire pride can weather feast and famine together. When one catches a meal, they all eat. When prey is scarce, they all go hungry together. The survival of the group matters more than the comfort of the individual.

(We could discuss the fact that the females do much of the hunting while the males often eat first, but that is a different post for a different day. Wink wink.)

The pride organizes itself so protection extends to the entire family. Cubs are raised communally. Young lions are not left to figure out survival alone; they are guided into maturity by the pride itself. They are taught how to use their strength for the flourishing of the group rather than against it.

Where most large cats live solitary lives, lions live in the same pride generation after generation. New members are brought in to introduce a larger gene pool, but the pride sticks together.

Lions identify strengths in each other and use them for the betterment of the pride.

The church was never meant to function as isolated people pursuing private spiritual achievement. Scripture consistently imagines the people of God as a communal body learning how to survive and flourish together.

In Acts 2, believers shared food and possessions with one another like a pride making sure the entire family survived.

In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul rebukes the Corinthian church because some church members were feasting while others went hungry during communal meals.

And when Paul writes in Philippians 1:6,
“He who began a good work in you…” the “you” is plural. He is addressing, “y’all.”

God is working in y’all, as a communal group. A veritable divine pride. A lion pride thrives together; so too, we followers of Jesus thrive together.

And the leader of our pride is the Lion of Judah, Jesus.

In Revelation 5, the Lion of Judah is declared triumphant and worthy to open the scroll—the symbol of authority and judgment over all creation. Throughout the Old Testament, prophets like Hosea, Amos, and Joel use roaring lion imagery to describe God’s strength, protection, and fierce devotion toward His people.

But unlike earthly kings of the jungle that use strength to dominate, the Lion of Judah uses his power to protect, gather, and defend the pride.

And under the Lion’s leadership, the pride becomes a family that reflects their submission to the Lion of Judah.

We become Jesus-like together. We weather what comes our way together. We do not merely survive together—we learn how to love each other so every member of the pride thrives.

This Flocking Family…

One Sunday, sitting in my new beloved church, I ruminated (like sheep do while digesting food) on the flock and family. Lost in thought, I looked up and noticed a stained-glass window in our sanctuary with half the face of a sheep and half the face of a lion.

I just sat there staring at it.

A sheep and a lion. The flock and the pride. The Flocking Family.

And honestly, it felt like God gently affirming the picture forming in my mind.

Because I feel this is what the church is meant to be:
a flock following the voice of the Shepherd,
and a pride fiercely devoted to one another under the Lion of Judah.

I pray you find a community like this.

You cannot do this alone.

I know because I tried.

And maybe, like me, you’ve been hurt by members of the flocking family—maybe deeply. Sometimes one sheep shoves another away from the hay bin. Sometimes lions bite too hard while roughhousing. We have to be honest and admit that sometimes the flocking family will annoy each other, misunderstand each other, or accidentally wound each other in the messy process of learning how to follow like a flock and love like a lion.

(And yeah, I’ll say it. Sometimes there are wolves hiding in the flock, or predators looking for the weak link in a pride’s phalanx. They seek to abuse or harm the flocking family. There is another word for them that starts with an F; F_ _ _ _ _ _ , but I’ll let you fill in the blank.)

But there are communities that will stitch up your wounds. Communities that welcome you into the flock and teach you how to live as part of the pride. Communities that help you become more fully yourself in your relationship with Jesus, instead of smaller. They are not perfect, but they are trying to become a healthy flock and tight-knit pride.

And when the inevitable happens—when someone annoys you, disappoints you, accidentally hurts your feelings, or metaphorically poops manure in your clean horse stalls—pause for a moment and think to yourself:

“Ugh, this flocking family…”

Which sounds suspiciously like a swear, but I promise it’s a term of endearment.

The phrase doesn’t excuse harmful behavior. But it does acknowledge that members of the flocking family can accidentally hurt others.

I think this illustration lands when it comes to communicating the messiness of church life. And in fairness, many of the constricting molds I’m asking the church to cast off often begin as attempts to keep the flocking family from hurting each other.

Let saying, “Ugh, this flocking family…” help you blow off some steam when you are annoyed or angry.

Let the phrase remind you that the sheep are still learning to follow the Shepherd and the lions are locking in under the guidance of the Lion of Judah.

Messy as it may sometimes be, my challenge to us all is this: When we strive to operate as the flocking family, thinking in terms of “y’all,” our church community could become the safest flock and most loving pride. Truly the kind of place where people become.