APEST Series #4 | The Shepherd Among Us: Discipling the Heart That Can’t Stop Caring
Front Note #1: Thank you to my mentor, Greg Getz, for contributing to this tool! Greg has been a long-term mentor and friend and an invaluable source of wisdom in catalyzing disciple-making networks.
Front Note #2: If you want to join a community of co-laborers launching missional simple churches, join my 💥 PREMIUM COHORT 💥. Meet monthly by Zoom with other disciple-making co-laborers. And get FREE access to my Simple Bible Notes web app and the 24/7 Virtual Disciple-Making Coach. Find out more by 🤜 CLICKING HERE 🤛.
Front Note #3: ✔︎ Click HERE for a high-level overview of the GREAT TEAM!
The GREAT TEAM Series | The Evangelist
This is the fourth article in a series on the GREAT Ephesians 4:11 Team. Each article uses the same format and language to describe each of the gifts from the perspective of disciple-making. I designed them to be identical to provide an opportunity to compare the differences among the Team Members.
Enjoy the series!
Click HERE for Article #1 - The Prophet
Click HERE for Article #2 - The Apostle
Click HERE for Article #3 - The Evangelist
The Shepherd
Let me ask you something that might sting a little!
When was the last time someone in your discipling community cared so deeply about someone that they actually prevented them from growing in the Lord? Maybe they enabled them to continue in their error or failed to hold them to account for the damage they were causing others.
😳 Yeah. Uncomfortable, right? 😳
Here’s the deal.
Ephesians 4:11 gives us five leadership roles that build the Kingdom Church. Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Shepherd, and Teacher. You know the Teacher (the Bible study guru). You can probably identify the Apostle (the church planter, the missionary, the entrepreneur). The Prophet? That’s the one making everyone squirm. The Evangelist? Running ahead, scattering gospel seeds everywhere.
But the Shepherd?
That’s the one everyone loves, until they realize the Shepherd has loved them into a holy huddle that forgot the world exists. Or has failed to speak the truth because their compassion overshadowed their truth-telling.
What Is a Shepherd? (And No, They’re Not Just Nice People)
Let’s kill the bad teaching right now:
A Shepherd is a nurturing disciple-maker who ensures a specific community is caring for one another, protected, and maturing in a loving relationship with Christ and others. A shepherd fully embraces the philosophy “no one left behind.”
Here’s what that actually looks like:
✅ Protects and cares for the flock (Acts 20:28-31; John 10:11-13)
✅ Makes sure people are well fed spiritually (Psalm 23:1-3)
✅ Strengthens the weak and searches for the lost sheep (Matt. 18:12-14; Luke 15:4)
✅ Values intimacy and deep relationships (John 10:3, 13-15)
✅ Leads by relational authority, not position (John 10:4-5, 27; 1 Peter 5:1-3)
✅ Creates environments where people feel safe, seen, and cared for
✅ Naturally gravitates toward the hurting, the broken, the struggling
✅ More comfortable with the found than the lost
The Problem: Undiscipled Shepherds Are Dangerous
Here’s what happens when a Shepherd doesn’t have accountability and discipleship, sometimes leaving the 99 for the one and then allowing the one to remain un-transformed.
❌ They create a culture of comfort instead of mission
❌ They foster unhealthy dependence (”You need me” becomes their identity)
❌ They value stability so much that they resist the change necessary for growth
❌ They protect people FROM challenges instead of equipping people FOR challenges
❌ They lose synergy with the rest of the Ephesians 4:11 team
An undiscipled Shepherd is like a parent who never lets their child leave home. There’s a lot of love, but little spiritual growth or multiplication.
Discipling the Shepherd: Four Critical Areas
1. Their Uniqueness
The Reality:
Shepherds have a radar for people who are hurting. They can walk into a room and immediately sense who’s struggling. Their compassion isn’t manufactured; it’s their default setting.
They remember names.
They follow up.
They check in.
They create a safe space where people can be real about their struggles.
💥 But here’s the tension:
🐑 🐏 🐑 Their love for people can become love for THEIR people
Shepherds can unintentionally shift from “caring for the body of Christ” to “protecting MY group from the body of Christ.”
Your Action as a Discipler:
Acknowledge, appreciate, and bless their uniqueness.
Don’t try to make them more aggressive or entrepreneurial. Don’t make them feel guilty for not being excited about the next big vision. God wired them this way for a reason. Your job is to help them steward their gift, not suppress it.
PUT THEM TO WORK IN SHEPHERDING THE HURTING AND ISOLATED IN YOUR FAITH COMMUNITY!
✔︎ Tell them: “Your ability to create safety and nurture people is a gift from God. The Church needs your heart.”
2. Their Presence
The Reality:
Shepherds can come across as risk-averse, slow to change, or resistant to new ideas.
They ask questions like:
“But how will this affect the people?”
“Are we moving too fast?”
“What about the person who’s struggling?”
💥 And here’s the truth:
They don’t love mission less, they love people MORE.
They see the cost of change in human terms. They know that when you launch the next big thing, someone is going to get hurt. They feel the weight of that. And God designed them this way!
Your Action as a Discipler:
Help them understand that Mission and care aren’t opposites—they’re partners.
Shepherds need to learn that loving people sometimes means challenging them, not just comforting them. The most loving thing you can do is equip someone to multiply, even if it means they leave your care.
Think about it in Three-Thirds terms: They need to balance the ←LOOK BACK (relationship), ↑ LOOK UP (truth), and LOOK FORWARD → (multiplication).
Shepherds default to LOOK BACK. Your job is to help them see that LOOK FORWARD is an act of love.
🤯 Help them see that keeping people comfortable is not always love, but can be control. 🤯
3. Their Role
The Reality:
We’ve all been in that meeting. The Apostle is casting vision for rapid multiplication. The Evangelist is fired up about reaching the lost. The Prophet is challenging everyone to obey.
❗️Then the Shepherd speaks up:
“But who’s going to care for all these new people?”
The room shifts uncomfortably. Someone says, “We’ll figure it out as we go.”
😩 The Shepherd feels dismissed. Again.
Here’s what you need to understand.
➠ The Shepherd isn’t being a barrier, they’re being faithful to their call.
❤️🔥 They’re reminding us that people aren’t projects—they’re God’s children ❤️🔥
The Hard Truth
🤷🏼 Contemporary Shepherds are often overlooked 🤷🏼
They’re told they’re “too slow,” “too cautious,” “too focused on feelings.” Their concern for people is labeled as resistance to vision.
😳 They’re tolerated but not integrated.
Their care is perceived as a barrier to momentum.
Your Action as a Discipler:
You have TWO jobs
1. Help the Shepherd stay connected to the mission by showing them how their gift serves multiplication. The Apostle will plant. The Prophet will keep them aligned to the will and word of God. The Evangelist will bring people in. The Teacher will ground them in truth.
🤯 But the Shepherd will ensure they’re actually cared for and not just used.
2. Disciple the team to embrace the Shepherd’s care. Challenge the aggressive leaders. Ask the hard question: “Are we building something that actually cares for people, or are we just building something big?”
Key Principle
❤️ When the Shepherd goes silent, you’ve lost the heart of the mission ❤️
When they speak, they’re calling us back to why Jesus came—not just to save souls, but to shepherd them.
Don’t dismiss the compassionate ❤️🔥 heartbeat.
👂Listen to it.
4. Their Recruitment
The Reality:
Shepherds are often exhausted. They’ve been carrying the emotional weight of everyone’s problems while the rest of the team moved on to the next thing.
They’ve been told they’re “too relational,” “too slow,” “too emotional.”
They might not even know they’re a Shepherd. They just know they can’t stop thinking about the person who’s struggling. They feel guilty for not being more excited about outreach. They wonder why Sunday morning feels less important than the coffee they had with the struggling single mom on Saturday.
😥 They’re often running on fumes, feeling alone in their burden for people.
Your Action as a Discipler:
Discipling the Shepherd begins BEFORE they join the team.
Here’s what to look for through prayer and spiritual discernment:
🔍 They naturally check in on people—they remember details about your life
🔍 They create spaces where people feel safe to be real
🔍 They get more energized by deep conversations than big events
🔍 They feel a burden, almost a restlessness, for people who are hurting
🔍 They ask, “Who will care?” when others are asking, “How will we grow?”
When you find this person:
✅ Come alongside them
✅ Recognize and affirm how God has gifted them
✅ Give them permission to be who God made them to be
✅ Connect them to the larger mission—show them they’re not alone
✅ Share with them their Ephesians 4:11 role and their Uniqueness and Function
✔︎ And here’s the critical one:
Teach them that discipleship multiplication is the ultimate act of care.
The Shepherd’s greatest weakness is holding on too long. Help them see that loving someone means equipping them to go and multiply.
❤️ Care AND ➠🏃➡️ release.
How This Fits the DMC Pathway
In the Disciple-Making Collective, we’re committed to the Jesus pattern of disciple-making. That pattern includes all five Ephesians 4:11 roles working in alignment and partnership.
🧰 Here’s where this hits our tools 🛠️
In your X-Groups: Are you creating environments where people feel cared for, or are you just driving multiplication without protecting people?
In your Discipling Communities: Are you recognizing and deploying the shepherding gift, or are you frustrated that “those people” always want to slow down and talk about hurting people?
In your Simple and House Churches: Are you practicing the 9 Behaviors of Church in a way that balances mission AND care, or have you created a driven culture that burns people out?
In IOI (Iron-on-Iron) coaching: Are you asking the hard question: “Who on your team is the Shepherd, and are you listening to them?”
Your Next Step
Here’s what I want you to do:
1. Identify the Shepherd in your sphere.
Who’s the person who always remembers birthdays? Who’s checking in on the person everyone else forgot about? Who lights up when they talk about the person who’s finally healing? Who pushes back when things move too fast because “people will get hurt”?
2. Pray for them.
Ask God to give you wisdom to disciple them well and to protect them from burnout and compassion fatigue.
3. Release them.
Reach out this week. Tell them you see their gift. Tell them you want to help them steward it well. Tell them the Church needs their heart.
4. Connect their gift to the mission.
In your next Three-Thirds meeting, ask them: “Who is God asking you to equip and release? How can we help you care for them AND multiply them?”
✏️ Drop a comment below:
Do you have a Shepherd in your discipling community? How are you stewarding their gift? Or are you the Shepherd who feels like your care is dismissed?
Let’s talk about it.
The body of Christ needs all five roles. Don’t dismiss the Shepherd. Disciple them.
For more on building healthy discipling communities that include all the Ephesians 4:11 roles, check out the tools at disciplemakingcollective.com.
I FEEL SO SEEN BY THIS ONE KEVIN. 🥺🙏🏼 Something I've become more and more aware of is how often my compassionate heart is dismissed as being too emotional and caring too much. Sadly my heart is misinterpreted in SO many ways. God has been working on my heart to teach me. That regardless if someone else misinterprets my heart I'm asking you to still be you... Don't shutdown your gift of nuturing and care simply because someone else doesn't see or understand the heart behind it, don't take it personally. My job role is a perfect example of why God chose me for this position to teach me this very lesson & MANY others around His heart for others. 🥺🙏🏼✝️💕
Thank you SO much for sharing this beautiful example of God's gifting of having a shepherd's heart. 🙏🏼✝️