Conclusion: The Chief Shepherd Still Calls

You have now spent time with ten men who understood the pastoral calling with a seriousness that rebukes every comfortable version of ministry that has arisen since their day. Chrysostom sold the bishop’s palace and went to his death rather than flatter the powerful. Gregory governed the Western church with the title “Servant of servants.” George Herbert transformed his small parish in three years and died before he could see the harvest. Richard Baxter visited every family in Kidderminster and watched a town become a congregation. Jonathan Edwards preached the whole counsel of God to his people for twenty-three years and was dismissed for doing so with integrity. John Newton spent a lifetime distributing the grace that had, against all reason, found him. Robert Murray M’Cheyne poured out a holy ministry in seven years and died at twenty-nine. A.W. Tozer spent thirty-one years in one Chicago church refusing to preach what the age wanted to hear. Dietrich Bonhoeffer returned from safety into danger, built a community of genuine discipleship, and died with serenity on the gallows. Martyn Lloyd-Jones preached the whole letter to the Romans over thirteen years and trusted the Word to do what only the Word could do.

What do these ten men call us to? They call us, first and above all, to seriousness about the pastoral office. The care of souls is not a profession to be managed or a career to be advanced. It is a calling to be discharged, at whatever personal cost, with faithfulness to the One who issued it. The flock does not belong to the pastor; it was bought with blood that is not his, entrusted to him by a Shepherd whose standards are those of a Father who gave His Son for each individual sheep. To handle that responsibility carelessly is an act of theological negligence that these ten men would not recognize as pastoral ministry at all.

They also call us to the comfort of a promise. The Chief Shepherd is still present. The same God who equipped Chrysostom to face exile, who gave Gregory wisdom to care for eight hundred different kinds of people, who sustained M’Cheyne in illness, who walked with Bonhoeffer into the darkness of Flossenbürg — that God is the God who calls every pastor today and promises to equip every person He calls. The author of Hebrews expresses it with breathtaking completeness: “Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever” (Hebrews 13:20–21, NIV). The great Shepherd of the sheep is present.

He is equipping. He is working. The pastoral calling is not a solo venture between a man and his congregation; it is a collaboration between a human under-shepherd and the divine Chief Shepherd, who never sleeps, never abandons His flock, and never runs out of the grace His servants need.

Perhaps you are reading this book as a pastor who is exhausted. The work is long, the fruit is sometimes invisible, and the weight of the souls in your care presses on you in ways that others around you cannot fully understand. The ten men in this book knew that weight. They did not carry it by being extraordinary; they carried it by returning repeatedly to the One who had called them to carry it, distributing it into hands strong enough to bear it. They prayed, they studied, they stayed, and they trusted.

Perhaps you are reading this as someone who is not yet in pastoral office but who feels the first stirrings of a call. The same Shepherd who called these ten is still calling. He is still looking for men and women who will receive His flock with reverence, tend it with patience, guard it with courage, and return it to Him at the last with the words “Here are the ones You gave me, and I have not lost one of them.” That is the pastoral ambition worth having.

The call has not changed. The flock still needs feeding, protecting, and leading. The wolves are still real. The wandering sheep are still wandering. And the Chief Shepherd is still speaking the same commission He has spoken in every generation: “Take care of my sheep” (John 21:16, NIV). Three words. Enough for a lifetime. The ten men in this book gave their lifetimes to it.

May we do the same.

“I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will lead you with knowledge and understanding.”

— Jeremiah 3:15 (NIV)