Ever such a quickie – John Stott was writing in this month’s Christianity all about preaching, and he had an interesting comment to make about feeding people. I haven’t got it to hand, so I’ll have to paraphrase.
Basically, he was considering Jesus’ (re)commissioning of Peter – “Feed my sheep”. If we limit this temporarily to spiritual feeding – but consider the analogy in more depth, how does a shepherd feed his or her flock? They get taken to a lush grass field, and left there to eat it themselves. They’re not fed from a bottle, or even hand-fed bunches of grass pulled up by the shepherd – no, they’re taken to the field, but they have to feed themselves!
I guess the point is that the aim of a preacher is not to give everything to his or her congregation, but to lead them to lush fields they can eat themselves.