On Shepherds and Sheep

My friend Linda has helped me a lot with understanding the shepherds and sheep analogies in the Bible, as she grew up on a sheep ranch - but you can see her blog for that. However, the recent election coverage here recently used the old term "bellwether." Thankfully we still have experts in language studies that can help us unpack words like this.

A wether is a castrated male sheep. Obviously such a sheep would be one of the first to face the chop for meat production, as they have no ability to help grow the herd. However, farmers by observation noticed something interesting: if an adult wether can be convinced to enter a gate, the rest of the flock will follow. Anyone with experience in herding sheep would be happy to find a semi-leadable (or maybe even less flighty) sheep with such an ability - and thus these sheep were belled so they could easily be located by the shepherds and they were called bellwethers.

So often our views of the leadership of the church (and specified ministry in particular) are based on the shepherd-sheep analogy and this really does drive home the privilege and responsibility of ministry, but how would this look different if we thought of ourselves as bellwethers? How would it look different if we saw our role of leadership and developing trust with our congregations as something that still places our welfare within that of the group rather than considering ourselves as an alien from outside? Most importantly, is not our primary aim in ministry to develop our reception of and obedience to the will of God?