When we feed the sheep, they want to feed others

When we shepherd well, we care well and prepare people to minister to others. That was Ruthann Cannings’ message at ELS. There, she wowed leaders with stories of times she’d experienced good shepherding – and how God moved through them

1 The baptisms

Early in her time on the team at Kensington Temple, Ruthann helped with baptisms. She remembers being pushed out of her comfort zone by one of the older ladies there.

“One lady, Lily, had a blue book where she kept names, addresses and verses of scripture,” she says.

“She taught me that we must pray over each verse for the baptismal candidates.

“Then she just put the book in my lap and said, ‘Your turn.’

“That’s mentoring!

“When we see something in someone, we mentor them to fulfil God’s call on their lives.”

2. The census

A census at KT revealed that the church included people of 86 nationalities and that 70 per cent of the congregation, aged between 18 and 30, left every three years after finishing their studies. So, the pastor at that time, Wynne Lewis, challenged five of his leaders to come up with a discipleship and mentoring plan.

“He told us, ‘If we’re losing them every three years, let’s impact their lives for three years with everything we can give them,’” Ruthann says. “So, we came up with a programme of how we were going to achieve that kind of shepherding.

“I don’t think we ever saw the benches empty because we were just releasing. At one point, I really felt that KT was a womb, as it were. So many churches in London began because people first came to Kensington Temple, were mentored there, then went off and started their own congregation.”

3. The hospital-church

Ruthann admits she accepted Wynne Lewis’s call to become KT’s pastoral care director very reluctantly.

Then, trying to figure out how to begin, God reminded her that he uses what’s already in us.

For her, that was 40 years of nursing experience, and a message she remembered hearing – that ‘a church is a hospital for sick people’ gave her confidence to get started.

“Wynne Lewis gave me three months to come up with a format and present it to the leaders, but I was able to do that – thinking of the sheep and how would I serve them as a nurse,” she says.

“It meant walking with them, so that’s what I did. I walked with them, I sat at bus stops with them, I listened to them, because I didn’t want to just offer care but to find out what their needs were.

“One of the key things the Lord showed me, even in nursing, is that people have social needs, and if their social needs are not met in church then they hear the Word but they can’t apply it. So, the idea was, how do we care for the whole person so they grow in Christ and walk in victory as sheep?

“But then I said to the Lord, ‘How will I know if they’re cared for?’ At the end of the first year, people were walking into my office saying, ‘I’m a nurse, what can I do? Would you mind if I start a group for women who have been abused as children, etc?’

“It just started to happen, and I knew that people were cared for because they now wanted to care for others. When we feed the sheep, they want to feed other sheep. That’s how we grow.”

This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.