No more flocks built around a personality
The purpose is not to replace one pastor with another charismatic figure. A gathering should not become the property of a preacher.
The Scattering
When the shepherds fail, the people still remain.
The Scattered Flock is built around the belief that the age of institutional dependence is ending and that believers can gather in smaller, looser, family-centered groups without recreating the structures they left behind.
Image placeholderA quiet dawn landscape with several distant footpaths leaving an abandoned stone chapel and leading toward separate warmly lit homes across gentle hills. Soft mist, pastel sky blue and lavender, hopeful but subdued.
The sheep were scattered.
When Jesus died, the sheep were scattered. The Scattered Flock reads the warnings of the prophets as part of a much larger story about shepherds, power, responsibility, and the people who are left behind when religious leadership becomes self-serving.
Zechariah 11 speaks of foolish shepherds appointed over a flock marked for slaughter. Ezekiel 34 speaks of shepherds who feed themselves rather than the sheep, and of the day when their ability to live from the flock is taken away.
Our position is that this time of dependence upon professional shepherds is coming to an end. The future may belong to small groups of believers who gather in homes and loosely defined communities, where responsibility is personal and relationships matter more than offices and titles.
No new denomination
The Scattered Flock is not intended to become another centralized religious organization with layers of authority.
Household responsibility
Each man is responsible for the group entrusted to him, with the emphasis placed on family, hospitality, protection, conversation, and honest study.
What replaces the old structure?
Not another structure of the same kind. The vision is smaller and more human: meals, homes, friendships, shared work, care for children and elders, study, argument, reconciliation, and mutual responsibility.
The Scattered Flock itself is only a clearinghouse. It exists to help people find one another. It is a map, not a church. It does not seek to own the groups that form through it.
People who have been hurt, disappointed, or left alone after leaving church should be able to find fellowship without surrendering themselves to another institution.