Breaking Up with Dru & The Shepherding Movement

LATE 1974

I was driving to Jacksonville from Opa Locka (7 hour drive) to visit my fiance Dru and I was just thinking over and over how our relationship was going nowhere and I was pretty sure that Dru felt the same way. So when I got to her house I rang the doorbell, she answered and without going in I said, "I think we need to break up." She agreed, we hugged and ended our relationship.

There was however, one other unsolved issue between us that may have added to the break up. Dru had recently wanted to join the Shepherding Movement, in particular, she wanted Bob to be her shephard, not that she wanted to date him, but she only wanted to join his shepherding group.

The Shepherding Movement was started in Ft. Lauderdale by five Charismatic leaders that submitted to each other for accountability and Christian growth. In time the submission grew to more and more people and while it grew, it became hierarchal... people submitted and tithed to a shepherd who in turn submitted and tithed to another shepherd higher than he, and that shepherd submitted to another and on and on.

In its hayday the Shepherding Movement was very popular, especially in Florida. People were asking each other, "who's your shepherd?" and you had better have had an answer. Submission to a shepherd was absolute...even to the point of asking your shepherd if you could get a car, or if you could or who to date.

Within a few years the five leaders broke up, most of them repenting and confessing to the church that it was a huge mistake. But when it was going strong many of my friends joined or wanted to join. Dru (my fiance) wanted to; I did not want her to, because if she did, somebody else would be telling her what to do or not to do with our relationship. In the 1 1/2 years I dated her, this was the only disagreement we had.

When Dru and I broke up she went to Bob's for fellowship, but I think she lost interest shortly thereafter.

The attraction of intense discipleship:
1. The feeling that others will help me live more like I should
2. The feeling that I need hard core discipline because I am spiritually careless
3. The need for fellowship with like minded people

Why it didn't work and still doesn't:
1. Although others can help, you still have to face your own issues
2. We can only handle so much hard core discipline before we burn out
3. Intense fellowship (which this becomes) with like minded people quickly turns cultish (ex: feeling that God favors our group over others)

There are so many other reasons, but I don't have the time in this blog to get into it. Let me just say, I have seen the rise and fall of the Shepherding Movement and I have seen the rise and fall of the International Church of Christ which was based on the Shepherding Movement. In both of them the leaders gave up and repented when they realized how much damage they did to others.

EPILOGUE

I met with Dru several years later and we talked for a few minutes. No longer under a shepherd, she talked to me about her boyfriend and I told her about my new girlfriend - the one I married.

Later Ray told me Dru married a TV reporter from a Jacksonville TV station.