What Bighorn Sheep can Show Us: Vision, Leadership, and Brooming

Wineskins Contributor・01/07/20

This past summer, our family got to visit Colorado NationalMonument.  At one of the visitor centers,a ranger talked about the different animals in the park and showed us a skullof a Bighorn Sheep.  He pointed out howthe horns curved around the skull, but were broken off at the end.  The ranger described how the horns tend tocurl around, passing directly into the rams line of sight. So, to keep safefrom predators and not let horns get in the way of its vision, the Bighornsheep will stick the tip of the horn in a crevice of a rock and break it offand then rub it on a sandstone rock to round off the rough edges. This practiceis called brooming.

This surprised my wife and I because, honestly, that seems likevery intelligent behavior for a sheep!

It made me think about the way horns serve as symbols of power,authority and leadership where we lived in Mozambique, Africa as well as in Scripture(for example, Psalm 18:2 and Jeremiah 48:25).

Maybe these sheep have something to teach us about the ways that horns/authoritycan obscure a leader’s vision.  Theyremind us that when we let authority go to our heads(!) we become moresusceptible to predators.  Leaders needto be intentional about not letting their power and influence impede theirvision.  That’s true for individualleaders and for institutions, as well.  Weneed to be deliberate about making sure that authority and tradition don’t growso large that we actually do losesight of what’s around us.  For bighornsheep, without proper brooming, these horns could be dooming them to anearly death, blinding them to dangers and threats.

To live out a 2020 vision effectively will require us, as leaders, to take stock of our own authority and influence to make sure it has not obscured our sight.  That doesn’t mean that we reject the use of power and influence, instead it means using authority and leadership properly.  One of my favorite resources on this topic is Andy Crouch’s book, Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power.  May we have the courage to practice brooming, keeping leadership and authority in its proper place.

May we as fellow sheep, join the Chief Shepherd in leading theflock well, awake to the ways that power, influence and authority have thepotential for good as well as the ways that they can impede our vision.