The idea of God, and of leaders who follow him, acting as a shepherd runs through the Bible. In Genesis, Jacob refers to “the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day”.

The term is best associated, in the Old Testament, with David. In 2 Samuel, David is anointed King of Israel, with God telling him to be “the shepherd of my people Israel”. King David, in Psalm 23 (NKJV), then writes the famous lines of poetry:

The Lord is my shepherd;
I shall not want.
He makes me to lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside the still waters.
He restores my soul;
He leads me in the paths of righteousness
For His name’s sake.

So the original readers of 1 Peter 5, Christians living in modern-day Turkey, would have been right at home with the apostle’s analogy here:

To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder and a witness of Christ’s sufferings who also will share in the glory to be revealed: be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them – not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock.

The type of leadership promoted in 1 Peter is servant leadership. It is not the leadership that sees pastors wearing $5,000 trainers, buying private jets or fixating over their celebrity status.

Instead, it is the leader who gives comfort to the dying, who helps out the food bank and who invests time in helping his church really understand the Bible. It is the leader who, metephorically wears a stole – that scarf-like garment worn by clergy.

According to J. Arnott Hamilton, in a Church of Scotland journal in 1946:

The stole originated as an article of dress worn by the citizens of Imperial Rome and, as such, was worn by those who conducted the services of the Church in the early centuries of the Christian era. It may go back to near the time of the Apostles, or even to that of the Apostles themselves…

Until the eighth century it was always called the “orarium”, then the term “stola” also came into vogue. For some centuries both appellations persisted, but by the eleventh century stola supplanted orarium.

The item was mentioned by the fifth century Christian Isidore of Pelusium. In AD 421 or thereabouts, he described it as “a memorial of the humility of Our Lord in washing and wiping dry the feet of the disciples”.

This is a reference to John 13, where Jesus, after washing the feet of his disciples and drying them with a towel, said:

Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.

So the wearing of a stole by clergy today is a symbol that they, too, are to act like servants of their flocks.