It’s a common enough complaint, so much so that I doubt many would challenge the underlying assumption. Get the right band playing the right songs, the right hipster telling the right jokes, the right technology creating the right ambiance and soon you’ll be adding campuses all across town. My precious wife calls it “big screens, skinny jeans and fog machines.” We of the small churches are quick to grumble, and to lay the blame at the feet of church growth gurus and brand managing hirelings.
There is plenty of blame to go around. No doubt those gurus and hirelings should take some of the blame. Perhaps we of the small churches might want to take some responsibility as well, since we are quick to grumble and such isn’t known to draw crowds. There is, however, one group that often slips under the radar- the sheep who flock to such places. Could it be that one key reason that most cities and towns are overrun with mega-churches is because most cities and towns have citizens demanding such churches?
Bill Hybels lit this fire decades ago when he sent his soldiers to the highways and byways around Chicago asking unbelievers what they didn’t like about church, and then set about to construct a service devoid of those pesky things. It didn’t take long for others to realize the same approach would work with an even easier demographic- believers. Tired of preaching that convicts? We’ll get rid of it. Had enough of the whole accountability thing? Just come and go as you please, and we promise no one will bug you. Prefer church camp music to church music? No problem, just Kum ba yah.
Sheep, not surprisingly, prefer that which demands the least of them, and so demand hirelings that will meet their demands. Of course the hirelings are guilty too. But we shouldn’t forget that while you can lead a sheep to meat you can’t make it eat. One veteran shepherd friend of mine pointed out that even those who leave one one inch deep church because of its one inch deep weaknesses tend to move down the street to 2nd Inch Deep Church of What’s Happening Now. We grumble about what we’re being fed, and then line up to get some more.
The cycle will not be broken until both sheep and shepherds get on the same page. Pastors must be committed to preaching for the Great Shepherd rather than to the flock. And flocks must insist that their shepherds lead rather than follow. They must not be satisfied with the thin gruel of shared observations wittily delivered, demanding instead the demanding but freeing Word of the living God. Pastors need to have a deeper faith in the power of the Word, and a deeper faith in the hunger of the sheep. Sheep must have a deeper faith in the power of the Word preached.
We all need to realize that we cannot get more by expecting less, whether of our shepherds or of our sheep. We are to spur one another on to righteousness, to encourage one another in the race as together we run to the Good Shepherd.