Occasionally I have shared with you all that I (as well as every pastor I respect who is reaching the unchurched) will sometimes here a faint splash in the waters surrounding the brook that has me somewhat concerned.
I don’t hear it often, but enough to know what it means…
‘Man overboard!’
Someone has jumped ship again due to the fact that they weren’t feeling like they were getting fed.
I say ‘feeling,’ by the way, because in reality they are spiritual porkers since they haven’t worked any of that excess spiritual weight off in years with good old fashioned application.
Nevertheless, they have this contradictory perception.
Maybe it’s a lack of spiritual fruits in their life.
I’ve heard low levels of fruit can lead to spiritual scurvy.
Here’s what happened the first time…
In the morning I received this email from a staff member,
Subject: interesting comment
I was meeting with Joe Shmoe (not his real name), pastor of First Church of none of your business. We were talking about preaching styles. In our conversation, he mentioned a comment from someone who is helping him start First Church, someone who used to attend Southbrook. The comment was not critical, simply an observation: “You’re preaching has shifted noticeably over the last year, from ‘seeker’ to more Bible oriented. (not a bad thing, but the shift is noticeable). The comment was, “He used to do things to get people’s attention, like ride in on motorcycles, etc. While I still love the preaching, I miss the attention getters.
“I thought it was worth noting…
Later that same day I must have run into 5 or 6 relatively new to brand, spanking new families to Southbrook who are seeing God rock their world, but then there was that one…
It too wasn’t bad, just another contribution to the drive Rob to the funny farm crusade.
Here’s the gist of the second comment…
Oh, we don’t go anymore because we’ve noticed such a push for seekers that we just didn’t feel like we were getting fed enough anymore.
AAAaaaggghhh!!!
How is that even possible?!The 2 comments are polar opposites!
Everyone’s sitting at the same table where most are developing into spiritual Olympians yet others just keep watching the food pass them by as they drift from the category of ‘finicky eater’ all the way to having a spiritual eating disorder that threatens their very spiritual existence?!
Do they really want to hear me sing “Here comes the plane, open the hanger,†as I zoom the meat carrying fork in dangerous high G-force turns toward their gaping hole called a mouth?
I hope not, because I’m not going to do it.
So, you can probably see why I sometimes feel like its one step forward in shepherding people and two steps back.
Not so hard to see why I fear the whole thing’s driving me crazy…
Even scarier the more I realize that critical distance could probably be reached at this point with a short putt.