Church as we know it

Leighton over at The Heresy has an interesting, and all too true observation:

The sad reality is leaders give people what they want. Many of those who dare swim against the current find themselves looking for work in a hurry. The people currently known as the congregation want programs and sappy worship music and big churches. Many American christians want high production values and low committment thus megachurches are popular. Many Christians want to be part of the church with the best facilities and largest attendance in town. It makes us feel like we are somehow better. People like worship music that is essentially REO Speedwagon patched over to Jesus. We like participating in programs because most of us don't really know how to sacrificially love one another and we aren't willing to take the time to learn how. Let's not fool ourselves in to thinking the congregation isn't just as responsible as anyone else.

Of course, there is the other side of the coin, too. Sally Morgenthaler points that out at Out of Ur, discussing the CEO mentality so common among mega-church pastors:

Large-church leaders have been trained in the modern, command-and-control paradigm for thirty years. Here, organizations aren’t seen so much as gatherings of people with a common purpose but as machines. There is no irony here. Machine parts don’t have minds or muscles to flex. They don’t contribute to a process or innovate improvements. Machine parts simply do their job, which is, of course, to keep the machine functioning.

Ah, but what about the person who doesn’t follow in lockstep? She raises that issue:

Sheep have their own ideas of what, where, and when they want to eat. They may not want to lie down by quiet waters and go to sleep at eight. They just might want to check out the watercress down by the streambed. Or they might want to head out over the next ridge to see if there are any other flocks out there. Conveniently, machine parts don’t get ideas. They just get to work, and they work according to specification. . .

Pity the member who questions the machine and develops any significant influence. Sooner or later, that member will be disposed of—shunned, silenced, and quietly removed from any position of authority on staff, boards, worship teams, or within the most lowly of programs. Unwittingly, this member has run headlong into an industrial age anachronism: “the great man with the plan” methodology. And he or she has lost.