James Emery White (host pastor for this year’s National Conference on Preaching in Charlotte) writes an excellent newsletter called Church & Culture. In this week’s edition, he says: “How many times have you heard the line, ‘I need to go where I’m fed.’ Or it’s corollaries, ‘I wasn’t being fed.’ ‘I just wasn’t growing there.’ ‘I just needed some meat.’ ‘I wanted something more in-depth.’
“First, an encouraging word to all of you pastors out there: We have ALL had this said of us, our teaching and our churches. Even those known for being consummate teachers, able to serve up the Word like a five-course meal, have heard it from those walking out the exit, such as: Andy Stanley, Chuck Swindoll, David Jeremiah, Bill Hybels, John Ortberg, Rick Warren, Francis Chan, Charles Stanley, David Platt, Max Lucado. You can fill in the blank with any teacher you have admired or learned from.
“They will each tell you the same thing. ‘I’ve had people leave because they told me they weren’t being fed.’
“So what’s up? Two things:
“First, spiritual narcissism.
“There is a consumer mentality within the Christian subculture that views the church as a feeding station that exists for no other reason than to keep them stimulated, titillated, and…yes, fed. This is, of course, a highly subjective assessment, and turns teaching into little more than a food bar as we search for what we like to eat in order to put it on our plate. Even worse is how this feeding often results in little more than weight-gain as opposed to fuel and challenge for missional exertion.
“Second, it reveals a fundamental breakdown in how feeding, at its best, should be taking place.
“While pastors are charged to teach and lead, that is not where discipleship and challenge is meant solely to reside. The nature of healthy, biblical community—as painted in the New Testament—comes through the one-anothers.
“For example:
• love one another (
• bear with and forgive one another (
• encourage and build up one another (
• spur one another…encourage one another (
• confess sin to one another…pray for one another (
“That sounds to me like discipleship is a communal effort, with every participant having a clear sense of communal responsibility. Yet according to a new LifeWay Research survey, almost three out of every four churchgoers say that while they have significant relationships with people at church, less than half are intentionally helping other believers grow in their faith.
“Digging further into the study, existing churchgoers don’t make an effort to press into new relationships (only one in six strongly agreed that they try), and almost one out of every three say they do nothing to help others grow.
“In other words, we are not very one-anothering.
“So the next time you hear someone say, ‘I’m not being fed,’ ask them what they’ve done to feed themselves, or even more pressing, whether they’ve put into play all that they’ve already been served.
“Actually, that would be snarky. But I give you permission to think it.” (Click here to read the full column.)