Some good thoughts in this blog post…and here’s a snippet:

Instead of pursuing faithfulness the sentimental church must provide a place where people can come to hear a comforting message from an effusive pastor spouting fervent one-liners which are intended only to make us feel good about the decisions we’ve already made with our lives. If our beliefs aren’t actually, really true then at least we can have a Hallmark moment, right? Above all the sentimental church must never teach us that in the kingdom of God, up is down, in is out, and nothing short of dying to ourselves and each other can help us truly live.

Perhaps more than sentimentality, pragmatism is ravaging the church. Pragmatism has led to a fairly new niche industry I call the Church Leadership Culture. Taking their cues from business, church leadership manuals are more than willing to instruct the interested pastor in how to gain market share. I once heard church consultant and leadership guru Don Cousins say that you can grow a church without God if you have good preaching, great music, killer children’s ministry, and an engaging youth minister. Cousins should know. He helped build Willow Creek Community Church and the church leadership culture. In the pragmatic church, there is only one question that matters, “What will work to grow my church?”

I think Ed Stetzer is spot-on correct, and he makes his case in a vivid manner. You can read the whole thing here. Here is a snippet from his blog post.

As a speaker at a number of conferences each year, I continue to see pastors and leaders going from one workshop to another searching for “THE” answer. They show up and hear amazing stories about implausibly happy people who willingly follow a new vision for their lives and their church. They have heard all the strategies and promises, but for many small-church leaders, the conferences, led by rock star celebrity pastors, are like “ministry pornography”– an unrealistic depiction of an experience they’ll never have that distracts them from the real and wonderful thing. In other words, the lust of the megachurch distracts them from the mission of their church. (I’m not anti-big church–I preach at a megachurch every week– but I am also pro-small church.) The reality is that smaller churches can thrive, too. More than 65 percent of the churches that participated in the research survey for Comeback Churches (B&H)–the book I co-wrote with Mike Dodson– had under 200 regular attendees. Smaller churches are not always unhealthy churches; it depends largely on their mindset. In our research, we found that the small churches which experienced revitalization often did so around prayer and outreach.