Reaching new people vs. pleasing old people

I am a student of the church in America. Just about all my friends are pastors, so I hear church stories all the time. Unfortunately, most of them are horror stories. Far too many churches are in conflict these days. In my humble opinion, the rub comes down to this: reaching out to new people vs. pleasing the old people.

Most of the dying/conflicted churches I know about want to reach new people. They want to see new people become followers of Jesus. What hinders that from happening, however, is they aren't willing to change. Change means putting my preferences aside (meaning I may not be pleased). Change means sacrifice. Change means sacred cows are butchered. There's always a price tag attached to change.

When churches are filled with people who say, "Please me, please me...feed me, feed me..." they might as well take the word "church" off their sign and become a social club.

It takes mature, self-less people to grow a healthy, mission-driven, God-honoring church. We at Crossroads have a long way to go, but I'm grateful for the great strides we've made as a church. Jesus came to seek and reclaim a world that had lost its way. What we're discovering is that it's a blast when we join him on that mission.