What we call ?church? is too often a gathering of strangers who see the church as yet another ?helping institution? to gratify further their individual desires. One of the reasons some church members are so mean-spirited with their pastor, particularly when the pastor urges them to look at God, is that they feel deceived by such pastoral invitations to look beyond themselves. They have come to church for ?strokes,? to have their personal needs met. What we call church is often a conspiracy of cordiality. Pastors learn to pacify rather than preach to their Ananiases and Sapphiras. We say we do it out of ?love.? Usually, we do it as a means of keeping everyone as distant from everyone else as possible. You don?t get into my life and I will not get into yours. Stanley Hauerwas I am seeing some truth to what Hauerwas is relaying. I pastor at a place where we are trying to point to Jesus in everything we do. We currently are at a point where we are having a vote of confidence for our lead pastor this Sunday, because there is a faction of confusers in this church, who want nothing more but church the way they want it. (oh yea, we are in Alabama, where they only want to be married & buried, with some good ole' preachin') I think McManus's bucket analogy is so wrapped up in laity, in our context. Another way to look at the situation here at the Sixth Avenue Service Station, is the Parable of Dirt. What we are essentially trying to do at this place is to see if the seeds that we are throwing, are landing on good soil, where we can see growth, or if they are landing on concrete, where they will just die.