When I was growing up, I went to the small specialty stores to get hardware, groceries, gas, paint, clothing, electronics, Pharmacy, etc. You knew the workers, owners, other customers and brands and products that each carried. Gas stations were full service. If you were local, you could carry a tab. Service was the premium. Life was good. Everyone had their niche. Back about 20 or so years ago, some marketing specialist decided (I am sure mostly for profits) that we should move to a BIG BOX store that had all these niche stores under one roof. This sounds good that you can get all you need with one stop shop. What drove this mentality is price. You could get it cheaper because they bought larger quantities. Because of this it drove out the smaller specialty stores when they could not compete. But consider the consumer lost too because they lost service, quality, comrade, and community. Ultimately the profits are concentrated to the few and specialized positions from the masses.
We have done this in our churches. There once was a time when we had many churches in our communities. We knew each other, married each other, camped with each other, knew the Pastors, nursery workers, etc. The service level was high. Church was good.
Then came the MEGA-CHURCH. Wow they could offer everything. This really hurt the smaller churches because they could not compete. The Mega church could entertain and draw a large crowd. This crowd more times than not came from other smaller churches.
These Mega-churches cheapened the gospel to maintain the crowd. They could not service the people like you once could when they knew everybody. The crowd just became a market number.
I suppose if you were to ask rural communities if the big box store helped the small business people fulfill a dream of ownership of a business in the community they would have to say NO. Why specialize when you can not compete.
I also suppose that GOD is not calling many men to fill the pulpits anymore. He does not need near as many to encourage, teach, support, love, have compassion on, with the BIG BOX CHURCH.
My question must be, Did we do right moving away from community churches to entertaining BIG BOX CHURCHES?
How can the pastors service with these ratios pastor to church members?
I do not think this is what Paul was speaking of in Eph 4 when he talks of the purpose of the local (community) church.
