" Pastor, you are not feeding me!"

The common complaint of the parishoner to pastor, "you are not feeding me," is about more than the complainer's opinion of the pastor's sermons. It reveals something much deeper about preaching centered churches. The arrangement is that preaching pastors have presented the sermon as the main event, this is very human of pastors. The parishoner then expects to be nourished and experience some level of change upon hearing a sermon. On rare occasions a parishoner will hear a sermon, be moved to action and go out and do  it. If they keep it up over a period of weeks, even months, they form a new habit and indeed they will be changed in that area of their life. Information doesn't transform, entertainment doesn't transform,great experiences don't transform, they can inspire us, move us to action. So people are being mislead when they are trained to believe that hearing sermons will transform their lives. Therefore, when a sermon listener says, "I am not being fed," they are expressing a deeper truth, that the sermons are not  making their lives different. A pastor is to be a shepherd, the shepherd is not to feed the sheep with his own resources, rather, he is to lead them beside still waters, he makes them lie down in green pastures. The shepherd is to lead people to where they can be fed, to the green pastures and still waters. That means to lead them into situations where they can be fed and changed. The pastor is to lead his people into the intentional spiritual exercises that Jesus himself practiced. So you start with a sermon, then based on the inspiration to help them get positioned for life-long discipleship. Discipleship is learning from Jesus how to live our lives as though he were living them. Sermons are the first step in that process in a local church, a great sermon is strengthened by an intentional process of voluntary discipleship to Christ.