Am I the only one who is struck with frustration about the church? As a pastor I had my share of "WOW! Where did all those people come from?" only to find out they had church hopped (They came from somewhere else.) . Now I am not against church hopping as long as one of your compelling reasons is to be a blessing, not to see how much you can take.

I just completed a season of ministry (10 years) where I oversaw people. I trained to the best of my abilities. Years later people I trained will tell me their new church is just getting around to what I shared with them 5-6 years ago and more. But just having a church full of people does not excite me. And many have not changed and that is heartbreaking to me.

A typical week for me included studying for the Sunday morning. (All eyes are on Sunday morning.) My church has never been larger than 60 people, so job placement is a little more difficult but on a Sunday morning I would look into the eyes of people who just came out of worship (Good music is important but not the be all and end all.) , and would wait for what was going to happen. Sometimes I felt like they just needed to check it off and say, "I went to church."

And with each day the dream that had burned inside of me got further away. I began to feel critical and then I began to feel hopeless and ultimately burnt out. We were fast becoming a club. Well, if I wanted to belong to a club I would have joined one.

And I wonder what the next step is. I know it is about souls.