“Sheep Stealing”
I take it that in the olden days, in tranquil rural communities it was frowned upon to steal someone else’s sheep. More than frowned upon, it was a crime. If you think about it, it wouldn’t be that hard to steal sheep. Maybe a bit messy, but I assume that the animal itself would have little to say about it all.
In the evangelical church it used to be frowned upon to steal sheep, but these days maybe it’s just good business practice. Hard to say.
Sheep stealing within the evangelical church (and within the Christian church as a whole) refers to the idea that there are a good number of people who move from one church to another church and then often to another and another. Unlike the old agricultural, farming type crime, the evangelical form of sheep stealing depends more often on the agency of the sheep. In the metaphor, the parishioner or congregant or church-goers are the sheep and the pastor of the new church is the thief. Something like that. Recently the term “sheep” has become used in culture wars in very derogatory ways. If you believe something, particularly if you believe something outside of the mainstream, if you believe a conspiracy theory, then you might refer to the people who just don’t understand the “truth”like you do as “sheep”. In the evangelical model of sheep stealing the metaphor was not quite as derogatory, but it wasn’t exactly kind to either sheep or to the supposed thief. It sometimes ascribed ill-will to the pastor or to the new church, and lack of agency to the person or people moving from one church to another.
There are more benign terms for “sheep stealing”, one of them being “transfer growth”. Transfer growth refers to the percentage of new people at a church who came from another church as compared to the percentage of new people who had little or no church background. I find it interesting that given the amount of transfer growth in the evangelical church it is still not actually talked or written about that much. A recent article in a journal addressing matters of Christian faith does speak about the issue and admits that it is a pervasive phenomenon. The article places a good degree of blame at the feet of the influence of capitalism and consumer culture on church attendance. It has some interesting things to say, but I’m not sure about this central point. Capitalism and consumer growth depends on a kind of expansion of markets. Transfer growth in the evangelical church happens largely because the market is shrinking, not growing, and this means that people leaving a particular church can be an existential threat to that church. On the other hand, one or two families moving from one church to a different church can help that receiving church survive or become established as a “church plant”. When the transfer growth concept is examined more closely a trend is observed whereby most people (not all) who leave a church and go to another wind up going to a larger church than the one that they left. Of course, this could be because of some real problems at the smaller church, but it could also be due to the consumer mindset identified in the article. It has now become evident that smaller churches in the United States (and Canada) are getting smaller and bigger churches are getting bigger.
I was a pastor for 25 years, 15 years in a senior leadership position. The churches I worked at did experience times of significant growth, but they never became (thanks be to God) a large or mega-church. Even though I was one of the pastors who generally tried not to encourage transfer growth, we did have people who came to our church from other churches. We also had people who left our church and transferred to other churches in the community. If pastors of smaller churches are honest, they will admit that one of the biggest challenges they face, is the damage that can be caused by people leaving for a bigger church in the neighbourhood.
There is a current trend to start, to “plant” multi-campus churches. The ministers of these kinds of churches may be well motivated, they may have a sense of call, and they may be really very nice people. However, if they are honest with themselves and with those who ask, the success of their endeavour depends largely on attracting people from existing churches. The “transfer” can be dressed up in all kinds of ways. Some large churches draw heavily from particular communities. One example is churches that consist mostly of people who have left their parents’ ethnically based churches. I am not putting a value judgment on this. Maybe it was healthiest for the younger people to leave their childhood church as identity was passed from one generation to the next. I am simply pointing out that large urban churches often find the bulk of their congregation from this demographic. Other church plants aim to attract people based on an age group, a particular demographic, usually “young”. So, pretty much the same message as that at the previous church is dressed up with slicker packaging, younger crowds, and the creation of a bit of a scene. Very many of these churches, particularly in evangelicalism, tend to be as conservative, or even more conservative theologically, than smaller, older churches. The young congregants for the most part don’t buy the social conservatism, but they do like the community and the scene. I sometimes think of the Arcade Fire lyric:
“All the kids have always known, that the emperor wears no clothes, but they bow down to him anyway, ‘cause it’s better than being alone.”
There are a lot of reasons that people leave one church and go to another, and the phenomenon is not all bad. Some people who lament the reality of “sheep-stealing” blame the sheep. They say that people just don’t commit to anything anymore (this is not true, people do commit to things). Sometimes the metaphor of a family is used. “It would be like leaving your family. You don’t leave just when something happens that you don’t like.” There can be a kind of virtue in this, but getting angry about people leaving the church is not altogether good. When it is difficult to leave a place or a group, the possibility of abuse becomes greater. Some people stay at a church far longer than is healthy for them or sometimes for the church. Being told that you are morally dubious because you left is a kind of abuse in itself.
Having said that, it is true that it is so very easy to leave a church and go to another. It can be as simple as trading one brand of toothpaste for another. I actually think that many people might be more loyal to their toothpaste brand.
People leave churches these days so that their kids can have a greater hope of connecting with a youth ministry. Of course this means that virtually no small church has a chance of a significant number of young families staying connected because small churches mostly cannot run the kinds of programmes that large churches can.
People leave churches because of the preaching. This is not actually as common as other reasons. I have mostly not seen evidence of higher quality preaching in larger churches than smaller ones. In fact, often larger churches have to tone down the message simply to attract the most people. No one is going to accuse Joel Osteen of preaching intellectually stimulating or challenging messages. He makes sure not to do that.
It turns out that more people leave one church for another due to music, than they leave due to preaching. This is one of the reasons that the “bigger band”, “bigger screen” phenomenon has set in. Many people seem to feel better if a church service is a kind of experience, and music has largely come to define this experience.
Sometimes people leave a church because “my gifts just aren’t being used”. I know what this supposedly meant, but I always found it amusing in a way. It carried a kind of “it’s contingent on other people to make me feel validated” tinge to it. At the church where I spent most of my career, one couple would consistently tell me that they wanted to leave the church but that “God has not released us yet.” Eventually I began praying for that release. I’m still not sure why they felt the need to keep telling me that they wanted to leave, but it did sound a bit like “our gifts are not being used”.
Sometimes in prayer I say to God, (as a joke, God’s good with it, I think)
“You know. I’m done with all of this! I need to go somewhere where my gifts are being used.” Then God and I laugh and laugh. After we stop laughing, God says to me “How do you think I feel?” Then God and I laugh and laugh some more.
If you are blessed with a spiritual manifestation from God, a kind of gifting, then you will be able to use such gifts. Though to be clear, spiritual gifts are not “yours” like you own a car or a nice sweater. If you “have” the gift of teaching, this does not mean that God’s spirit is manifest every time you teach and in every word you say. God is less into accolades and press coverage, and being validated, than we are, but there’d really be no point in God giving gifts if they could not be used. It is more likely that gifts are given for the blessing of the larger world, not just a local church, and certainly not so that you can feel good about using them. But I digress.
Eugene Peterson (The Message, etc. etc.) was asked in his later years what advice he would give to someone who really expressed a desire to grow in their faith. He said that they should find a small church, preferably in the neighbourhood. They should go there, stay there, and get to know people. He said that you might grow in a large church, but it was far less likely. Peterson famously warned against crowds. He said that three things, more than most others, offer a kind of false transcendence. Namely, sex, alcohol/drugs, and crowds. He thought that the false transcendence of crowds was actually the most dangerous of the three, at least for the church.
Remember Mark Driscoll? He knew how to attract a crowd. For quite sometime he was a superstar in the evangelical church until the truth came out that the whole thing was toxic and abusive. There are no shortage of problems in smaller churches, but larger churches sometimes avoid the honest questions of how and why they became large churches. Is there someone at the centre of this thing who values drawing a crowd more than they value just about anything else?
My take on the whole “sheep stealing” phenomenon within the evangelical church includes the idea that one of the reasons people move from church to church based on decoration and programme and marketing is because there is largely an absence of real theological renewal within evangelicalism.
I am actually hopeful about this. My contention is that the renewal required for much of the church is theological. That is, we can honestly look at how the evangelical church came to project so much fear and divisiveness. We can honestly look at why there is a consistent decline in church attendance (even as larger churches attract more people from smaller churches). Maybe there are healthier ways to understand faith and salvation and hope and mission. I am convinced that there are. This hopeful way of understanding will, I think, find expression within traditional churches, but also outside of such institutions as they continue to be so impacted by transfer growth, by “sheep stealing”.
I agree that searching for theological renewal is a valid reason for leaving church.
I am hopeful that minds will be open to new ways of reading the Bible and that pastors will welcome discussion and questions. It takes courage to be the one to tackle the validity of age old traditions and beliefs but I am happy to be that voice.