“I’m not getting fed.”

In my teenage years I finally began to notice the phenomenon of people leaving my church to go attend another one. Some Christians are nomads like that: They attend a church for a few months, even years, and then switch. They stick around till the novelty wears off. (Others stick around until they’ve burnt too many bridges, but I’m not writing about those people today.) That church got boring, so off they go to find a new one, which won’t be boring… for a few months anyway. Once they’re bored of that one, they’ll once again move on.

But these Christians still live in town, so every once in a while you’re gonna find them at a grocery store, restaurant, park, library, theater, or wherever. And you might have time to catch up, and find out where they’re going to church now; hopefully they’re still going. And they might tell you why they’re not going to your church anymore: They didn’t like the music, or had problems with your church’s doctrines, or grew outraged by your church’s politics, or your youth pastor molested their kids. Issues which range from petty to profound. But most often they’re petty.

A rather common one I kept hearing from ex-attendees was, “I just wasn’t getting fed anymore.”

No, this wasn’t a complaint about how our church didn’t have potlucks regularly enough. By “fed” they mean spiritually fed. Spiritual food is what Christians tend to call our encounters with the Holy Spirit’s wisdom. We expect him to tell us profound things… and we expect him to do this through our church leaders. We expect the sermons to be full of deep, meaningful stuff.

Well, things we consider deep and meaningful. Some of us haven’t a clue about what’s actually deep and meaningful. For a while there I used to think it was historical background about the bible which I didn’t yet know. Plenty of other Christians believe the very same thing, which is why whenever I teach on the bible’s historical background, I get compliments from people who love how “profound” my teachings were. Meh; you can find that stuff in books. The good stuff is when the Holy Spirit uses that raw data to provide us insights about how he works.

And the Spirit can get our preachers to give plenty of profound insights in their sermons. But if we don’t recognize these insights as profound—or if we don’t like these insights, ’cause they rub our flesh the wrong way—we’ll presume there’s something wrong with our church. And leave. And go try to find one which pleases us more.

All that aside, I have a bone to pick with the underlying presumption: Is the point of church to get us “spiritually fed”? Or is it something else?—something more?

Yeah, I won’t leave you in suspense: It’s something more. The point of church is to interact with our fellow Christians. To worship together, and encourage one another to follow Jesus more and better, and discourage one another from slacking. It’s to support one another, and build each other up.

But, same as those people who followed Jesus only because he fed ’em bread, there are Christians who don’t give a rip about fellow Christians and encouraging one another. They want bread. “Spiritual bread,” but bread just the same, and not because it’ll actually make ’em better Jesus-followers, but so they can add to their stash of bible trivia.

Thing is, if you wanna increase your knowledge of bible trivia, you can do that at home. It’s not something we need to do together with fellow Christians. Worship, fellowship, and encouragement is stuff we need to do corporately, in church, as the church. Education?—you can read a book. I learn way more from books than from any lecture series—even the ones I took in seminary.

If the only time we ever get spiritually fed is when we go to church, it means we suck at following Jesus.

Don’t blame your church when you’re not growing.

When we’re brand-new Christians, naturally we don’t know how to spiritually feed ourselves. We need another Christian to come alongside and mentor us; or to use the Christianese word, “disciple” us. Some churches are great at this; others suck. But part of this training is to show us how to access Jesus ourselves, without our mentor’s help. Every Christian has to learn to listen to the Holy Spirit, and individually come to him for our teachings and our God-encounters.

We don’t need to gather as the church to get taught by God! Again, that’s fine for newbies, but if you’re not a newbie anymore, you shouldn’t be chasing preachers, begging ’em to chew up your food for you, and spit it into your mouth like a mama bird. You should be further along than that!

Same as the writer of Hebrews complained to her readers:

Hebrews 5.11 - 6.3 GNB

5.11There is much we have to say about this matter, but it is hard to explain to you, because you are so slow to understand. 12There has been enough time for you to be teachers—yet you still need someone to teach you the first lessons of God’s message. Instead of eating solid food, you still have to drink milk. 13Anyone who has to drink milk is still a child, without any experience in the matter of right and wrong. 14Solid food, on the other hand, is for adults, who through practice are able to distinguish between good and evil.

6.1Let us go forward, then, to mature teaching and leave behind us the first lessons of the Christian message. We should not lay again the foundation of turning away from useless works and believing in God; 2of the teaching about baptisms and the laying on of hands; of the resurrection of the dead and the eternal judgment. 3Let us go forward! And this is what we will do, if God allows.

If you’ve never yet learned to feed yourself, you need to go to your church leaders and ask ’em for mentoring. If they can’t do it—if they haven’t the time, or can’t forward you to someone whom they trust to mentor you—okay yeah, you need a church which can do this; only then do you have a valid reason to switch churches. Your church needs to be able to make its members mature, and dependent on the Holy Spirit, not their leadership. If they can’t do this, you need a better church. If they refuse to do this, and insist you should be dependent on them, you’re in a cult and definitely need a better church.

But our churches should already be pushing us in this direction. Teaching us how to individually go to Jesus for our teaching and our God-encounters. We don’t need to come together to get taught by God! We do need to come together to confirm God taught us stuff, and maybe he taught us something because we’re meant to share it with fellow Christians. But for the most part, our spiritual feeding needs to come directly from Jesus.

So if your complaint about your church is “I’m not getting fed,” that’s your fault. Not theirs. And the time is gonna come where you’re bouncing from church to church, wondering why none of them seem to be able to feed you, ’cause you’re starving—and this’d be why. Grow up and learn to feed yourself.