Below is a post from Alan Fadling that you should read… I couldn’t agree more.

A very simple question that we might consider asking ourselves as paid or volunteer church leaders is, “What is the church?” Sometimes it feels more like a machine than a community of people sharing Christ together. Along these lines, I always appreciate Eugene Peterson’s seasoned insights, like this one:

“Another common way to avoid community is to turn the church into an institution. In this way people are not treated on the basis of personal relationships but in terms of impersonal functions. Goals are set that will catch the imagination of the largest numbers of people; structures are developed that will accomplish the goal through planning and organization. Organizational planning and institutional goals become the criteria by which the community is defined and evaluated. In the process the church becomes less and less a community, that is, people who pay attention to each other, ‘brothers and sisters,’ and more and more a collectivism of ‘contributing units.’” (Eugene H. Peterson. A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. Downer’s Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1980, 2000, p. 179-80.)

In The Leadership Institute, we call this the difference between a “program-centered” church and a “people-centered” church.

Program-centered ministry can become more of an “it” than an “us”… {the rest} …