The Most Interesting Pastor in the World ...

Leonard Sweet wrote some years ago in his book, Soul Tsunami, that the Gospel is like water - it takes the shape of its container, but its nature remains unchanged.  He argued that we should not be concerned about the shape of the container, but about the contents.  That the way we "do church" should be, in effect, a container that is attractive and relevant to our culture, so that the contents, the unchanging water of the Gospel, can be more readily accessed by that culture.  I don't disagree with this.

However, many so-called churches are more like soulless, Frankensteinian, manmade, zombie monsters rather than expressions of the Body and Bride of Christ.  As containers of Gospel water, they are cracked and often bottomless.  Whatever is poured in spills out on the ground and rarely reaches the parched mouths of the thirsting.  Sometimes a few drops remain, just enough to give an empty promise of delicious, cool delights.  But never enough to satisfy.

This is one reason that more and more sheep are finding ways to escape the fences of industrial church.  They are unsatisfied with a few meager, warm, stale swallows from cracked, dirty troughs.  They have had enough of trying to draw a little moisture from frozen, muddy puddles.  They are seeking the wild source of water - water that is still but not stagnant, cold but not frozen.  Clear, cool, refreshing, nourishing, cleansing.  These sheep have left the bondage and imprisonment of human domestication.  They are thirsty for Living Water that flows in endless, pure abundance in the places where Wild God leads his feral sheep.

For this is not the thirst of drought that withers and kills pent-up sheep; it is the thirst that brings life to those who venture into the wild, following the scent of abundant water stirring on the air.

These are the sheep who hear the Most Interesting Pastor in the World - the Great Shepherd! - saying, "Stay thirsty, my friends!"