Milk or Meat: What Are We Feeding People

I've sat in a lot of churches over the years. Different denominations, different cities, different styles of worship. And one thing I've noticed, again and again, is that the same people are still sitting in the same pew, hearing the same introductory truths, year after year.

That's not growth. That's just attendance.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians and told them straight: I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it (1 Corinthians 3:2). He wasn't being kind about it. He was frustrated. These were people who should have moved on, and they hadn't.

I understand why a pastor defaults to the simple things. You don't know who's going to walk through the door on Sunday. You might have someone hearing about Jesus for the very first time sitting three rows from a woman who's been studying her Bible for forty years. That's a real tension. I've watched good pastors try to navigate it and end up serving nobody particularly well.

On a farm, you don't feed lambs and mature sheep the same thing. A lamb needs milk because its gut can't handle pasture yet. But you don't keep it on milk once it's grown. You'd end up with a very confused animal.

The same principle applies in a congregation.

The problem isn't that milk exists. It's that some churches never move anyone off it. The introductory sermon — salvation, grace, faith as gift — gets preached every week to people who received those truths fifteen years ago and are quietly starving for something more substantial.

What does the meat look like? Deeper engagement with Scripture. Teaching that takes the hard passages seriously rather than going around them. Sermons that assume the congregation can handle complexity. Discussion that goes somewhere rather than circling back to the same safe conclusions.

There are practical ways to do this. Sunday teaching can be layered — begin with the foundation but let the sermon go somewhere. Let it press into territory that requires people to think. Discipleship programmes, small groups, mid-week Bible study — these give people places to go deeper than the Sunday message allows. A small group can sit with a hard question in a way that a congregation of two hundred can't.

And then there are the people who come every Sunday and seem content to stay exactly where they are. Not hostile. Not troubled. Just present. The "Sunday Christians," some people call them — though I've always thought that label is too easy. People are in different places for different reasons, and not all of them are visible from the front.

But the shepherd's job is still to lead. Not to leave people where they are simply because they seem comfortable there.

Jesus told the church at Laodicea: I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot (Revelation 3:15). That's not the kind of thing you want said about you or your congregation. Lukewarm isn't a resting place. It's a warning.

Love in a shepherd isn't the same as leaving people undisturbed. Sometimes the most loving thing is to call someone further than they thought they wanted to go.

Here's what I've seen happen when a congregation doesn't grow. The witness to the surrounding community weakens. People outside the church look in and see people who look much the same as they did five years ago. If the gospel doesn't transform the people inside, why would anyone outside believe it transforms anything?

A church moving from milk to meat looks different. You can tell. The questions people ask change. The way they read Scripture changes. They start applying what they know to hard situations rather than waiting to be told what to think. That kind of maturity doesn't stay inside the building. It spills out.

That's what the world is waiting to see.

Not a polished Sunday service. A people who have actually been changed by what they believe.

So here's the question worth sitting with: where are the people in your care right now — and where do they need to go?