Hirsch is preaching to me once again

"...We need to ask ourselves [the question]...What is the irreducible minimum of the faith? What can be done away with? What is too complex and heavy to carry into a new missional situation and an adaptive challenge? We, too, need to eliminate the things that don't matter."
"Take for instance the predominant idea of attractional church in the church growth mode. If we wished to start a church plant on the assumption that need to look like the local megachurch, with all its polished professionalism, great worship bands, exceptional communication, fully staffed children and youth ministry, effective cell programs, and all around attractive appeal, then for the most part, it is simply not reproducible - at least not by the vast majority of average Christians. Whether we intend it or not, the implicit message of this medium says that if you want to start a church, then you will need all of these things if you wish to be effective. Well, the fact is that most people can't put together a show like that - and it is a fact that we have had church growth and megachurch for well over thirty years now and the overwhelming majority of the 485,000 church in the United States remain under eighty per congregation, while laboring under the guilt of failure to perform like the bigger churches. Let's face it squarely: it is darn hard to reproduce a Saddleback or a Willow Creek, as remarkeable as those churches are. A church like that, with all its professional departments, charismatic leaders, large staffing, and financial resources, simply cannot be easily reproduced. If we put this up as the sole model of effective church, the net effect will be to marginalize most people from ministry and church planting, and it will effectively put a contraceptive on the reproductive mechanism of the church. It will certainly stifle genuine people movements, because it necessitates a professional concept of ministry with massive buildings and resources."

Hirsch continues to smash my head through the wall of my own preconceived notions...