Joe good comments but I can't go with you on:

"maybe there needs to be some who become the crusty old overprotective religious types to win the crusty old overprotective religious types. It is a tough gig but for the sake of the kingdom someone has to do it. Heaven rejoices equally when someone who never heard the gospel repents as it does when someone who has sat in church all their life with selfish attitudes repents."

My problem with that is that in an age when so many millions have never heard the name of Christ, and so many Aussies themselves have no idea about the revolutionary Gospel of grace, why should I spend any more of my precious time, energy, emotional and spiritual resources on crusty believers who have heard the Gospel so many times already and allow so little of its consequences to sink in?

Given the fact that we have limited time and resources, are we not sometimes wasting them on recalcitrants who have had their opportunities in spadefuls? Sometimes I think the average pastor is someone who baby-sits and entertains comfortable middle class suburban Christians and provides them with the consumer experiences they want.

For the crusty old overprotective religious types they have a definite wish list, as does the urbane, progressive modern believer. So much of our time is tied up ensuring that we provide the range of consumer experiences and services these believers want whilst the harvest fields lie waiting.

Trying to get a crusty to repent of selfish attitudes involves calling things as you see it, which is a guaranteed way of bringing on a dummy spit spit of biblical proportions, and another family leaving the church, poisoning their network against you in the process.

Other pastors are happy to receive your departing crusties, because that's church growth innit?