If you are over 50 and a cricket fan then chances are you will remember the rise of World Series Cricket in 1977, an attempt by Kerry Packer to make the game faster paced and more engaging for the spectators as well as more commercially viable – for his personal gain of course…

However if you were born 1975 onwards you will never have known a time when players all wore white, where there was only, red balls and 5 day tests with some lesser prioritised one day games. Prior to 1977 cricket was a conservative person’s game and you didn’t mess with the culture in any way.

Packer did. In fact he took a sledghammer to it. His aim was originally to lure cricket from the ABC to his channel 9, but despite pitching significantly higher offers for the rights he was knocked back. So he decided to ‘take his bat and ball’ and set up his own league. He recruited many of the best players in the world —who he knew were badly underpaid— into his rogue competition. And so began World Series Cricket.

The purists hated it. It just ‘wasn’t cricket’. But many top level cricketers dissatisfied with the establishment and lured by the promise of real money signed up for it. Many ordinary punters loved the new approach—white balls, coloured uniforms and field restrictions that made the game more entertaining and watchable. Add to that a cast of star performers (including previously banned South Africans) and it was just the recipe for a consumer culture to lap up. People began to come back to cricket…

Similarly if you had entered a church in the early to mid 70’s chances are you would have been met at the door by a man dispensing hymn books while shaking your hand and welcoming you. Ushers may have guided you to a very hard wooden pew and the room would have been eerily silent, even though it was full of people—all dressed to the nines. The hymns for the day would have been clearly displayed on the hymn board at the front of the building and the order of service would have been entirely predictable. It was church… and this was how you ‘did church. No one questioned it or considered any other way.

Some of you reading this born in the 80’s and later will have never experienced this version of church.

But you get the parallel I’m sure. It seems that what Packer did for cricket, the church growth movement did for church. Even if some of Donald McGavran’s key ideas were employed haphazardly the focus was on the church connecting with the people living locally who were unchurched, dechurched or just over church in general. McGavran was a missiologist who was thinking thru how to connect gospel with culture. Some local church pastors co-opted his ideas much more pragmatically and decided the goal was to serve the ‘customer’ in a better way.

Ah… and so emerges the era of congregant as customer. You reckon that mighta changed things just a little bit?…

Some of the better known outcomes of this era are Saddleback church and Willow Creek church who each innovated to effectively reach thousands of people who had given up on God, church, religion and the whole shooting match. One of Carey Nieuwhof’s recent podcasts explores the impact of the church growth movement and how it moved from being initially focused on missionary thinking to becoming more of a commercial enterprise, asking how a church can achieve greater market share (although no one would ever call it that)

World series cricket changed the game of cricket forever and most of it was for the good. You have to admit cricket could get very very boring some days… Packer and his crew reshaped the game in ways that offended the traditionalists but that appealed to those who were marginally interested, but could be won over. (Think people like my mum…) Nowadays many of the ‘changes’ are woven into the game and the multi-faceted approach to cricket seems to be more attractive to potential viewers.

In a similar vein for better or worse the church growth movement changed the DNA of many churches as they recognised that converts were few and far between and ‘we just have to do something’ to win people back. Some of this was courageous and good. Some of it cringeworthy and horrible. Sadly what happened was that Australia imitated the USA (as we often do) without realising that our cultures were worlds apart. A sympathetic unchurched/dechurched population in the US responded far more easily to churches that sought to reach them than did Australian churches who simply tried to copy their strategies.

The ‘attractional’ expression of church was effective in reaching many people and drawing them back into the fold. But it’s greatest strength was also its achilles heel. If you win them over with bright lights and great music then you better keep dishing that stuff out week after week or they will eventually grow weary of your best efforts and seek a ‘better’ church. My experience as a youth pastor at Lesmurdie Baptist in this time demonstrated this perfectly. We were ‘flavour of the month’ for a while… until we weren’t.

And then there is the question of how to move a person from consumer to disciple without them feeling somehow duped?

Here we are in 2026 and most people will have no memory of hymn books, wooden pews and pastors in suits and ties. Most people will not be aware of the ‘church growth movement’, the ‘missional movement’ or any other culture forming entity. They simply attend church and want to be part of a ‘good church’, however that may be defined.

Fifty years on, the landscape has shifted significantly and the impact of the church growth movement is here to stay. Even if its impact – seen in the formation of larger attractional churches – was not its original intent, it is the outcome that happened anyway. And now it seems to be expected that a church will dish up excellent music, outstanding kids and youth programs as well as spotless bathrooms and easy parking.

I mused several years ago that I saw the church moving in two directions. The big getting bigger and the small either adapting and tapping a niche of people, or simply ceasing to exist. Of most concern were those in the middle with some capacity to imitate the megachurches, but likely at the cost of willing volunteers who would have to serve on rosters more frequently than is fair if they were to keep up. The middle will get exhausted. The middle will struggle.

But the big will get bigger. Bunnings will always outdo Mitre 10 because most people prefer what Bunnings have on offer. Just this week Christianity Today ran an article titled US Megachurches Grow Bigger as Smaller Churches Decline. It’s what I call simply the ‘hardware shop effect’ and I think it’s here to stay.

What does that mean for those of us who inhabit the smaller communities?

Should we just call it a day now and go join a bigger church?

I’d suggest that in the absence of a conscious missiological focus the answer is ‘yes’. If you are trying to do exactly the same thing they are doing and they have 1000 people and you have 50, then it may be a good idea to go and join forces with them. Why duplicate the weekly event? Surely your church could still ‘exist’ in small groups within the larger gathering and perhaps it would be a win/win.

That said, your church may have a clearly thought out missiology that is owned by your people and that is not dependent on church size in any way. It may be that you have excellent clarity around who God has called you to be as a community and you have a strategy for thriving in spite of the hardware effect. If so do your thing and do it well.

There are some things that only a small community can do – but if this is your choice then you do it knowing that some people will come and sniff around for a while before realising your music is average, your programs lack the sparkle of the bigger churches and your facilities are somewhat tired and jaded.

Then they make a choice.

Either they stay with you because you have articulated a reason for the shape the church is taking – why it isn’t strongly attractional – and why you have adopted your approach to community.

OR

They leave and go join a church that fits them better. And that is also a win. Hopefully a win for the larger church as they receive new members to serve and participate – but also a win for the smaller church as they don’t have unhappy members constantly sniping that they want better this that and the other.

You don’t have to be Einstein to know which way my heart leans on this subject. I believe deeply in the local church and in its genuine connectedness in the neighbourhood. 30 years ago I gave the attractional church a caning – I was 32, full of fire and it was easier to polarise than to sit in the grey that is a multiplicity of church forms. (To be fair that post was part of a deliberate exercise in polemics and was the text for a bigger group debate.)

30 years on I have to accept that some attractional churches can produce strong committed disciples and some smaller so called ‘missional communities’ can be gatherings of disaffected, exvangelicals with little focus other than their own gripes.

But… I wonder what the future holds and how we as the Church hold together in the challenges ahead. Smaller churches will need to sharpen their focus and their energies if they want to remain in existence, while larger churches will need excellent systems and processes to ensure people cannot simply remain as attenders, enjoying the show. Add into this the complexities that come with governance and compliance and I am ready to tap out. This is where I do see greater potential for the large and small to work together and serve one another. If a larger central entity can take care of all of the red tape and BS then it relieves the smaller churches of a massive burden. If the smaller churches can then do their focused missional activity well then that can also inform and serve the larger body.

While it may have been driven by self interest and financial gain, Kerry Packer initiated some significant and important changes in the game of cricket – and he copped some heat for it. Similarly McGavran began a process that departed from his original vision, but brought some real focus and purpose back to churches that had become religious clubs. We live in their wake and our job is to sift thru the learning and apply what is relevant to our own unique context.

All that said, I’m still trying to work out what the ‘Big Bash’ ecclesial equivalent would be!