Bussing Then In (Cons)

This morning I blogged about some pros of "swelling in the numbers artificially" in Church. Here are some possible cons (contras).

• A notorious con is the swelling of numbers at (voting) meetings. In Churches, such meetings are often held after a Sunday service. Sometimes one sees the numbers swell even as the worship comes to a close. Many Churches have some provision in their constitutions to reduce or prevent this.
• Another con is a Church where the life has gone out of it, and a certain interest group -- whether bound by ties of ideology, family, history (and so on) -- props it up with, say, a quarter or even half of the numbers. There are various hazards here -- one of them, in my view, a loss of a sense of spiritual reality.
• So familiar that it is hardly noticed at all is the swelling of numbers by artificial attraction -- through technique.  Thus, while one is attracting people, it is in an important sense "swelling the numbers artificially".  The Church does not need things artificial. It needs only the "old, old story", and the experience of that story. 

OBSERVATION: In the Congregational Church, spiritual equality in diversity is thought to be of crucial importance. It is an attentive listening -- therefore any "engineering" in the Church is (ideally) excluded.