But if the sheepdogs ever become convinced that the sheep will
stay on the nickel, regardless of their own actions, and the sheepdogs start looking for free bones at Mr. Greenspan's house
rather than doing their job, the sheep may not even
stay in the
neighborhood.
The proportion of congregations
in the 1960s and 1970s that actually responded as prescribed to their contexts was
in fact very small.21 As
neighborhood populations changed racially, some churches whose physical and financial resources lingered after their former membership fled introduced service programs to assist the poor, but the adjustment seems
in most cases to have stemmed from necessity or default
rather than from deliberate reorientation and restructuring by members who themselves
stayed on to be transformed.