Sam,

19 years ago I gave an article from Ministry magazine to a conferencee president. Basically it had to do with pastors who were in a frustrated mode like you were/are. He sent copies of it to all of the pastors in his conference (100+). I will tell you that pastors basically don't know what they are doing. The 2 non denom churches I attend are only  3 miles apart. the smaller one has 600 attending at 3 services. the larger has 12,000+ at 4 services at 4 locations. ...live and 3 remote church sites. I notices the sermon/homiletic quality differences right away about the 2 churches. The SDA church has about 200-250 regular attenders. I wil say that I am not sure that many SDA attenders would be able to listen to anything other than the typical cliché loaded, shallow soteriology, obscure religious lingo, superficial, low bible exposure sermonizing.
BTW people don't sit in pews for decades..they sit for 60-180 minutes a week out of 7000 of their waking weekly minutes. Get my point?