My position on the Seeker Sensitive movement

If you've read my blog for very long at all you know that I'm not all that concerned with being "relevant" or "seeker sensitive" at least in the way that most churches and pastor's are today. That being said I am very passionate about outreach and seeing new people come to know Christ and attend church. My problem with being "relevant" is that most churches take it to the extreme and the Gospel is sacrificed on the altar of church growth (I'm afraid that many pastors are worshiping the god of church growth!). I am less concerned about my church being appealing to the sinner so that sinners will come and I am more concerned about my church's services being pleasing to God as we worship Him (this is what our gathering as believers should be all about). I think that church (as a service) is more for the Christian than the sinner. This doesn't mean that the sinner is not welcomed, encouraged to attend, etc. This doesn't mean that I don't preach salvation messages on Sundays - in fact I probably preach more on this than anything else. The fact of the matter is that currently most of the people that attend my church on Sunday's are not Christians. However, when we gather on Sunday's our focus should be on worshiping the Lord in the beauty of holiness - not in shaping the whole service around the felt needs of sinful man.

All that being said, I believe the Biblical evangelism occurs when the church as a body goes out to the world and evangelizes the lost. Most churches expect the world to come to them and I think we've got it all backwards. We've adopted the mentality that we can sit within our four walls and wait for the world to come to us. What has happened is that some churches and pastors, in their desire to reach the world (a good and proper desire), has come at evangelism with the wrong mindset. They think they've got to do whatever it takes to appeal to the sinner to entice them to come. So they become seeker sensitive-purpose driven and it works! The people do come (at least for awhile). Seriously, if your goal is just to grow a church it's not that hard. Get a good rock band, wear grungy clothes, play great videos, preach sex sermons, and be "cool" and your church will grow! I realize that I'm probably oversimplifying it a little bit, but not too much...

For many churches it has become all about marketing. I think that every church should attempt to look first class. I think their handouts, signs, ads, website, etc. should all be as good as possible. I appreciate guys like Allan Mowery and Jon Plank who produce first class design. I'll never be up to their caliber but one of my hobbies is website and graphic design. I have done my best to have a decent looking website for my church and I design all of our materials we handout so that we have something (hopefully!) nice to give to people. The first major project I undertook as the pastor of my church was to buy a nice lighted sign so that we could get rid of the wooden one with peeling paint that we had out in front of our church. We raised nearly $6,000 in order to purchase the sign and I believe it was a good investment. So, I believe that marketing your church well is something that you should do.

However, I'm afraid that many churches and pastors have moved away from real evangelism and going out and reaching the lost, and instead have turned to slick marketing and seeker sensitive methods to appeal to the world and compel them to come in to the church services. On the surface this may seem great. After all, don't we want people to come to church so that the church will be full? Of course. I wish my church was packed every Sunday. However, when the Gospel is sacrificed and truth is not preached there is something desperately wrong! When your church services are built around the felt needs of sinful man it will turn into the debacle that most modern church services are! Preachers are called to preach the truth without fear or favor of men! I don't care one bit about being seeker sensitive if it means that the Truth is not preached. The Truth must be preached even if it offends! There are many times when I feel that God wants me to preach on certain things and it's not always easy when I know there are people in my congregation who are guilty of those sins. However, I will be held accountable on the Day of Judgment and I don't want to stand guilty before God for failing to preach the Truth - I don't want anyone to be able to accuse me of not telling them the truth about their sins. Right now it may not always make me popular, but in the end it will be right!

I want to recommend a great book that you may have already read but we all ought to read over again every once in a while - "Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire" by Jim Cymbala. Especially chapter 8 - "The Lure of Marketing." In chapter 8 Cymbala talks about the new holy trinity of the church - the A-B-C's: Attendance, Buildings, and Cash.

In this chapter Cymbala writes,

Nowhere in the epistles do we find Paul saying, "I hear your attendance was down last quarter - what's the problem? What are you going to do about it?"

This leads me to say that no church, including the one I pastor, should be measured by its attendance. Although I am thankful for the crowds of people who come to the Brooklyn Tabernacle every week, that is not the sign of God's grace.

Cymbala continues to point out that what did matter to the book-of-Acts church was things like speaking the Word with boldness and being boldly confrontational trusting the Spirit to produce conviction necessary for conversion. He points out Peter's preaching on the Day of Pentecost where he said, "You, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross." (Acts 2:23)) Cymbala writes, "This was the last thing the crowd wanted to hear. If David Letterman had a Top Ten list of things not to say to a Jewish audience, number one would be "Guess what - with your own hands you just killed the Messiah, the one Israel has been expecting for centuries."

Cymbala continues, "But Peter's boldness did not drive the people away. Instead, it stabbed their consciences. By the end of the day a huge group had repented of their sin and been converted." He points out several other examples of things which the Apostles said and preached which I would term as being "non seeker-sensitive."

Again I quote Cymbala:

The apostles realized that without a bold, aggressive attitude in proclaiming God's Word, they would not build the church Jesus intended. Any church in any city of the world must come to the same conclusion.

The apostles weren't trying to finesse people. Their communication was not supposed to be "cool" or soothing. They aimed for a piercing of the heart, for conviction of sin. They had not the faintest intention of asking, "What do people want to hear? How can we draw more people to church on Sunday? That was the last thing in their minds. Such an approach would have been foreign to the whole New Testament.

Instead of trying to bring men and women to Christ in the biblical way, we are consumed with the unbiblical concept of "church growth." The Bible does not say we should aim at numbers but rather urges us faithfully to proclaim God's message in the boldness of the Holy Spirit. This will build God's church God's way.

There is much more in this great chapter in this great book. So, I encourage you to go buy it if you don't already have it. If you do, maybe you should reread it.

Let me summarize this long post by saying that it is my desire to reach a lost and dying world! I want to see the Kingdom of God built and see men and women, boy and girls, come to know Christ. For this to happen it will take sound Biblical preaching: preaching on sin, righteousness and the judgment. Preaching that has no fear or favor of men and that will boldly proclaim, "Thus sayeth the Lord!" Christ deserves the reward of His suffering!

I close this loooong post with one more quote from "Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire":

Spiritual "construction" that uses wood, hay, and straw comes easy - little work, little seeking, no travail, no birthing. You just slap it up and it will look adequate - for a while. But if you want to build something that will endure on Judgment Day, the work is much more costly.

On that day it won't matter what your fellow Christians thought of you. It won't matter what the marketing experts advised. You and I will stand before the One whose eyes are "like fire." We won't soften Him up by telling Him how brilliant our strategy was. We will face His searing gaze.

He will only ask whether we were boldly faithful to His Word.