The Whole Seeker-Sensitive “Thing”
November 15th, 2008 Categories: Church Planting
Pastor Greg wrote this post over on the Grace Community Fellowship site a while back which got me thinking; is a church falling into the “trap” of being seeker-sensitive simply because they participate in culturally relevant times of corporate worship?
In the post linked above, the term “seeker-intensive” was coined with the following definition:
A give-it-all-you-got, worship with all your heart, dance, sing, praise, shout it out, fall on your face, love God loud, offend the devil and all other religious spirits, passionate, expressive time of corporate worship!
I like the concept. I think it’s necessary. I also think that it’s almost never executed with any sort of power and authenticity. Morningstar does it quite well. So does IHOP. Everybody else seems to be trying to clone the worship experiences of places like IHOP and Morningstar without much success. I’m not passing judgement, I’m simply making an observation.
I think the root issue in the entire debate centered around the seeker-sensitive church is “what has God called me to do?” The entire purpose for the emergence of the seeker-sensitive model was to keep people coming back long enough to soften their hearts, and then to engage them with the uncompromised gospel. The basic thought was that it takes people several exposures to the gospel before they typically respond. Being culturally relevant, modern, hip, and generally agreeable is the common methodology for accomplishing that end.
I also think that seeker-sensitive models tend to produce me-centric quazi-disciples. So, this creates a conondrum of sorts: I need people in order to make disciples, but if I do just anything to keep people coming back, people will think that it’s all about them. What to do?
The answer might actually exist in a mixture of the program and purpose-driven methodologies. Culturally relevant worship times are not necessarily bad, as long as they serve as a starting point for engaging people who will eventually become rabid, world-beating praise animals. My hypothesis is that people, when continually submerged in the power of the Holy Spirit and given opportunity to enter into structured discipleship, will make the transition over time.
In other words, if you can create a culture of discipleship, then it’s not necessarily bad to devote some energy to filling the seats. What say you?
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