First of all, some qualifiers… (1) We are not against “big churches”, rather we’re against the mindset of those in big churches who hide in the big group, apathetic in living like Christ. We’re not against “seekers” (as in “seeker churches”) as should be obvious. Rather, we against the notion that the church exists for seekers rather than for God. Romans 3 makes clear that actually, no one seeks God! In fact, by definition, “church” in Scripture is the assembly of God’s people, of whom “seekers” are not a part. Therefore, in fact, it’s impossible to have a “seeker church”.
With that lengthy qualifier made…it dawned on us what a walking contradiction “seeker churches” are in much of what they do. For example, every seeker church will be very quick to say we’re saved by faith, not by works. {So far so good}. However, in stead of being places where the content of this faith is fully declared and articulated, “seeker churches” tend to be the last place one will find thoughtful, comprehensive theological teaching. Rather, every church I hear that praises a “seeker sensitive” mentality spends all their time on “how to” teaching {How to be a good…How to live…. How to find…} Catch the irony….the necessity of faith for salvation would seem to compel more rigorous preaching and certainly more God centered sermons. How to’s concern works, which they supposedly minimize (in the conversion process). Seeker churches, of all places, claim to focus on the unsaved, nonChristian.
In short, “seeker churches” fill their building with a lot of people who don’t love Jesus (after all, they’re “seeking”) to tell them how to live (i.e. do works), despite the fact that they can only be saved through faith (the content of which is barely if ever taught).
Consequently, the very method attempting to win seekers may be sending them to hell!! (since they are being taught how to do works but unfamiliar with the content of our faith).
I wholeheartedly agree with what you are saying. More and more I'm realizing the "seeker" church is just a product of our commercialized society - we want everything to serve us and be easy or we're just not interested. I think the reason these are popular, however, is that even if American Christians agree with what you're saying - that new or "almost ready to be new" Christians need to hear God's word, rather than "how-to's" - no one seems to know how to get an unbelieving American into church to hear that word any other way. After all, why else would they come...surely it's not because they feel like they need a savior (who needs that in America?) I would say that the answer to the question is that each of us has to commit to personal discipleship and relationship-building. The only problem with that is that it's inconvenient and takes more work than we would like.
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