THE SEEKER-FRIENDLY MOVEMENT DEFINED
What is the seeker-friendly movement? It is a philosophy of church growth that seeks to discover what characteristics the unconverted would like in a church to induce them to attend, then seeks to fashion the church to please their carnal desires. There are, of course, different degrees to which churches are willing to compromise the truth of Christianity to accomplish this end. Some seek to retain at least an external appearance of historic Christianity, while others seem to have totally abandoned it. The problem is, once a person has embraced the basic philosophy that drives this movement, there is really no stopping place on the road to adopting pagan religion.
RECOGNIZING A SEEKER-FRIENDLY CHURCH
How can we recognize the seeker-friendly philosophy at work? The answer is relatively simple. In a seeker-friendly church, everything that might be offensive to the fleshly hearer has been removed. Worship is put on the back burner and replaced with an emphasis on "having fun in church." This experience occurs in a "non-threatening atmosphere." Everything with a semblance of theological truth is removed. The great hymns of the faith are replaced with theologically vacuous "praise hymns" that appeal more to the feet than to the heart. Sin becomes "a mistake" instead of a deep-seated nature that raises its rebellious fist against the Sovereign of the universe.
Most of the teaching from the pulpit would not be out of place in a secular seminar on human relationships. There is seldom, if ever, an exposition of an extended passage from the Epistles of the New Testament Scripture. If any privilege of membership in the family of God is ever mentioned, it is applied, without distinction, to the entire audience, converted and unconverted. Hearers are seldom directed to look at their Bibles to see what God has revealed.
Instead, paraphrased versions of the Scriptures are used to buttress a point the speaker wishes to make even if the word or phrase he wishes to emphasize has no support in the original text. It comes down to this; since sinners don’t want to feel guilty, we won’t tell them they are rebels against God. Since people don’t like to think, we won’t talk to them about doctrine. Since sinners don’t like to think through the theology of the great hymns of the faith, we will give them catchy tunes and rhythms accompanied by repetitive, mindless drivel.
It seems those involved in this movement despise our Christian heritage in the way they discard the great hymns of the faith that God has used for centuries to instruct and bring blessing to his people.
Since people do not want to read the Bible, we will use power point to show them a substitute, a paraphrase that masquerades as Scripture. The bottom line is, a seeker friendly church is one designed by unconverted sinners, not one designed by the Lord of the church.
Although not describing the seeker movement by name, Dr. Timothy George has encapsulated its perils well. Describing the theological and practical maladies that currently plague Baptists he wrote, As Baptists have gained influence and status, we have also tended to approximate the values or our changing culture, including its secularism. We have lost touch with the great historic traditions, which have given us our vitality and identity.
Seduced by he lure of modernity ("whatever is latest is best"), we find ourselves awash on the sea of pragmatism ("whatever works is right"), indifference and theological vacuity. The results are all about us: Church rolls stuffed with so-called "inactive members" no one has seen or heard from in years, trendy sermons which lack both biblical depth and spiritual power, a generation of young people uninstructed in the rudiments of the faith, fractious controversies which sap our strength and strain our fellowship, shallow worship services geared more to the applause of man than the praise of God, a slacking interest in evangelism and missions, all amidst a hurried activism steeped in this-worldly proprieties.
Please understand I am not extolling the imagined virtues of cold, dead, judgmental, orthodoxy. We should seek to remove every humanly erected obstacle to the conversion of sinners. We must reject the idea that we believers are by nature in some way superior to the unconverted. We need to look beyond externals to the deep needs of sinners’ hearts.
If they refuse to come into a "church”, [building set aside for worship] because of the stupid and malicious antics of the religious people they have known, church should not be a place where a lost sinner should feel comfortable. Church is the Body of Christ, made up of the saved. Lost people are welcomed to come and watch but only the saved and be a part of the church.
Sinners are never commanded to come to Church; the church is commanded to go to the entire world. We can rid ourselves of every humanly devised tradition that has encumbered the church in her mission, but we must not lay aside the faith once delivered to the saints.
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