Should Churches Be Seeker-Sensitive?

I am sure many of you have heard of the "Seeker Sensitive" movement that has bee plaguing the church for a number of years. The idea is to make a person's "worship experience" comfortable. They are told to relax and enjoy the service. These services are usually filled with upbeat music accompanied with a fog machine and/or a laser light show to make you feel like you are in a concert. 

The pastor comes a preach a message that is gear toward day-to-day living that maybe filled with good advice, but with little Bible in them. Some of them show movies as their sermons rather than a preacher proclaiming the Word of God. It is a nice, causal atmosphere with little care as to what is holy and pure. They try their best to be entertaining while keeping the attention of the "seeker," which is another word for non-Christian in their lingo. 

The church is made up of believers and non-believers. Yes, you have read that correctly. seeker-sensitive churches are filled with people who claim to follow Christ and others that are still lost in their sins. One such church is North Point Community Church in Georgia where the lead pastor is Andy Stanley. In one video, he mentions in the community they have Christians and non-Christian as part of the church. He is church has also baptized a man who admits he is a homosexual, which seeker-sensitive churches tend to watered-down sin by making it more of a mistake than an offense to a holy God.

To the question that is being addressed in this post, should churches be seeker-sensitive? Here is my answer: depends on who you deem as the seeker. First, a lost man cannot seek from God. The Bible says, "There is none who understands, There is none who seeks for God" (Romans 3:11, LSB). We see later on in the third chapter of Romans that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23, LSB). We are lost in our sin, therefore, we cannot seek for God.

Second, Jesus is the One who seeks, "For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost" (Luke 19:10, LSB). Jesus is the One who seeks you which also means the Father is seeking you. When God works on your heart through the Person of the Holy Spirit, He is the One who calls you in fellowship with the Only Begotten Son. The Bible says, "All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will never cast out...No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day" (John 6:37, 44, LSB). 

Third, once we come to faith in Christ, we begin to seek God. The Bible says, "And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who draws near to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him" (Hebrews 11:6, LSB). The Psalmist wrote, "And those who know Your name will put their trust in You, For You, O Yahweh, have not forsaken those who seek You" (Psalm 9:10, LSB). How does one seek the Lord? We open up the Word of God and see Him for who He really is. The Bible is God's Special Revelation to His people, the church. We pray to God by telling Him our complaints, desires, praises, and confess our sins to Him. 

Finally, God seeks true worshippers. In John 4, we seek Jesus speaking to a Samaritan woman, who had five husbands and shacking up with a man, who she is not married to, where she turns the subject to worship:

The woman said to Him, “Sir, I see that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:19-24, LSB)

Noticed that Jesus said the worshippers that God seeks must be worshipping Him in spirit and in truth. That means we worship God with our whole heart based on what He has revealed about Himself. We are to worship God based on what the Bible says about Him. If there is a worship song that paints a different picture of God than what has been divinely inspired, then it is to be disregarded. Most of these so-called seeker-sensitive churches tend to sing songs about Christ that make Him more as my boyfriend than my Lord and Savior. Our churches need to be filled with true worshippers of God and not those who only wanting His benefits, which, sadly, most of our churches are filled with. 

True believers are the ones who truly seek after God after coming to faith and repentance. God is the One seeking those who are lost so they may come to faith in Jesus. Does this mean we do not preach with lost people in mind? A pastor should always assume lost people are in their churches. There are more lost people in the church than at Wal-Mart on a Sunday morning. God has chosen to use the foolishness of preaching to edify the body of Christ and allow sinners to hear the gospel, as the Bible says, "So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ" (Romans 10:17, LSB). 

One more thing, the church is made up of believers, not non-believers. We should never listen to people who do not follow Jesus as to what kind of church they would like to be part of. A church is called to holiness (1 Peter 1:14-16) and not conform to the pattern of this world (Romans 12:2). Being a seeker-sensitive church will compromise that calling and must be avoided.

May God bless the church in these days and give our people the boldness to be the people He has called them out to be without conforming to the world. Amen.