Among the issues which have worked to weaken the Church is the seeker-sensitive church movement, also called the seeker-friendly church movement. This is not exactly new. As long ago as the 1960’s the late Robert Schuller was operating in one of the hallmarks of this movement: emphasizing the positive aspects of Christianity. While there is nothing wrong with that in and of itself, it becomes a problem when this is all that is preached, just as preaching hellfire and damnation only is problematic. The whole counsel of God must be shared from the pulpit (Acts 20:27) unless you have some specialized calling such as being an evangelist where your primary message will be about salvation or the lack thereof. Schuller was known for the Crystal Cathedral and his Hour of Power TV program, and was also considered to be a motivational speaker. No surprise there.
If Robert Schuller could be looked at as the “father” of the seeker-sensitive church movement, then Rick Warren can be considered as the one who really brought this movement into its own. Warren is the founder of Saddleback Church in California in 1980 and was its senior pastor from then until June 2021 when he announced his retirement. In 1995 he published a book which radically changed the landscape of Christendom not only in America but also in other parts of the world, a book called The Purpose Driven Church, followed in 2002 by The Purpose Driven Life. I found the latter book too boring to finish, but I did read The Purpose Driven Church and wondered why it did not trouble more Christian leaders than it did. It certainly troubled me. I will not detail what was in the book, but having been a Christian for a long time I not only have been to churches built on the purpose driven model, I have known others who have attended them and have read another book, The Dark Side of the Purpose Driven Church, a 2005 book written by the late Noah W. Hutchings, with chilling firsthand testimonies by those who were burned by this decidedly unbiblical movement. So what can be found in churches that are purpose driven or are otherwise seeker-sensitive?
A. The Show Must Go On—Church-style
Not all of the following are necessarily signs of a purpose driven church, as there are variants in the seeker-sensitive movement, and not all of these may be present at such churches, but usually several are and sometimes all of them are present.
1. A band instead of a choir: This is not an automatic red flag, as there are church bands whose members sincerely desire to honor the Lord. However, if there are special effects like smoke and strobe lights, lights of different colors, or flickering lights, beware. Entertainment is going on. There will also be a definite pattern to the songs from week to week that each of these churches will use to “set the mood” for the service. The pattern may vary from church to church but almost invariably there will be some upbeat or hard-driving songs (some even like rock ‘n roll) and some soft, sentimental, tearjerking songs, and some of these songs will have an unusual amount of repetitiveness to the chorus, more like mantras than Christian praise. Soaking music also would fall into this New Age-like music practice. God is not against church music as long as it exalts and magnifies Jesus, whether it comes from a band or a choir, but He very definitely does not like entertainment and showmanship in what is supposed to be a holy service. Music is an important component of worship and has been ever since Old Testament times (1 Chronicles 25:1-7; Habakkuk 3:17-19). However, it should always be the Holy Spirit who sets the mood for the service.
2. Watered-down preaching or worse: Week in and week out, the so-called preaching at these churches will be soft and gentle, usually. Hell and judgment are seldom if ever mentioned. Some of the more Biblical-sounding preachers will preach sermon series on different topics or on different books of the Bible, staying away from hard preaching about sin and damnation for the most part if not always. There are also “preachers” who should more rightly be called motivational speakers or pop psychologists. What they present from the pulpit is more akin to theological therapy or enthusiasm than to actual preaching and teaching of the Word of God. They may not admit it, but there is often a fear that solid preaching will reduce their attendance numbers and, therefore, the amount of money coming into their churches. Just as it is in the world, so it is in the church that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil (1 Timothy 6:9-10).Meanwhile, these parishioners who sit under this powerless adulteration of preaching are being made to go to hell more comfortably if they are lost or are being maintained in perpetual spiritual infancy if they are saved.
3. Small groups: These are not always bad. Despite Rick Warren’s damnable purpose driven books, his church did contribute a blessing in the form of the Christ-centered 12-step group Celebrate Recovery, which I was a part of for more than nine years, including in leadership, and which I desperately needed when I was at an extreme low point in my life in 2012. Church jargon may change over time, but for the past several years the catchphrase “Get plugged in” has been used heavily in the pitch that seeker-sensitive churches have made in getting members interested in small-group participation. Normally these will include Bible study groups, groups for men, groups for women, and groups for singles, although each church either may not include all of these or, if they are larger churches, will include more types of small groups than these. Small groups have great potential to do good. It was not unusual for the earliest Christians to meet in smaller groups in each other’s houses (Acts 2:46). Unfortunately, however, in practice today’s small groups are usually reflections of the seeker-sensitive churches that create and promote them.
4. Liability consciousness: A sad consequence of the times we are living in is that people can be lawsuit-happy. Worse, lawyers have the ability to see even the remotest and most unlikely scenarios as potential liability cases waiting to happen. From businesses to churches, these lawyers have scared leaders to death, making cowards of them. One of the most glaring examples of this in the modern church, both in the seeker-sensitive and in the more traditional churches, is the desire to either exclude certain classes of felons (especially sex offenders) from their churches or to minimize their participation, chaperoning them around the church to the bathroom or wherever else during services. This is what I call the “back door” of Christianity. Just as a person throws scraps from the dinner table to the dogs or the cats out the back door of the house, so such individuals are thrown scraps of Christianity from the table of God’s house, comfortably outside the church’s doors or, at best, outside of the main church community. Rather than relying on spiritual discernment to tell them who to welcome and who to look out for, these cowered-down Christian leaders work to exclude potential liabilities (people with bad pasts) from their church membership rolls or to make sure they do very little except to attend the services.
5. Titles and more titles: This is not exclusively in the domain of seeker-sensitive churches, but it is not unusual for such churches to have an executive pastor, a lead pastor, a youth pastor, various other “pastors”, and perhaps even life coaches. In lock-step with this titular nonsense is the use of corporate-style speech such as “at the end of the day,” “we need to have this conversation,” “no worries,” and so on. A fitting development for churches built on the corporate business model!
There are some other things I was going to include, such as an increasing reliance upon technology such as overhead monitors and online services, plus the use of bad Bible translations, but these are becoming more and more common throughout Christianity in these last days. So we have a sorry state of affairs in the seeker-sensitive church. We now have an idea of what to look for in identifying some hallmarks of such a church. But there is more to discuss.
B. The Consequences of Seeker Sensitivity
I have already noted that the lost in such churches may remain lost while those who are saved there may not grow spiritually. There are other consequences as well. Such coddled believers are rendered unable to handle sound preaching. They feel that they are being attacked when they hear true preaching, or they think whoever brings such a word is legalistic and harsh. When churches attempt to adopt a seeker-sensitive or purpose-driven model, church splits sometimes occur. It is God’s will for us as believers to be united, and He does not like divisiveness (Psalm 133:1; Proverbs 6:16, 19b). People who oppose this nonsense, seeing its destructive potential, get pushed aside or kicked out the church doors like so much garbage. The lost, upon entering such a church, are hard-pressed to see why they need to change, considering that what they are walking into resembles, more than anything else, a night club with cleaner language.
It is sad but true that many believers want no more of Christianity than what they get on Sunday morning. They want to continue to be pampered, to be served rather than to serve, and to keep their personal lives compartmentalized away from their church life. The believers want fluff and pablum, and the seeker-sensitive churches gladly supply such spiritual compost:
Jeremiah 5:30-31: “An astonishing and horrible thing has been committed in the land: The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule by their own power; and My people love to have it so. But what will you do in the end?”
2 Timothy 4:3-4: For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.
So we have preachers and other “pretenders to the throne” who peddle a brand of Christianity not found in the Bible. They pervert the love of God into easy-believism and sloppy, greasy grace, portraying the Lord as an indulgent old pansy who is there to be used by His people. In return we have believers who are spiritually weak, undiscerning, ignorant, and spoiled. Sadly, the seeker-sensitive hucksters are not the only stains on the fabric of today’s Christianity. In my next blog we will look at another group of ear ticklers and swindlers: Those who preach prosperity and the word of faith in an unbiblical manner.
