My Thoughts on "User-Friendly" Church Pt. 3

“There’s a lot of talk these days about “user-friendly” churches. Church growth experts counsel church leaders to try to provide an atmosphere in which ‘unchurched’ people can feel comfortable and at home. That strikes me as an utterly wrong-headed approach to the church. ‘Unchurched’ people who come into our fellowship out to leave saying to themselves, I have never seen anything like this on earth! If they walk away thinking, Ah, that felt comfortable. That was familiar—then something is seriously wrong. The church should be like a preview of heaven.” - John MacArthur

In my last post I was trying to narrow my thoughts to one particular thought on this issue of seeker sensitivity. Indeed there are several concerns, but I am going to try to hone in on one. The most important issue is whether life changing biblical truth suffers from the seeker sensitive approach. I think that it is safe to say that this is probably the main issue with every believer that disdains the seeker model. Personally, I grow tired of the seeker sensitive apologists who can never address the criticism directly, but rather cloud it by responding to critics by saying “You’re just jealous because our church is bigger!” or “How many people are you reaching?” That is beside the point. Are we to reason that a pastor has the freedom to alter the content of the gospel once he has attained “successful ministry” and “church health?” If so, how high do we set the bar? 1000 church members? 2000? 3000? James White is spot on when he says, “The Gospel is ours to proclaim, not to edit.”

Here’s the thing however. Seeker Sensitive pastors vehemently deny that Gospel truth suffers by their methodology. I argue otherwise. I argued in my last post that the Gospel message needs to be accompanied by a proper corresponding method because marketing methods communicate how we view the Bible and its message. I just came across this blog today and found that Phil Johnson has argued the same thing. Not that I got my convictions from team Pyro, but they by far do a better job than me. I am bellow featherweight, if there is such a class. They are the heavyweights.

Ok, in closing let me say again that seeker sensitive pastors deny that their method affects the message and I find that you can argue this point back and forth and never get anywhere because it usually goes like this, “Yes it does!” “No it doesn’t.” “Yes it does.” “No it doesn’t” You get the point. So I am going to present my case by poviding you with one example. A really bad sermon from a large seeker sensitive church, but I’ll do so in my next post entitled “How Some Pastors Help Atheism.”