Bill Hybels , the unofficial father of the seeker movement in the United States, recently admitted that seeker churches have done a very poor job of making disciples. This is damning because making disciples is what Jesus commanded us to do! Why has the seeker movement failed in the church’s central purpose?
I attended a seeker church this past weekend. As I was sitting there watching the pastor perform his way through his presentation, props, film clips and all, the thought struck me that the seeker church is in many ways a Protestant form of Roman Catholicism (I grew up Roman Catholic and the Roman Catholic church is having the same problem). I know the connection is not immediately obvious because of the major differences in liturgy, hierarchy and theology. But there are several significant similarities:
- Time: This won’t take long– 45 minutes to an hour, max. You can set your watch by these services. And if the pastor or priest goes just a wee bit longer, the congregation gets restless.
- The Bible: Leave your Bible home– the folks on the stage or altar handle the Bible reading which is normally a mere sprinkling of verses yanked from their context. Moreover, there is no attempt to teach you how to study the scriptures yourself.
- Worship: Just watch– there is a performance up front. You’re more of an observer than an active participant in worship.
- Message: It’s groundhog day– you hear the same, short message repackaged every Sunday. The sermon (or Homily) is to preaching what cotton candy is to nutrition. Sweet but of little value.
- Outcome: Low commitment and little life change. A significant portion of Roman Catholics disagree with official church teachings, and Hybels’ own research shows the seeker movement has failed to produce disciples
Now before I get hate mail from my Roman Catholic and Seeker-oriented friends who can cite several exceptions, let me grant that there are exceptions, but they simply prove the rule. We’ve got to stop defending our church practices if they are not doing what Jesus told us to do. If you’re not making disciples, you’re not doing church the way Jesus commanded it. As Jesus warned, we can’t let our traditions nullify the Word of God.
Unfortunately, most other denominations are not doing much better. We’re loosing 75% of our young people because– instead of making disciples who are in awe of God and devoted to His purposes– a majority of churches from most denominations are producing shallow narcisists obsessed with themselves and their own happiness.
We fail to realize that what we win them with we win them to. If we win them with entertainment and low commitment, we win them to entertainment and low commitment. Charles Spurgeon was way ahead of his time when he implored the church to start “feeding the sheep rather than amusing the goats.”
This seems to be a big problem in many churches, not just seeker churches. I believe the problem is three-fold, one – pastoral, two – administratively, and the other congregational.
First, many of those in head leadership positions limit themselves. It’s leading us to where we talk more about the quips the preacher used in the sermon than the Biblical message that was presented. If people walk out of a church service without learning something new or useful, have nor been challenged, or did not meaningfully engage in worship, the time was only one thing that was wasted. The other bigger thing wasted was the opportunity.
We all have varying degrees of talents, and for those in the ministry, it is no different. It comes easier for some than for others, but all are accountable for their best efforts every day. Most people in fundamental church leadership have their heart in the right place, but many are ill-equipped to lead, they have lost their focus, or they’ve gotten lazy and not even realized it. The study and preparation that must go into a powerful life-changing message can take days, yet many sermons are packaged and ready to go in a couple of hours, if that.
I realize the work ethic of those in the ministry is not the point of your post, but it has much to do with it. Lifestyle sermons are quick and easy, and because most ministers can pull a few topical verses out of their head or steer a sermon to verses that would be useful, the average experienced minister can assemble one of these very quickly.
With study/research tools such as the internet and the advent of email, cell phones, and other technological gadgetry, pastors have the chance to be more engaged with their parishioners and develop better sermons than ever before. Instead of using tools and time management to increase the power and effectiveness of the church to reach out to evangelize and train, many leaders have not embraced the opportunity or they’ve used it to reduce their time involvement instead of increase their reach. Maybe even more disturbing is the number of businesses that have crept up that sell sermons.
Seminaries need to focus more on developing work ethic and accountability, and church boards and district supervisors/administrators need to require that. Simply put, when a ministerial staff doesn’t put in quality time for preparation and to fulfill other pastoral duties, the church suffers. If ministers don’t get back to teaching, understanding the pressures that the world puts on young believers to lose or abandon their faith, and if they don’t get out there and produce some very hard work, the church will continue its downward spiral.
Seminaries must also start to focus more on teaching others to teach. It’s not so simple and ministers that get out of practice will lose that. Being a minister should also require going back to school on a routine basis. The world is changing around us and so the church and its leaders must be made aware of these changes and ways to interact with the good stuff, counteract the bad stuff, and generally be informed. How many young people are going to listen to a minister that sounds ignorant of everything else? Many can’t even discuss what’s happening in Christian circles let alone the world.
The congregational members can’t take a pass on this one either. We like to walk out of church feeling better about ourselves and hearing a lifestyle message that praises us for what we do rather than convicts us for what we don’t do. It makes us feel good. Humans are creatures of habit so if something is out of order, it disturbs our sense of normalcy and it might wake up the back pew. When the preacher says something that attacks our conscience, it is disturbing. If we are given tools, that means we should probably use them and many of us don’t like that.
Christians also don’t like to stir the church pot or if they do, it’s not in a positive way. We need to come to church with an expectation of service, worship, and a willingness to be challenged, and we need to leave the building a bit wiser, knowing more, or jostled. At the very least, we need to leave knowing that we have truly worshipped our God all the way to our core instead of just going through the motions.
Members must expect this both from themselves and from the church they go to. If the church and the leadership isn’t teaching or is taking the easy way out, members must demand change. Yet thousands of churches nationwide do the same ‘ol every week, decade after decade while they watch the pews slowly empty and their children melt into the world. Why is it that we would rather lose our children than to demand more from our church? But also – why is it that when people do, they are labeled as malcontents?
To sit in silence is not a Christian virtue, nor is it one to avoid conflict. In the world around us however, most Christians sit on the sidelines, say nothing so as to not anger those who do not serve our Lord. And we sit in silence in our churches instead of being the voice of enablement and positive force to require change.