Seeker Sensitive Church: Mark and Avoid?

This is for me, and I don't think I'm alone in this as a pastor. It feels good when people show up to your church. It feels good when you're you're getting momentum in that way, like people are showing up and there's something specific that they're coming for, right?

And you've hit that and you're like, this is, this is a, it can be a good thing. But it's far too easy for that to become the thing that you chase after. It's far too easy as a pastor to just keep what we, I want more people here.

And to have a greater impact for the gospel. I want all of those things, but check your heart in that. I have to do it constantly.

What a Seeker Sensitive Church Is

Striving for superior theology and denominational unity. One joke at a time. Your Calvinist podcast begins now.

Welcome to your Calvinist podcast. My name is Keith Foskey, and as always, I'm your Calvinist. I'm your Calvinist. And I'm joined today by my good friend and fellow pastor, the pastor of Mission Way Church here in Jacksonville, Florida, Kenny Roberts.

Kenny, thank you for being in the sanctuary with me today.

Yeah. Very nice. I love the setting.

Yeah. It's awesome. I thought this would be a good place for us to talk today about the subject of church, because our subject today is going to be about what's called seeker sensitive church and seeker sensitive church is a term.

I think it was a term that came out in the nineties, but maybe earlier. And that's something that I wanted to ask you, maybe if you knew more about the history of that term, but we'll define it in a moment.

Yeah. I don't know that I necessarily know a ton about the history of the term as much as I think that's really when it became popular at the very least is in the nineties and early two thousands, even.

I mean, that's when I became familiar with it.

Yeah. Well, let me ask you this and you're not a lady, so I can ask you this question. How old are you?

I am 32.

You're 32. So you're 10 years behind me. You were born in 91 then? Yes. Okay. All right. So you grew up in your childhood when I was in my teens. And so I got to see what I consider to be the heyday of the seeker sensitive movement, which was the, I mean, the nineties, man, they even made a movie about it.

You and I have talked about that movie before the movie Saved.

Yeah. I've not watched it, but I've heard about it. Yeah.

Macaulay Culkin plays in it and it's about a small town that has this church that sort of runs the town. And if you're not a member of the church, then you're not like, you're not a member of the social people, the social club.

Right. And it's an interesting movie. I never forget the youth pastor coming out and say, is everybody down with G-O-D?

Well, and for me, you know, you were certainly ahead of me in that, but I grew up in the Bahamas and I would say that overall the church culture there is usually at least a few years behind. And so I don't think, I think, I mean, I went through in my early teenage years, my own church kind of went from a much more traditional approach to church to starting to incorporate some more contemporary elements.

I don't think it was necessarily driven by a seeker sensitive model, but I think that model had a lot of influence in how we started to do church. And so I think we had a lot of those influences just a little bit later.

Church Marketing, Evangelism, and the Seeker Audience

All right. Well, to get the audience all on the right foot, and before we go to our little break we're going to have here in a moment, would you at least define for a seeker sensitive, and then I'm going, as you understand it, and then we're going to do a would you rather question.

So if somebody said, Kenny, what is a seeker sensitive church? How would you define that?

Yeah, so I think everybody may define this a little bit differently, but the way I think about it is a seeker is somebody who would be defined as someone who is at least somewhat interested in the things of Christianity, Jesus.

They are not a Christian, but they are somebody who is not antagonistic toward Christianity. They would be somebody that would be maybe interested in coming to church and even adding in, incorporating some of the things of Christianity into their lives because they think it's beneficial and helpful.

And so they're a prime target audience for churches to grow, right? So you want to get them in your church and you want to see them saved. I think there are good desires there in the seeker sensitive movement.

But I think you then form your services around that seeker, right? I think one of the defining characteristics of a seeker sensitive church is everything they do is geared towards reaching that demographic.

The church is no longer primarily about the Christian and the members of that church. It's actually primarily about the person who's not yet here and the person that they're trying to reach, right? So that would be the way that I would define it.

Excellent. Excellent. And that's really what we're going to dive into in a little.

Bit.

So we're going to dive into what churches do that are identified as seeker sensitive and what their methods seem to be. And maybe that's probably, at least for me, some of the issues is the methodology, not necessarily the heart.

They want to reach the loss, we want to reach the loss. So very quickly, I do want to say to the audience, anything we say today, you know, we're not necessarily saying that these people aren't Christians or they don't love the Lord or they don't love the loss.

We're just saying this is a methodological difference that can lead to other problems, such as things like a reduction in theological understanding, even theological heresies creeping in because theology becomes unimportant and reaching the loss becomes the main focus.

And when we say reaching the loss, reaching the seeker, as they would define them. And so before we cut to our quick little break, here's a would you rather question. All right. So you now have many years of ministry under your belt and you have pastored now at Mission Way for how many years?

I've been there for five years in ministry for 11.

Okay. So if you had the opportunity and you said, okay, I have to choose one of two churches to pastor, like let's just say you were moving to, and he's not, he's not going anywhere.

Not at all.

But if someone said, okay, you have to choose to pastor, would you choose a seeker-sensitive church or a woke church?

A seeker-sensitive church. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, unfortunately, some seeker-sensitive churches are also woke.

Because they find that as a method.

Exactly right. But if the seeker-sensitive church is not woke, I mean, there's a lot to consider there, but I think initially I would, that's where I would go first for sure.

Yeah. I kind of thought the same. And my reason for asking that question is, again, we're talking about levels of problems, right? Caring for the lost is, is a good thing. Methods can be bad, but like wokeness, that can be a tremendously, that can lead to all kinds of things.

Maybe that's a good thing to say at the outset, is I would consider the issue of wokeness to be even more dangerous, potentially, more potentially dangerous than seeker sensitivity.

Cool. Yeah. Well, good deal. All right. I kind of thought I knew your answer, but I thought it'd be good for the audience to hear. All right, audience, we're going to switch now to a quick little break.

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So when we talk about the seeker sensitive church and you gave a great definition before the break of what a seeker sensitive church is, right away, we have to talk about methodology. I remember growing up and the big churches in town, often which were seeker sensitive, or at least were moving in that direction, they would have all kinds of things that were intended to draw crowds, whether it was, you know, a pizza party was a big thing.

I don't think that's a huge deal anymore. People can have pizza anytime they want, but...

Right. But I will say if you have pizza, I'm coming, so...

Yeah. So that's one thing, right, is like the pizza party. But I mean, it was everything from amateur wrestling to skits, to, uh, I mean, in my, again, I grew up in a small town, even though I'm from Jacksonville, I'm actually from Callahan.

Right. And in our town, there were two churches that sort of were the two, neither one were mega, but there was the big Baptist church and the big Pentecostal church. Right. And sort of like that, like I went to both youth groups.

I did the pizza party at the Baptist church, did the worship thing at the Pentecostal church. And both of them were very much driven by this seeker model. So what are some things that you've seen, you know, over the years, like attempts and methods?

Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, the drama skits and all that, I grew up doing a lot of that as a kid as well. And I think it's maybe good to also make clear that I'm not going to sit here and suggest that everything the seeker sensitive church does is bad or should not be done either.

But I think that one big thing that really is driving a lot of seeker sensitive churches these days is just a high production value. And so it's the smoke machines and it's the paid musicians to come into church, right?

Which is, again, it's not a sin to pay your musicians, right? But it's making sure that everything is top notch. And then it goes to the next level of, I've seen a lot of churches, for example, do productions of The Greatest Showman and the Christmas and Easter services are, I mean, it's like going to a performance.

I mean, and it's not, it doesn't feel as much like a church service. And I think sometimes that's intentional. It's not meant to feel like a church service. It's not meant to be your grandfather's church is a line that is.

Oh, I hate that line. Yeah. You know what I get? So I don't mean to be that guy because I normally am not. I have a really high threshold for things I disagree with, you know, and I, and I try to be really gracious to people who I disagree with.

But the one line I hate when people say, it's not your grandmother's church. I think how insulting as if to say the church that reared that saint and nurtured her and loved her in the gospel, that church was just, you know, not worth your time.

We're better than that. And I don't know. I get offended. I don't mean to like get like, like almost visceral, but it's, oh, yeah, no,.

There's a lot of lines like that that I think, you know, can be really offensive to people who grew up in a church that's not like this, right. It's fine if this is what you want to do. But you know, to go back to some of the things that I've seen, I point to some of the things that I've done in past, like I was a youth pastor for several years and you know, I would, everything once a month, especially, we had a once a month youth service that was always event driven.

It was laser tag or it was capture the flag or something that would draw people. And I would tell my students, if you bring a friend, I'll give you a $5 Starbucks gift card for every friend you bring.

Right. And so I've looked back on that and thought I paid my kids to go out and evangelize, which maybe we should do that more. I don't know, but just to,.

It was, it was, I wonder if that would work with like adults. I got a $5 gift card, a $5 Home Depot card. Oh man. I mean,.

If you give me some grocery and gas gift cards, I'll go out and evangelize a little bit more. And that's probably an indictment on me. But, um, yeah, I mean it was, it was all about just getting more people in the building and it was the celebration was almost always, look how many people we had here.

And now I love to see when people celebrate, look how many salvations there were. And it's not even fine to say, look how many people were here. But that just became the focus. It was high production.

How many people can we get here? Um, it's spending thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dollars in marketing your church. Um, and it just, yeah, I mean, that's, that's a lot of the stuff that I think kind of generalizes, uh, what we see in seeker sensitive churches.

You use a term, I want to, I want to jump on this for a minute. Maybe we chase a rabbit for a few, few, few minutes here. The word marketing, because this is a conversation, you know, that I've had with leadership and, you know, we've been in this church for, you know, a long time now and, and, and thinking about what is the difference, you know, evangelism versus marketing, right?

Like, like, like we, we, you know, evangelism, we're going out, we're sharing the gospel, we're pointing people to Christ. Um, but you know, some churches send out, you know, mailers and the mailers, Hey, come get your kid picture taken with Easter, right?

Right. Yeah. And, and it's like, okay. Um, but, but is that, you know, right. And so that, that's been like a issue for me. I'll get these in the mail and I'll see them. And I think, you know,.

I think, sorry, I don't want to forget this story. I think the best one of those I've ever seen, we had some friends who were not believers. We actually met them on our honeymoon cruise and became lifelong friends with them.

And, uh, you know, they knew we were believers. We had talked with them about the gospel and all this, but they said they got a mailer from a church. They were in the Orlando area. They got a mailer from a church that said on the front of the mailer, come to our church on Sunday, we won't lick you.

And I thought, is, is this a problem? Is this a regular occurrence in some other churches in Orlando? Like,.

I think I need to mark this point as the point that's going to be at the beginning of the video. You know, I always had that little 30 second. Yeah, that was it.

Yeah. And I thought, I mean, these, these people probably wouldn't have, our friends would not have been classified as seekers by most people in that sense. But I mean, they were so weirded out by that.

I mean,.

We won't lick you. What does that mean?

He said, if I was considering coming to your church, I surely am not now.

Listen, we know what happened before. John has been removed from leadership.

Yeah, that was a bad decision. And somebody paid a couple thousand dollars for that mailer too, you know.

Oh my goodness. You know, but I'm going to, I'm going to ask you this and I'll go first that way. I feel like, you know, I opened the door for you. I know that in the past, like, you know, I haven't always been who I am today.

You know, you grow and you know, I look back at myself 20 years ago and I probably would have smacked myself now if I could talk to myself then. And when I was a youth pastor here, and I would like you, I was a youth pastor here when it used to be Forest Christian Church.

And we paid for a commercial on television. It had nothing to do with the gospel. I wish I could find a copy of this commercial. It was so bad. Kenny, it was boys playing and they were doing all kinds of crazy stuff.

Like they would throw water balloons or they would do this. And it was this, it was a stock commercial that was created for us. We paid for the stock commercial. One kid was even doing the sound with his armpit, you know, I don't want to, you know what I'm talking about.

And at the end it said, don't you just love kids? We love kids at Forest Christian Church. Come visit us this summer. It was awful. So again, we have to at least say, or at least I have to say, I've been there, you know, like that was pure marketing.

That was not pointing to Christ. That was just saying, Hey, we love kids. You love kids. Come and bring your kids. Right. Kind of thing. Yeah.

Yeah. I think maybe to go into that a little bit, I'm maybe more comfortable even with a church using the term marketing than some other people would be. I'm okay with that. But my question is always, several questions.

I mean, how much, how much of your resources are you giving to this as a church that should be going towards a more fruitful ministry? But also why are you doing this and what's, who are you trying to attract to your church?

What are you saying in your marketing? I mean, are you trying to give, in a lot of ways, I think some church marketing turns to be the bait and switch because it's something like that even where it's, we love kids.

Okay, great. Your kids, but then they come here and we're going to be giving your kids the gospel. Right. So being upfront and honest about that, maybe an example for our church. Now we do a summer kids Bible camp, BBS, we call it Bible camp and we, you know, it's a free week long event.

We have a ton of kids come. We're going to be inviting kids from the community because we want unsaved children to come to this event. And you know, somebody suggested that maybe we don't say it's a Bible camp.

And I said, no, we're going to tell them it's a Bible camp. I'm not like, they need to know right up front. It's a Bible camp, what we're going to be teaching at this. And that may turn, that may cause some people not to come, but I'm not going to be dishonest in my marketing.

And I'm not, I'm not doing this just to get more people in the door. I actually am trying to give a gospel invitation. So let's be upfront about that, you know?

Amen. Amen. And it's funny, as you mentioned, you know, who you are. Some churches, even the name, you wouldn't know that it's a church.

Have you seen John. Chris, is it a church or a weed shop?

Yeah. Yeah. And church or a... Actually, I don't know if I've seen the weed shop, but I've seen the graphic that says church or nightclub. Because if you hear the term elevate, instigate, you know, percolate, it's always that, you know, ascension, dimension.

Yeah. And it's all these words that have nothing to do with Christ or the gospel. And there, you know, it is just an attempt to sort of separate from the traditional. It's not Main Street Baptist Church.

It's Elevate Church. And I know there is an Elevate Church. I'm not necessarily, you know, that's just one word that's used by them. But yeah, you get these, you get a flyer in the mail, come be with us at Elevate.

What is this? What is it even talking about? There's very little. We had a conversation not too terribly long ago. We're talking the last few years where we were trying to discern that difference, the marketing versus evangelizing.

You know, what is it, you know, and when I say we're trying to discern it, what I mean is we feel like we know the difference, but we wanted to, like we've put out Facebook ads. We've done that. I don't know if you've ever done that.

It's five bucks. You can do, you know, 500 ads from 10 cent an ad or whatever it is, you know, and you're going to have this many impressions. You can do it for this area. And you know, it is, there's only so much you can put on that.

You can't do an entire gospel presentation in that, but you still point it to Christ, you know, this is what we're about. And so even our, we've talked about doing mailers, but we have our, our gospel tracks are down to business card size.

I've shown you, you've seen those. Yeah. And so we were like, well, if we did a mailer postcard size, why couldn't we put the gospel track with the message and have it go?

Yep. Yeah. I think you should, you should consider doing things like that. I mean, you know, again, I may be more comfortable with the term marketing for the church than other people are just because I think it's clearly what you're trying to do.

You're trying to tell people about your church. There's nothing wrong with that, right? We want people to know about our church, but the question is why are you marketing your church and what's the message that you're marketing with at the end of the day?

Because I do think that some of what we see churches do in marketing can be classified as deceptive. And, and I just, I have an issue with that. I think we've got to be very clear about who we are and what we're trying to do and what the purpose is when we're marketing.

Yeah.

And it's the, I know you've heard this phrase before, the what you win them with is what you win them to. Yeah. Well, yeah, we got to keep them, right? What you want to win is you have to keep them with.

So if you win them with a hot dog on a stick, you got to keep them, you got to keep the hot dogs coming, right? Or the pizza or whatever it is. And it's, that's a conversation too, is the conversation about, okay, well, what, what are we, what are we doing once they come?

And when they get here, you know, is it a bait and switch? Yeah. I don't know if I've ever told this story on the show before, but I sold cars when I was, um, first got married. I worked for Westside Dodge.

Okay. Westside Dodge had a, what we called a bait car. The bait car was a Dodge Ram brand new, and this is 1999, a brand new Dodge Ram pickup. And it was 12 ,995.

That's a dream today.

Well, yeah. I mean, you can't even buy a used car for that, but it was 1999, 12 ,995. It didn't have, it had, it had seats and it had the cheapest vinyl seats you've ever seen. It had no floor mats. It was all rubber, had no air conditioner in Florida.

Wow. This car was the basest of base models. And the, the attitude of the managers was, yeah, we know that's a bait car. Yeah. We know what that's for. Right. People see that they come in. I want to see the 12 ,995 car.

And the job of the salesman was the upsell. Yep. You know, closers, you know, what is it? Closers to get coffee or there's a movie line. I'm not sure. I'm not good with movie lines. Oh man. I forgot. I'm sorry.

You know, coffee's for closers I think is the line. It's from some sales movie. But the idea is like, like you, you, you have to close this guy. He's going to come in looking for the 12. You got to upsell him.

And by, and back then, this is how funny it is, back then an actual decent truck was 22 ,995. Oh wow. So it's still much better than today. You could buy a brand new quad cab. Yep. I remember the sticker price.

I remember taking it out, you know, because you'd show them the 12 ,995 junk. Right. And then you're like, but we have for $10 ,000 more. Double the price almost. Yes. You can come into this. So that's sort of what we get with the church.

Yeah. A little bit. And, and it becomes exhausting if you're a pastor leader in that church, because every time you do something, you've got to at least match what you did last time. And if not, it's almost always we got to do something more and better and bigger and different.

And we've got to outperform the other churches. Like what are they doing? Oh, they've doing that. Well, we either can't have our event on that day to conflict, or we've got to try to do something better that more people want to come to our thing.

And it, I mean, it's so exhausting. Again, I've, I've been there. I've done this. I've been a part of this. And so, um, I just remember being so tired of that and so exhausted by that because it, it's not, it's not what I got into ministry for.

It has nothing to do with the call of ministry of my life. It turned into as a youth pastor, especially I was an event coordinator. Um, and not that I didn't, not that I didn't do ministry and not that the church didn't want me to do ministry.

I did that, but so much of my time and energy and resources were taken with event planning and social calendar planning that I was, ministry was snuffed out, um, so often.

Wow. What you just said, I mean, it's really profound. You were, as a minister, you were an event coordinator.

Yeah, it felt like that sometimes.

Wow. That, I mean, I'm, I'm, and I'm right there with you. I remember every youth meeting because I was a youth pastor, every Wednesday night we had to have a game that was exciting.

Yep.

Now in the area that you're in, and I don't know what the, you know, church life is like around your area, but are there other churches that try to get you involved with their stuff? Or do you feel like a disconnect there?

Cause I know there are churches around here that sometimes do things.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's some of that. Um, we, I don't know that we have, we don't have a strong partnership with other churches necessarily, although we do have three international congregations that are meeting at our church that are not affiliated with our church.

We just allow them the space to do what they're doing. Um, and churches honestly are very cordial to one another. I don't feel like there's a competition, but I also don't, I haven't experienced a whole lot of necessarily inviting us to be a part of things per se.

Um, yeah, but I, but I did experience that in my previous church, um, where there was some of that and, and there also was on the opposite side of that, there was a lot of competition and it was never spoken.

I don't think it would have ever been acknowledged that way, but there was absolutely competition between the churches.

Sure. Yeah, sure. Well, that's the reason why I asked, I thought about, you know, a few years ago I was, uh, I was over at the Lowe's, which is not too far from here in the little river city marketplace.

I was walking around and I noticed this like little bizarre that was going on in the parking lot, uh, you know, like a little fair, they had a pony ride and they had a basketball shoot and they had fishing and stuff.

It looked like a little fair. Yeah. And I walk over there and I notice it's this, this such and such Baptist church, such and such, you know, this church and, you know, elevate and percolate were there.

But, but, but I, I obviously, our church wasn't even know about it. And I kind of got to thinking, I was like, well, I wonder why because we're all of these churches are within a stone's throw. Right.

And this is, even though we're, Jacksonville is a big city, Ocean Way is kind of a small subsection of Jacksonville. And I was kind of like, well, I wonder why we weren't invited. Um, I wasn't offended.

Like, I was like, why didn't I get invited? But I was more just like, I wonder if like they didn't even think about it or if it was like, you know, you know, maybe it's just, they knew it wasn't our, our thing.

Could be. I don't know. I don't know. I just remember seeing that and wondering, okay, so how are these churches, are they handing out cards for their church? Are they doing like one big event that they're trying to get everybody to come to?

I don't know. Just curious for me.

Sometimes the pastors just know each other already and have that natural connection and just invite one another to events too. I think that, that certainly can happen. Um, you know, and, and what's so interesting is I, I have been to seeker sensitive churches that in their service every Sunday they'll pray for another church in town, which I think is great.

That's an incredible thing to do. But it's just fascinating to me that in some ways you're in competition with them for attendance and marketing and then the same time you're going to pray that. And, and I, I think they're sincere in that.

It's not that I don't believe they're sincere. I really do think they are. I just think it's in some ways that's contradictory in some ways. It's, it's not what you're really putting out there that we're all one church because you're trying to convince everybody that your church is the best church, right?

You know, um, and, and that's, you know, it can have its place. I tell people all the time, a guest comes to our church, almost every one of them will hear me say to them, cause they'll ask about our church and I'll say, I'm not a salesman, I'm a pastor and my desire for you is not, not first and foremost that you come to this church.

It's first and foremost that you know Christ and that you are a part of a biblical church and would love that for that to be mission way. But if you're looking for me to sell you on our church, that's not what I'm here to do.

Ooh, there was a time I remember very specifically with a family that was sort of considering our church and another church and we spent a lot of time with them talking to them. And at one point I did feel that way.

I felt like, you know, it's, I even said, I can't sell you, I can't tell you why to come here rather than go there. We're both good churches. The two churches were both, you know, biblical churches. And so I was like, just flip a coin.

I said, I'm a Calvinist man, throw the lot. Now that's not Calvinism. This is to be clear.

I mean, I will tell people too, like if you need me to recommend another church, I know other biblical churches. If, if for whatever reason, this is not the church, um, that's fine. You're not going to offend me.

Matter of fact, I wouldn't, I much rather you tell me that up front than show up for a few weeks when clearly you're going to be going to this other church. Like, don't, don't do that. That's not, because I'm going to be spending my time and energy trying to connect with you and build a relationship and see where you're at and all that.

So, I mean, love you, but like, I need to be focused on the flock that God has in front of me. Um, that's right. Is the opposite of the secret sensitive model, but yes.

The Pastor’s Audience Is the Flock, Not the Seeker

And let's get back to the, what you just said is a good transitioning point. So the difference really in method and even in philosophy is the difference of who is the most important audience. And I want to, I want to, I'm going to use Furtick here.

And I know sometimes people might think I'm, you know, overly, uh, critical of Furtick, but he puts himself out there and, uh, you know, not everything, not everything, you know, he's ever said is bad, but overall he has said some stuff that is really graded on me.

And one of the things that I remember him saying, and I have the video and the audio of it, uh, cause I've used it in when I do my, my, uh, survey of the, or it's church life and ministry class at the Academy.

I use it. I say, here's, here's a man who said this to his congregation, tell me what you think of this. And what he said was, when you join our church, it's no longer for you. And I'm not misquoting him, or I don't think I'm exaggerating.

He says, when you join this church, it's no longer for you. You're now on the, you know, you're now in the, in the army, you're now a soldier and you're now, we're now, you know, this church stopped being for you the moment you joined it.

Now it's, you know, we're about, you know, we're not about Bible studies. We're not about this. We're about getting people to Christ. And you know, of course people are clapping and yeah, we, you know, we understand.

And so is that in your estimation, is that the, is that really the divide who we see is the, is the major audience?

I think it is. I know several pastors who I've heard say to me that when they preach, the first person they have in mind is the seeker. They may not call them the seeker, but that's who they describe.