Seeker Sensitive Church: Mark and Avoid?

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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.

00:06

It feels good when you're getting momentum in that way, like people are showing up and there's something specific that they're coming for, right?

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And you've hit that and you're like, this can be a good thing. But it's far too easy for that to become the thing that you chase after.

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It's far too easy as a pastor to just keep what we need. I want more people here. And to have a greater impact for the gospel,

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I want all of those things, but check your heart in that. I have to do it constantly.

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Striving for superior theology and denominational unity, one joke at a time.

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Your Calvinist Podcast begins now. Welcome to Your Calvinist Podcast.

01:04

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.

01:18

Kenny, thank you for being in the sanctuary with me today. Yeah, very nice. I love the setting.

01:24

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

01:34

Seeker Sensitive Church. And Seeker Sensitive Church is a term, I think it was a term that came out in the 90s, but maybe earlier, and that's something that I wanted to ask you maybe if you knew more about the history of that term.

01:48

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 90s and early 2000s even.

02:00

I mean, that's when I became familiar with it. Well, let me ask you this, and you're not a lady, so I can ask you this question.

02:06

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.

02:12

All right. So you grew up in your childhood when I was in my teens, and so I got to see what

02:20

I consider to be the heyday of the Seeker Sensitive movement, which was the,

02:25

I mean, the 90s, man. They even made a movie about it. You and I have talked about that movie before, the movie Saved.

02:31

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 a member of the social club.

02:48

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

02:56

Yeah. Well, and for me, you know, you were certainly ahead of me in that, but I grew up in the

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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,

03:11

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, and 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.

03:34

All right. Well, to get the audience all on the right foot, and before we go to our little break we're gonna have here in a moment, would you at least define for a seeker -sensitive, and then

03:44

I'm going, as you understand it, and then we're gonna do a would -you -rather question. So if somebody said,

03:50

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

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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.

04:08

They are not a Christian, but they are somebody who is not antagonistic toward Christianity.

04:13

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?

04:28

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?

04:40

I think one of the defining characteristics of a seeker -sensitive church is everything they do is geared towards reaching that demographic.

04:49

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?

04:59

So that would be the way that I would define it. Excellent, excellent. And that's really what we're gonna dive into in a little bit.

05:06

So we're gonna 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.

05:18

Not necessarily the heart, right? 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

05:28

Christians, or they don't love the Lord, or they don't love the lost. 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 you know, reaching the lost becomes the main focus, and when we say reaching the lost, reaching the seeker, as they would define them.

05:52

And so before we cut to our quick little break, here's a would -you -rather question.

05:59

Okay. 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?

06:06

I've been there for five years, in ministry for 11. Okay. So if you had the opportunity, and you said, okay,

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I have to choose one of two churches to pastor, like let's just say you were you're moving, and he's not, he's not going anywhere.

06:18

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?

06:28

A seeker -sensitive church. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, unfortunately, some seeker -sensitive churches are also woke, because they find that as a method.

06:37

Exactly, right. But if the seeker -sensitive church is not woke, I mean, there's a lot to consider there, but I think initially

06:43

I would, that's where I would go first, for sure. Yeah, I kind of thought the same, like, and my reason for asking that question is, again, we're talking about levels of problems, right?

06:53

Right. Caring for the lost is a good thing. Yes. Methods can be bad, but like, wokeness, that can be a tremendously, that can lead to all kinds of things.

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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.

07:16

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 it. All right, audience, we're gonna switch now to a quick little break.

07:23

We'll be back right after this. Hey guys, I just want to quickly say thank you for watching this episode, and if you're enjoying it, please hit the thumbs up button.

07:31

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07:44

slash your Calvinist and leave a donation. Most importantly, we want to make sure that everybody who hears this podcast hears the gospel.

07:51

The word gospel means good news, and that good news has to be preceded by some bad news.

07:57

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08:03

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08:11

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08:17

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08:23

And if you've never done that, I encourage you to do so today. Now back to the show. All right, we're back.

08:30

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.

08:41

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.

08:53

Whether it was, you know, a pizza party was a big thing. I don't think that's a huge deal anymore.

08:59

People can have pizza anytime they want. But I will say if you have pizza, I'm coming. So that's one thing, right, is like the pizza party.

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But I mean, it was everything from amateur wrestling to skits to...

09:14

I mean, again, I grew up in a small town. Even though I'm from Jacksonville, I'm actually from Callahan. And in our town, there were two churches that sort of were the two...neither

09:24

one were mega. But there was the big Baptist Church and the big Pentecostal Church. And sort of like I went to both youth groups.

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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.

09:41

So what are some things that you've seen, you know, over the years, like attempts and methods?

09:47

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.

09:54

And I think it's maybe good to also make clear that I'm not gonna sit here and suggest that everything the seeker -sensitive church does is bad or should not be done either.

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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.

10:14

And so it's the smoke machines, and it's the paid musicians to come into church, right?

10:20

Which, 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

10:33

Christmas and Easter services are...I mean, it's like going to a performance.

10:39

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.

10:46

It's not meant to be your grandfather's church is a line that is often used, right? Oh, I hate that line. Yeah. You know what?

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I get so...I don't mean to be that guy, because I normally am not. I have a really high threshold for things

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I disagree with, you know? And I try to be really gracious to people who I disagree with.

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But the one line I hate when people say, it's not your grandmother's church, I think how insulting. Yeah. 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.

11:22

We're better than that. Yeah. I don't know. I get offended. No, I agree. I don't mean to get like almost visceral, but it's ugh.

11:28

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?

11:37

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'd point to some of the things that I've done in past, like I was a youth pastor for several years.

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And, you know, I would, everything, once a month especially, we had a once a month youth service that was always event driven.

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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,

12:00

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.

12:09

I don't know. But just it was. I wonder if that would work with like adults. I got a $5 gift card, a $5

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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.

12:22

And that's probably an indictment on me. But, yeah, I mean, it was all about just getting more people in the building.

12:29

And it was the celebration was almost always, look how many people we had here. And now

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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.

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But that just became the focus. It was high production. How many people can we get here? It's spending thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dollars in marketing your church.

12:52

And it just, yeah, I mean, that's a lot of the stuff that I think kind of generalizes what we see in seeker sensitive churches.

12:58

You use a term, I want to jump on this for a minute. Maybe we chase a rabbit for a few minutes here.

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The word marketing. Because this is a conversation that I've had with leadership.

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And we've been in this church for a long time now and thinking about what is the difference evangelism versus marketing, right?

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Like evangelism, we're going out, we're sharing the gospel, we're pointing people to Christ. But some churches send out mailers, and the mailer is, hey, come get your kid picture taken with Easter Bunny.

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And it's like, okay. And so that's been like an issue for me.

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I'll get these in the mail and I'll see them. Really? Sorry, I don't want to forget this story.

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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.

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And 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.

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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.

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

14:20

I think I need to mark this point as the point that's going to be at the beginning of the video.

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What is happening? I always have that little 30 -second. That was it.

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That was the mail. And I thought, I mean, these people probably wouldn't have, our friends would not have been classified as seekers by most people in that sense.

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But, I mean, they were so weirded out by that. We won't lick you. What does that mean?

14:45

He said, if I was considering coming to your church, I surely am not now. Listen, we know what happened before.

14:54

John has been removed from leadership. Yeah, that was a bad decision. And somebody paid a couple thousand dollars for that mailer, too.

15:02

Oh, my goodness. I'm going to ask you this.

15:09

I'll go first. That way I feel like I opened the door for you. I know that in the past,

15:14

I haven't always been who I am today. You grow, and I look back at myself 20 years ago, and I probably would have smacked myself now if I could talk to myself then.

15:23

And when I was a youth pastor here, and I was like you, I was a youth pastor here when it used to be Forest Christian Church, and we paid for a commercial on television.

15:34

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

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They would throw water balloons, or they would do this. And it was a stock commercial that was created for us.

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We paid for the stock commercial. One kid was even doing the sound with his armpit. You know what I'm talking about.

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And at the end, it said, Don't you just love kids? We love kids at Forest Christian Church.

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Come visit us this Sunday. It was awful. So again, we have to at least say, or at least

16:13

I have to say, I've been there. That was pure marketing. That was not pointing to Christ.

16:19

That was just saying, Hey, we love kids. You love kids. Come and bring your kids kind of thing.

16:25

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.

16:36

I'm okay with that, but my question is always, well, several questions.

16:41

How much of your resources are you giving to this as a church that should be going towards more fruitful ministry?

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But also, why are you doing this, and who are you trying to attract to your church?

16:54

What are you saying in your marketing? I mean, are you trying to give? In a lot of ways,

17:00

I think some church marketing turns to be the bait and switch, because it's something like that even, where it's,

17:05

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 may be an example for our church now.

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We do a summer kids Bible camp, BBS. We call it Bible camp, and it's a free week -long event.

17:22

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 somebody suggested that maybe we don't say it's a

17:32

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

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Bible camp, what we're going to be teaching at this, and that may cause some people not to come, but I'm not going to be dishonest in my marketing, and I'm not doing this just to get more people in the door.

17:48

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.

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Some churches, even the name, you wouldn't know that it's a church.

18:03

Have you seen John Chris' Is it a Church or a Weed Shop? Yeah, yeah, and Church or a...

18:10

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, whatever, 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 they're, you know, it is just an attempt to sort of separate from the traditional.

18:37

It's not Main Street Baptist Church, it's Elevate Church, and I know there is an

18:42

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

18:52

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.

19:07

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 put out

19:16

Facebook ads. Yes. 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, 10 cent an ad, or whatever it is, you know, and you're gonna 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.

19:31

Yep. You can't do an entire gospel presentation in that. Right, right. But you still point it to Christ, you know, this is what we're about.

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Yep. And so, even our, we've talked about doing mailers.

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Yeah. But we have our, our gospel tracks are down to business card size. Yeah. I've shown, you've seen those.

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I've seen them, yeah. 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?

20:01

Yeah, I think you should, you should consider doing things like that. I mean, you know, again,

20:07

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.

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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?

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Because I do think that some of what we see churches do in marketing can be classified as deceptive.

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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.

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And it's the, I know you've heard this phrase before, the what you win them with is what you win them to.

20:49

Yeah, we got to keep them, right? What you win them with 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?

20:55

Or the pizza or whatever it is. And it's, that's a conversation too. Is the conversation about, okay, well, what are we doing once they come?

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And when they get here, is it a bait and switch? I don't know if I've ever told this story on the show before, but I sold cars when

21:15

I first got married. I worked for Westside Dodge.

21:20

Okay. Westside Dodge had a, what we called a bait car. The bait car was a

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Dodge brand new, now this is 1999, a brand new Dodge Ram pickup.

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And it was 12 ,995. That's a dream today.

21:40

Well, yeah. I mean, you can't even buy a used car for that. But it was 1999, 12 ,995.

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It didn't have, it had, it had seats and it had the cheapest vinyl seats you've ever seen.

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It had no floor mats. It was all rubber, had no air conditioner in Florida. Wow. This car was the basest of base models.

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And the attitude of the managers was, yeah, we know that's a bait car.

22:11

Yeah. We know what that's for. Right. People see that, they come in, I want to see the 12 ,995 car.

22:16

And the job of the salesman was the upsell. Yep. You know, closers, you know, what is it closers to get coffee?

22:23

There's a movie line. I'm not sure. I'm not good with movie lines. Oh man, I forgot. I'm sorry.

22:28

That's all right. You know, coffee's for closers, I think is the line. It's from some sales movie. But the idea is like, you have to close this guy.

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He's going to come in looking for the 12. You got to upsell him. And back then, this is how funny it is. Back then, an actual decent truck was 22 ,995.

22:45

Oh wow. So it's still much better than today. Yeah. You could buy a brand new quad cab.

22:50

Yep. I remember the sticker price. I remember taking it out, you know, because you'd show them the 12 ,995 junk. Right.

22:55

And then you're like, but we have for $10 ,000 more. Double the price almost.

23:00

Yes. You can come into this. So that's sort of what we get with the church.

23:06

Yeah. A little bit. 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.

23:18

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.

23:25

Like, what are they doing? Oh, they're 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.

23:35

I mean, it's so exhausting. Again, I've been there. I've done this. I've been a part of this.

23:41

And so I just remember being so tired of that and so exhausted by that, because it's not what

23:49

I got into ministry for. It has nothing to do with the call of ministry in my life.

23:54

It turned into, as a youth pastor especially, I was an event coordinator. Wow. Not that I didn't do ministry, and not that the church didn't want me to do ministry.

24:05

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

24:16

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

24:22

Yeah, it felt like that sometimes. Wow. I mean, and I'm right there with you. Yep. I remember every youth meeting, because I was a youth pastor, every

24:30

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 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?

24:49

Because I know there are churches around here that sometimes do things. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's some of that.

24:57

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.

25:07

We just allow them the space to do what they're doing. And churches, honestly, are very cordial to one another.

25:14

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.

25:22

Yeah. But I did experience that in my previous church, where there was some of that, and there also was, on the opposite side of that, there was a lot of competition.

25:30

And it was never spoken, and I don't think it would have ever been acknowledged that way, but there was absolutely competition between the churches.

25:37

Sure. Yeah. Sure. Well, that's the reason why I asked. I thought about, you know, a few years ago, I was over at the

25:45

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 bazaar that was going on in the parking lot, you know, like a little fair.

25:56

They had a pony ride, and they had a basketball shoot, and they had fishing and stuff.

26:01

It looked like a little fair. Yeah. And I walk over there, and I notice it's this such -and -such

26:07

Baptist church, such -and -such, you know, this church, and, you know, Elevate and Percolate were there. But I, obviously, our church wasn't anything to know about.

26:17

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?

26:23

Yeah. And this is, even though we're, Jacksonville's a big city, Ocean Way is kind of a small subsection of Jacksonville.

26:30

Yeah. And I was kind of like, well, I wonder why we weren't invited. Yeah. I wasn't offended. Right. Like, I was like, why didn't

26:36

I get invited? But I was more just like, I wonder if, like, they didn't even think about it.

26:41

Yeah. Or if it's like, you know, maybe it's just they knew it wasn't our thing.

26:47

Could be. I don't know. Yeah. 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?

26:57

Yeah. Are they doing, like, one big event that they're trying to get everybody to come to? I don't know. Yeah. 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.

27:07

I think that certainly can happen. You know, and what's so interesting is

27:13

I have been to seeker -sensitive churches that in their service every

27:20

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 at the same time you're going to pray.

27:33

And I think they're sincere in that. It's not that I don't believe they're sincere. I really do think they are.

27:38

I just think in some ways that's contradictory. In some ways 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?

27:50

You know? And that 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, because they'll ask about our church and I'll say

28:00

I'm not a salesman, I'm a pastor. And my desire for you is not first and foremost that you come to this church.

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

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I'm here to do. 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

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I did feel that way, I felt like, you know, I even said, I can't sell you, I can't tell you why to come here rather than go there.

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We're both good churches. The two churches were both, you know, biblical churches. And so I was like, just flip a coin.

28:47

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

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I mean, I will tell people too, like, if you need me to recommend another church, I know other biblical churches.

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If for whatever reason this is not the church, that's fine. You're not going to offend me.

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Matter of fact, I would 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.

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Like, 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.

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So, I mean, love you, but like, I need to be focused on the flock that God has in front of me. That's right.

29:24

Which is the opposite of the seeker -sensitive model, but yes. And let's get back to what you just said is a good transitioning point.

29:30

So the difference really in method and even in philosophy is the difference of who is the most important audience.

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And I want to... I'm going to use Furtick here, and I know sometimes people might think

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I'm, you know, overly critical of Furtick, but he puts himself out there and, you know, not everything...

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He's not shy about it. No, no, and 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, because I've used it when

30:08

I do my survey of the church life and ministry class at the

30:15

Academy. I use it, I say, here's a man who said this to his congregation, tell me what you think of this.

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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

30:28

I'm exaggerating. I know the quote. 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 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.

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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.

30:45

And, you know, of course people are clapping, and yeah, we understand. And so is that, in your estimation, is that really the divide?

30:55

Who we see is the major audience? I think it is. I know several pastors who

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I have heard say to me that when they preach, the first person they have in mind is the seeker.

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They may not call them the seeker, but that's who they describe. And they will sometimes say, and then secondarily, it's my church members.

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And I'm thinking, who were you called to pastor? Were you called to pastor the random people in your community, or you called to pastor

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Mission Way Church, in my case? Because the primary role of a pastor is the preaching and teaching of the

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Word. And so if you're saying when I preach and teach the Word, my primary audience is not even my church members, then you're not operating as the pastor of your people,

31:48

I would say. And that may be harsh, but again, I'm saying all of this as somebody who,

31:54

I operated that way, and I thought that way, and I supported that way. I came to Mission Way Church in many ways with the intention of pastoring that way.

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And the Lord just convicted me about that. I mean, I shared this with you before we went on air, but when

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I got to Mission Way, it hit me, something I already knew, but I never really deeply thought about, that as a pastor,

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I will stand before God one day and give an account for the souls at Mission Way Church. And everything began to change.

32:24

I mean, the last five years has been an absolute journey in ecclesiology for me, in so many ways, and in pastoral theology, and what it means to be a shepherd, and I mean, it's been so good and painful at times, because these are things that I promoted and supported, and it's been hard, but also at the same time, so good and so freeing, because the pressure is off in that sense.

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Now, the pressure you can suggest is on, because I'm going to give an account for these souls, but the good news is,

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I did all of that stuff in the seeker -sensitive model on my own strength and power. I don't have to pastor on my own strength and power.

33:00

So in a sense, yes, the pressure is off. And you reminded me of a passage, the

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Scriptures, when Paul is speaking to the elders at Ephesus in the book of Acts, and he says, shepherd the flock of God that is among you.

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It tells us a couple things. One, it's God's flock, not ours. He tells us that we are shepherds, under shepherds of Christ, but we are shepherding

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God's flock, and among you. That key there is,

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I'm not called to shepherd Kenny's flock. I love your people. I love you, and I'm thankful that we are friends, and our friendship has been beneficial in many ways in my life, just having someone to talk to and call and have lunch with and things and be able to share with you things that only pastors get, because there are things that only pastors get.

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But I don't have to go home at night and say, I wonder how the flock at Mission Way is doing.

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I wonder how the deacons are doing at Mission Way and the other elders, because that's not my call.

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Again, this is not me bashing anybody because I thought this way, but also

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I was hypocritical, in a sense, in that when I was interviewing to be the pastor at Mission Way, one of the things that I did in that process was

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I had dinner with the staff, and one of the staff members asked me, who is the

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Sunday morning worship service for, the believer or the unbeliever? And I said the believer, and I believed that, but I was not operating in that way.

34:39

I would not have been a guy who said my first audience in mind is the unbeliever, the seeker, whatever you want to call them, but I operated that way, and so what

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I believed in my head was not lining up with my practice, and the Lord just really had to convict me of that, and I'm not saying that I don't have the unbeliever in mind in my sermon to some degree, but that's not the first person

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I have in mind. I think pastors should explain terms that unbelievers are not going to immediately know in their sermons.

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I think we should recognize that they may be in the room. Paul talks about that in one of his letters as well, but that's not my primary audience.

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And Furtick saying, when you come here, this church is no longer for you, in some ways sounds like, great, they're so passionate about reaching the lost, amen, but Jesus didn't just say that our call was evangelism,

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He said it was discipleship, right? And so if I'm going to go make disciples, and the only thing

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I'm focused on is the preaching of the gospel, that's the only thing I'm focused on to unbelievers, then

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I'm missing the other part of discipleship, and furthermore, as a pastor, my primary call is to the flock that God has to me, and I'm supposed to equip them for the work of the ministry and evangelism and going out and sharing the gospel, right?

35:57

Like, I should be doing evangelism as well, don't get me wrong, but my primary role as a pastor is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry.

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So I just think that seeker -sensitive models have that backwards, it comes from a good desire and a good heart, but you'll hear some of them complain that their church just doesn't seem to be getting it, and that discipleship isn't strong, and they just wish people in their church were more committed to their faith, and it's like, well, why would they be when they don't get any of that from the pulpit?

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Like, all they're hearing is somebody trying to reach their lost friends, which is a good thing, but nobody's challenging them to go deeper in their faith.

36:37

Yeah, and you know, the other side of that too is Luther's quote, which

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I say, you know, probably at least once a month here when I'm proclaiming the gospel from the pulpit, as I'll say,

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I remind you of the gospel every week because every week you forget. Yep, amen. So even if you are, you know, preaching the gospel, the people in the pew who are believers, who've been believers for 20 years, still need the gospel because it all comes back to are you trusting

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Christ, are you trusting yourself, are you trusting in His work, are you trusting in your work, are you trusting in what He has done, are you trusting what you've done?

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You know, it all comes back to that, and oftentimes where we're dealing with sin, or we're dealing with struggles, or we're dealing with fear, or doubt, or depression, or anything else, it comes down to where does our trust really lie, and who are we trusting in?

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And so, you know, if you preach the gospel, the unbeliever will hear it because he's there.

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But it doesn't have to be... This is where I think, and this could also be another tangent for us,

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I think it's also an issue of what we think the gospel is. Because if the gospel is to some people, just accept

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Jesus, just say this prayer. And I know that's so cliche, but tell me it isn't true.

37:56

I was recently in a service where I had joked about this so many times because I do the funny videos and everything, and I had joked about the raise your hand, come forward.

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But it had been a while since I'd been in one. I mean, like a long while, because we don't do that here.

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And again, I just was like, do people still do this? So I'm sitting in the service, and it like happened like gangbusters.

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The music, it went dark, the music went high, and we're not leaving this place until somebody comes forward.

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It's like, oh, wow. Yeah, you don't see much of that anymore. I know, but it's still...

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But man, that's the 90s. Brother Andy, one of our elders, he always said, play the keys, sister.

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Play the piano again. Just as I am. That's right. One more verse, and we'll get somebody down the aisle.

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But that's what they think preaching the gospel is. And I remember somebody saying to me one time here, it was a good friend, he was just asking.

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He said, hey, we don't do an invitation. When's a person supposed to get saved? And I thought,

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I kind of giggled a little. I said, well, what do you mean? And he said, well, you know, if we don't do the invitation, we're leaving them without an opportunity to trust

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Christ. And my answer, you may think differently, and I'd love to hear your thoughts, but my answer to him was, the entire service, the entire preaching of the gospel is an opportunity to trust

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Christ. Every time I'm proclaiming, and we end with the supper every week.

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So it's an opportunity to see, am I trusting Christ? Because if I'm not taking the supper, there's something wrong.

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It's either I haven't trusted Christ or I'm in Christ and there's something in my life that's causing me to not want to take it.

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Either way, it's a confrontation. So what are your thoughts on that?

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Yeah, I mean, I agree with that. I do personally, most Sundays, not every single

40:02

Sunday, I at least at the very end try to give a specific invitation to lost people that may, and I'll say, whether you're in the room or even later watching this online or whatever, if you have not yet trusted

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Christ, I would love to have an opportunity to talk to you about that or something like that.

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I don't invite people to come forward. Our connect card, we call it, to get information about guests, has a space on there, like,

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I trusted Christ for the first time or I'm interested in hearing more about Christ. So we have that opportunity to connect people, but I agree,

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I think it's the proclamation of the Word that is, if you're doing it properly, you are proclaiming the

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Gospel. You may not preach a specific message that details the life, burial, death, and resurrection of Jesus, but you should be preaching the

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Gospel every time you open the Word. I was just looking over to the side over here because I was hoping

40:59

I'd see a bulletin, I might grab it, but I don't see one over there. Our bulletin at the bottom, and I don't know how many people look at the bulletin anymore, but we do give them out.

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But at the bottom, underneath the sermon, it says, if you have a question about your soul, if you're concerned about your soul,

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I forget how it's worded exactly, here's my phone number and I want to talk to you today. And it's my name and my phone number is right there in the thing.

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And all of our elders' and deacons' phone numbers are on the back. One of our elders, to kind of talk about that a little bit more too, one of our elders often talks about how, you know, because sometimes questions will come in to us, or we'll have discussions about, you know, why don't we have more things that are like invitation -based, or why aren't we more concerned about getting lost people in the church, and we'll always say, first of all, we are concerned about that, but this elder at our church will often say, my primary goal with an unbeliever in my life is not actually to invite them to church.

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My primary goal is to get them the gospel. Now, inviting them to church may be an opportunity for that, sure, and that's a great thing,

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I'm not saying don't do that, but if I think that my job in evangelism as a Christian is to get somebody, is to just get them to church.

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First of all, at least as of a few years ago, 47 % of people will never go to a church, okay?

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So if your evangelism strategy is, I want to invite them to church, you can only do that with half of the population.

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And so half the population will never hear the gospel, if that's what everybody's mindset is, right? And so, you know, his thing is always, when's the last time you shared the gospel?

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Like, you're so concerned about the church doing this event and that event, like, when's the last time you shared the gospel?

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It's so funny, because I don't know that guy, but I have an elder that sounds almost exactly the same. And that's where, like, when we talk about the mailers, or going back to the marketing thing, it's always, okay, but how does this give the gospel?

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Does this present Christ in any meaningful way? And people will say that, you know, they'll say, well,

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I invited so -and -so to church. He'll say, did you give him the gospel? Did you point him to Christ? Because like you said, they're probably not going to come here.

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And if they're experiencing anything like mine, you'll invite them to church, they'll say yes, and you'll never see them again in your life.

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Yes, yes. They'll agree to come to church and never show up. But if we had Santa Claus singing

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The Greatest Showman. They may show up. They may come for that. Did you see that video? I did.

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That's the best. Yes. Actually, Sarasota, where I used to live before here, it's a big circus town.

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The Ringling Brothers Circus was there for a long time, still has some of that. I didn't know that. Sarasota, wow.

43:45

Yeah, it's a big circus town. Actually, there's an area you can drive in there where you see some of the circus homes, some of the tiny homes for like the tiny people,

43:55

I guess, that were in the circus. They literally had homes custom built for them. You can see. Anyway, all that to say, one of the larger churches there almost every year, they used to, again,

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I don't know if they still do, but they had like a Greatest Showman type performance, and they would bring some of the people from the

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Ringling Circus into their church. And I mean, I'm just watching this going, cool performance, but man,

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I mean, what are you communicating? Not just to the lost people who are in your church, but like you're actually discipling your church people to say that this is what the gathering of the church is about.

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Like you're telling your church people that this is why we gather. And here's the deal. I don't care how good your church gets at some of that, they can find a better performance somewhere else.

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And so if they think that the gathering of the church is about a performance, they're gonna find a better performance at some point.

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They're not gonna be entertained forever. And somewhere down the line, they're not gonna stay because of that.

44:51

It's just not gonna happen. That's a good point. And I've said this before, and I don't remember exactly the verbiage, but it was basically that the church is trying to put on plays when nobody goes to watch plays anymore.

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We're putting on performances. I mean, when was the last time you went to the theater? I mean, I go to the movie theater.

45:17

When was the last time you went and watched a play? I know when the last time I went to a play was. It was great. I went to the

45:23

Jacksonville Observatory. It's over in your neck of the woods over there. It's a place where they do acting and stuff.

45:31

And I did t -shirts for Newsies. I don't know if you've ever seen

45:36

Newsies, the movie. Well, this was the Broadway. And they had terrific actors.

45:43

And it was production value very high. And they gave me free tickets because I did the t -shirts for the event back when

45:51

I had my t -shirt business. I mean, that was great. And the only reason why

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I bring it up is because that was professional actors on a professional stage with professional lighting and had a director and had all this stuff.

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And churches are trying to match that. And sometimes, again, they're doing some pretty incredible stuff.

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Zip lining, angels in, and all kinds of stuff. But that becomes, again, like a competition.

46:20

Yeah, and here's another danger that I recognized in my own life.

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If you are a pastor trying to pastor a seeker -sensitive church, and you desire to honor the

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Lord and you desire to teach the Word, you really desire people to be saved, somewhere along the line, if you're truly trying to be faithful to Christ, you're going to have an instance where you offend the majority of your congregation.

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Because, and I've seen this play out, you give this impression that we're this cool church, that we just love everybody, and we just want everybody here.

47:01

But then you get to a text of Scripture that addresses, for example, the issue of homosexuality. And you either have to avoid that text entirely, in which you're being cowardly with the

47:12

Word of God, or you're going to preach it, and because you're wanting to be faithful to Christ, you're going to preach it faithfully, and half your church is going to literally walk out the door because they didn't know you believed that, and they can't believe that you're so hateful and spiteful toward them.

47:26

And you have set yourself up to actually fail at your own strategy of reaching those people, because they didn't know.

47:33

They didn't know that you were really serious about the truth. And it's not because you're not serious about the truth, maybe, but it's because you haven't been clear with people that you're serious about the truth.

47:43

Yeah, absolutely. And boy, you really nailed it, because when we talk about the preaching of the

47:51

Word, I don't know this to be true. But I'm going to make an assumption, and I know the danger of assumptions, in case anybody wants to...

48:02

Don't put that in the comments! But the assumption I would have is in most churches that are seeker -sensitive churches, you're not going to have verse -by -verse expository preaching.

48:19

And I want to say this, and this might get me some hate. I might end up with, you know...

48:25

This would be thrown around on all the websites of how bad I said... I don't think that if a pastor's not preaching verse -by -verse through books,

48:36

I don't think that's necessarily bad. Even though that's my method, and I do find it useful, and I do think it's good, and I would debate its merits with someone.

48:50

That's not what Charles Spurgeon did. I always have to remind people, Charles Spurgeon was not a verse -by -verse, book -by -book pastor, and yet we call him the

48:57

Prince of Preachers, right? So if somebody's not doing that, okay. But here's the opposite of what...

49:04

Here's what often happens, and maybe you could speak to this, is it becomes...

49:11

We're going to preach on whatever is our hobby horse, and it's just going to be a cycle through.

49:19

We're going to do... And this is... My mom and I joke about this sometimes, because she doesn't go to our church, she goes to a different church, but she jokes sometimes about sometimes when she's listening to topical preaching, she'll say it's

49:30

Noah the Flood, David, Goliath, Jesus walks on the water, and then it rotates back through, and you get those again.

49:38

And again, I know that sounds like maybe you're being overly harsh, and saying, oh, well, they're being childish, or whatever, but it is.

49:44

It's just these consistent things, and if you don't preach verse -by -verse, you're never ever going to talk about Judah and his daughter -in -law.

49:55

You would not choose to, that's for sure. I did three years in Genesis, and I got to chapter 38, and I was like...

50:03

I really got to do this. Regret the sermon series at that point. Exactly. It was like, okay,

50:11

Tamar, let's talk about this. And of course...

50:16

Was it Dinah, the sister of the brothers, and they went and just destroyed everybody?

50:21

And how did they do it? They tricked them into circumcising themselves? This is like... I mean, sometimes the stories are really wild.

50:30

And unless you're doing a series on hard sayings of the Bible... Or, I mean, you could avoid all that and just unhitch yourself from the

50:37

Old Testament, and you'll be good, I guess. See, there you go. The epitome of seeker sensitivity. Yeah, and...

50:44

And where has that led him? I know you have something to say, and I don't want to make you forget, because what you're talking about right there, for those who don't know, is

50:50

Andy Stanley, and his movement is, really has moved away from felicity to Scripture, he's moved away from the truth of the

51:00

Bible, and it's got to the point where it's almost... I mean, his last conference, he was headlining people who were promoting same -sex attraction and things like that.

51:10

I mean, what's the next step? Well, you have to get the seeker, right? And the seeker today is not the seeker of the 90s.

51:18

Certainly not the seeker of the 50s. The seeker today comes in with the baggage, and the woke thing, you were right earlier, the connection between seeker sensitivity and wokeness, because it's going to meld together.

51:30

I have some hopefulness in this conversation for a lot of seeker -sensitive churches, and it's something that I don't know how far this is going to go, but I hope it does go far.

51:42

I hope it does go the way that I could see it going for some... I don't think this will happen for all of them, but for some.

51:48

I'm seeing people say, who are involved in seeker -sensitive movements, church growth movements, that Gen Z, for example, because that's going to be the target audience for a lot of these churches,

51:59

Gen Z is not interested in performances, they're not interested in a big show, they want authenticity.

52:05

A lot of them actually are seeking some ancient practices and some real depth to it, and I'm seeing some of these seeker -sensitive churches start to run to things like catechisms and confessions of faith and all this stuff, and I'm going, maybe this will lead them to some really solid theology, right?

52:25

So maybe that's the case, but my plea would be, don't wait for the trends to take you there, because if you keep riding the trends, it won't.

52:34

I'm just hoping that as they encounter these truths, that will happen. But yeah,

52:39

I think of people like an Andy Stanley, for example, who they're just doing everything they can to reach the next demographic, the next person, the next generation of seekers.

52:52

The desire is good. And I even really believe, I've seen Andy speak a lot of times,

52:57

I've been at conferences with him, all this stuff, I really believe that his desire is to reach people.

53:03

But I think that he's had such a long and yet slow, progressive drift, that he's really drifting away from the message of the

53:12

Gospel, ultimately, and forsaking truth, and I think, I really believe, that if you're on this path long enough, somewhere along the way, there's going to be compromise.

53:23

Because you cannot, you cannot be interesting to unbelievers by having complete fidelity to the truth.

53:35

You may, listen, we all know unbelievers who, their interest is piqued by something that we're talking about at times, or some event that we may happen to be doing at a church, and all that's great and fine, and great,

53:46

I want you to come, I want you to be here, but if my whole goal is to get you in the room, then I'm somewhere along the line,

53:52

I'm going to be cowardly with the truth, I'm going to be quiet about the truth, or I'm going to compromise the truth.

53:57

And I didn't mean to have three C's, but it just worked out that way. Cowardly, compromise, what was the third one?

54:03

I don't even remember what I said. There you go, Pastor, looking for the popular alliteration.

54:11

Yes, I don't do that. Do preachers do that anymore? It's too much work. It's too much work. Every once in a while I'll do it for fun, but it's very rare.

54:18

It's very rare. It's interesting, you mentioned the, just going back to the compromise and everything, and looking at this whole subject is, okay, things were compromised, and now this new generation is saying, we don't want the compromise, we want this.

54:40

Right. And I think you're right. You've probably seen some of the stuff I've done with Redeem Zumer. That's Zumer, right?

54:47

That's Generation Z. And he has, I mean, his following, every time he posts a video, he gets hundreds, thousands and thousands of views right away, within the first hour, thousands of views.

55:01

I'm not jealous or anything. But he and I are friendly, and we're talking about doing a debate on evolution.

55:10

Which I'm excited about, because I think it's a good, important thing that needs to be discussed among people who care for each other.

55:20

I think the hardest thing is when you get two guys who don't like each other, like Bill Nye and Ken Ham.

55:26

You sure they don't like each other? I don't think there's much love there at all. But you get two guys who actually care for each other, and who differ on something so dramatic, and I do think that's a dramatic difference.

55:38

We can love each other and really have a conversation. And again,

55:44

I'm not saying I'm great. I have people I hate, too. Can you tell us who those people are?

55:51

No, I mean, there are a lot of people who hate me. I get a lot of messages, and I try not to hate people when

55:57

I say that. But when it comes to that generation, here's my only fear, and I agree with you.

56:04

I have a lot of hope that the

56:10

Gen Z in this group that doesn't want the junk. They don't want

56:15

Santa Claus singing Hugh Jackman songs.

56:20

And to be clear, I'm talking about the Christian Gen Z, not necessarily the unbelieving Gen Z. Sure, yeah, yeah. But here's my fear, and this is also my fear, and again,

56:29

I have a pretty good relationship with the CREC group, C -R -E -C. And for those who don't know who that is, that's the

56:35

Doug Wilson guys. I did all the stuff with Harbor Freight Doug Wilson. I just spoke at one of their churches last

56:41

Friday night. Oh, nice. I did a thing on a theology of comedy. They wanted me to come and talk about why humor is valuable.

56:50

So my relationship with CREC is really good. Even though I have issues with some of their theology, I have a good positive.

56:56

I'm going to have some of their leaders on in a few weeks. We're going to do a bow tie dialogue. Nice. But the reason why

57:02

I bring that up is because CREC is appealing to young men because they want a masculine church.

57:12

They don't want a church that's singing Amy Grant and Anne Murray.

57:19

They want a church that's men who are powerful and seashanty, and the doxology with no music, just praise

57:29

God from, they want that. And I'm like, yes, I'm with them. I'm singing with them.

57:35

They sang a song when I was there called Raise a Glass to the King. It was a song that somebody wrote, and it was talking about toasting the

57:42

Lord, which is an interesting concept, right? But it's called Raise a Glass to the King, boys,

57:48

Raise a Glass to the King. And it goes to this great theological refrain, and the men are all singing.

57:57

It's 80 guys on a Friday night. That's awesome. I mean, Friday is like, the pastor and I talked about,

58:02

Friday is like sacrosanct. People don't do things on Friday nights because that's family night, that's whatever. Eighty guys on a

58:08

Friday night because they want to have that. So I think that masculinity is good.

58:15

I think Gen Z, getting away from the junk, is good. But here's my only fear, and I'll say this to them, this is my only fear, anything can be a trend.

58:27

And these things are good, but will they last? Like you said, the new generation that wants the catechism.

58:35

Okay, is that a trend or is that going to last? Is that the next evolution of Seeker?

58:44

Okay, how do we get men here? Well, let's sing these songs that men like. Is that Seeker?

58:51

And I'm not saying it is. That's the question, that's where my... That's a good thought. It may be a good challenge for the pastor listening to this whose church is not

59:00

Seeker -sensitive because this is, for me, and I don't think

59:05

I'm alone in this as a pastor, it feels good when people show up to your church. It feels good when you're getting momentum in that way, like people are showing up and there's something specific that they're coming for, and you've hit that, and you're like, this can be a good thing.

59:21

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 going.

59:28

I want more people here, and the desire is good. I do want more people at my church. I want my church to grow.

59:34

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

59:40

I have to do it constantly, maybe primarily for me because I was in that for so long, and that was kind of how

59:46

I was trained in ministry in many ways, but I've got to check my heart that I'm not seeking the trend.

59:53

I'm not trying to be, I'm not turning into a seeker -sensitive pastor in church again, you know, just in a different way because a seeker -sensitive model can, you can even be seeker -sensitive in the sense that,

01:00:06

I would say, that you're pursuing Christians, right? I think, here's something I'm finding in myself.

01:00:12

A lot of people are leaving some of the larger seeker -sensitive churches because they want something more real.

01:00:17

I've had a temptation to try to play on that and to try to convince people that we're not that, right?

01:00:25

And... We're not your megachurch. Right, yeah, and it's almost like this is my marketing tool, right? And I've had to check myself and go, may it never be that I'm trying to steal sheep from anybody's church and trying to convince anybody that they should leave their church and come to ours unless they're in a truly unbiblical church.

01:00:41

That's right. But I have to check myself in that. I think that's a challenge to pastors. You may listen to this, or even church members, you may listen to this and go, that's not our church.

01:00:49

Yeah, you know, but I think we can all have that tendency sometimes to want to jump on the trend, to want to be the best church at XYZ, and we're missing the heart of what it means to care for God's sheep, truly.

01:01:02

Amen, amen. So, we're getting close to the hour mark, so I want to draw to a close, but I do have something you said a minute ago

01:01:09

I think would be a good way to bring this all together. Yep. I don't know any pastor who doesn't care if people come, right?

01:01:21

Because nobody wants to be here by themselves. Nope. You know, I've been here on Sundays where everybody was sick or whatever, and there was only a few people in the seats, and it is lonely, you know, to be here with just the precious few.

01:01:37

And so, you know, we would be dishonest to say it doesn't matter at all.

01:01:42

We want people to come and hear the gospel. We want the church to be full. But at what point do you think a church is too big?

01:01:50

And this could be a whole other podcast, but because we're talking about this idea of seeker sensitivity and unbelievers coming into the church, and let's say you did start seeing a rise in your church's attendance, and I don't know what your church currently sits, but I know, like with us, you know, about 150 is about our seating.

01:02:07

Then after that, we'd have to start figuring out something else. What do you think a church should do?

01:02:15

And again, I didn't tell you I was going to ask you this, so if you opt out, I wouldn't be afraid. No, I've been asked this question actually recently by a few people, because a few people who have joined our church recently have said something along the lines of, we came here because we wanted to find a smaller church.

01:02:30

Yes, and that's a big thing, right? People looking for a smaller church. That's a trend right now in a lot of ways, and you're seeing smaller churches grow because of that.

01:02:38

Thankfully, almost everybody that's showing up looking for a smaller church is also looking for a biblical church, and not that we're perfect, but that's what we're striving for.

01:02:48

And they've asked me this question, and this is a subjective number, by the way. It's kind of arbitrary in some ways, but it's sort of based on my experience in churches of different sizes.

01:02:58

It's based on my experience at the last church that I was at, going from 175 people, 150 people at our lowest point, to in like two years we had 700, 800 people.

01:03:09

Wow. So I've kind of seen that transition. Now, how did that happen? I can't help but to have to ask. You said it went from 100 to 700?

01:03:16

Yes, it was like 150, I think, at our lowest point. I mean, it's a long story. We had a church split, and then a new pastor came in who's a good friend of mine, just did a lot of really good things for the church, and truthfully, a lot of things that were more seeker -sensitive in nature, and I was a part of that in helping to lead that too, and just a lot of growth happened because of that.

01:03:36

But the biggest thing, I really think the biggest thing... You're talking about 400 %? I know, I know. I mean, like if... I think what he did better than almost anything else was he really built relationships with people.

01:03:47

700. And it was sincere. Yeah. But then you get to that point, and you can't keep doing that with everybody.

01:03:52

And that's part of the issue. And so I say it's an arbitrary number, but it's kind of based on that experience a little bit.

01:03:58

I think once you hit around 300 people, it's gotten too big for me personally to pastor the way that I want to pastor.

01:04:10

Now, here's the truth. A hundred people I can't have a personal relationship with as the pastor.

01:04:16

But the way we structure our church is we have other elders who are responsible for sections of our church.

01:04:23

And I think that 300 people is at least a number that I can at least know who everybody in the church is.

01:04:31

I can know their story. I can have some interactions with them as the pastor well enough that I would have confidence in being able to deliver the word to that flock on a regular basis.

01:04:42

I can't personally care for every person in that flock all the time. But it's also not too big of a number that I can't be at just about every major funeral and weddings and things like that too.

01:04:52

So sort of arbitrary, but that's kind of where I go. I think if the Lord blessed us in that way,

01:04:58

I would not try to hinder the growth, but I would be saying, how do we plant a church? And how do we send some of these people out to help plant that church in an area of town or even somewhere else entirely that needs a church, that needs a biblical church?

01:05:10

So that's kind of how I think about that question. Yeah, I think that's where we have landed as well.

01:05:19

Our intention would not be to ever build unless we were building something for a school.

01:05:25

We've talked about that, the possibility of maybe doing some type of a private school. And if we did that, we would need a different, or at least more in our way of facility.

01:05:34

But as far as the sanctuary, where it is now, because ours, you know, magic number, which is not true, but it's like the thought for us, you know, 250, so around the same as you.

01:05:46

And to say that's, you know, after that, you take 50 people, you plant another church.

01:05:52

If you got 50 faithful people that are willing to go, that's your, I mean, 50 people who are faithful could start a church for sure.

01:06:01

And so with that, and I heard something years ago, I want to hear your thought on this.

01:06:08

And it was one of these church growth gurus. And he said, the reason why most churches don't get past 80 to 100 people, and most churches don't,

01:06:18

I mean, that's the vast majority of churches are that 80 to 100 point. He said, the reason why most churches don't go past that is that's the most that any one man can minister to effectively.

01:06:30

And so the only way a church gets past that is if he has a team of people that are ministering alongside of him to get there.

01:06:37

It's almost as if there's something in Scripture about that somewhere. Exactly, yeah, yeah. I mean, I didn't need a church guru to tell me that, but yeah.

01:06:43

But yeah, that's true. But it's a good point. It's a good point. And that's true. But again, my fear with that is people are thinking,

01:06:53

I need some more people on my team because I need to grow more people. That's right. It's a whole other method.

01:06:58

I want to be faithful to the Scriptures and have a plurality of elders and deacons that are going to be ministering to the body of Christ.

01:07:06

And so again, check your motives in that. Why am I building a team? Why am I trying to get more people ministering and serving and all that?

01:07:16

Again, I'll go back to it. It's exhausting when you have to think about that. Because we did. I mean, we were told the thresholds.

01:07:22

We were told there's these barriers that's known to every church, like 200 and then 1 ,000 is a real big barrier.

01:07:29

And there's whole books and resources of like, how do I break the 200 -person barrier? How do I break the 1 ,000 -person barrier?

01:07:35

And some of it's helpful advice. I'm not here to say that everything the seeker -sensitive church does and suggests is bad.

01:07:42

We probably do some things that other seeker -sensitive churches do. But where are we getting that from?

01:07:48

Are we getting it from the Scripture, or are we getting it because we think this is going to help us get more people in the church?

01:07:54

So again, it's almost always going to go back to what's the heart in this? We all want to see more people in our church, but are we trying to be pastors, or are we trying to be event coordinators and church growth gurus?

01:08:06

That's right, that's right. And ultimately, are we ministering to the flock that God has placed among us?

01:08:13

Are we focused on the building of that flock to the detriment of the flock?

01:08:20

Are we building without the foundation for sure? How many wolves are you allowing in your church who are going to devour the sheep?

01:08:29

I have a story for everything, but every time you say something, it makes me think of a story. I remember a guy who came here, who his previous church, they had to leave.

01:08:37

They had a leader who didn't believe in the Trinity. And when he went to the pastor and said, hey, this guy doesn't believe in the

01:08:43

Trinity, yeah, but he's a good leader. Which means he's doing something to build.

01:08:50

He's doing something that's helpful, so his theology is not important. How dangerous.

01:08:56

Yeah, that's a scary place to be, for sure. Well, Kenny, thank you for coming in today. I know you made the drive over, and I don't always get to have in -person interviews.

01:09:05

It's nice to look someone in the eye and not be through the digital eye of a camera. Can I say one more thing?

01:09:10

Yeah, please. Can I say two quick things? Yes. I did not tell you I was gonna do this, but I wanted to publicly thank you for two things.

01:09:17

First, you mentioned earlier our friendship and being able to call one another.

01:09:23

The Lord has used you greatly in my life, and I've told you this to some degree, but the

01:09:29

Lord used you specifically last year in my life to be a great encouragement to myself and even my wife, you and your wife both.

01:09:38

In many ways, the Lord has used you and others just to build into myself and my life to be able to have greater longevity in ministry, greater faithfulness to Christ.

01:09:50

I appreciate that. Your friendship means a lot to me. Praise God, I'm thankful, and I'm very thankful for you and your wife and your friendship as well.

01:09:58

Yeah, and then secondly, I just appreciate being able to be on the show. You're starting to see a lot more people watch and listen to it, and you still are interested in having

01:10:07

Kenny from Mission Way show up to the show. I'm glad to have Kenny. We have such a great rapport,

01:10:13

I think, because we are good friends. Things like this, we don't have to plan it. We just have a good conversation, and I think a conversation like this is good for people to hear.

01:10:20

Just two pastors chopping it up. So that's great. Well, thank you. Thank you. Absolutely.

01:10:27

And again, I want to thank you guys for being a part of your Calvinist podcast today. I keep wanting to say conversation with a Calvinist, and it's probably going to be that way for about a year.

01:10:33

Well, I knew you when you were coffee with a Calvinist. That's right. This is the third name change, because I'm a...

01:10:39

Hey, I don't have a secret sensitive church, but I definitely have a secret sensitive podcast, trying to do what gets people to listen.

01:10:47

No, but I do want to thank you guys for being a part of the show, and I want to remind you to please, if you enjoyed the show, hit the thumbs up button.

01:10:54

If you didn't enjoy the show, hit the thumbs down button twice, as always. And if you like the program, remember, we have a ton of other stuff on the channel, so please hit the subscribe button.

01:11:04

And you may not realize this, but leaving a comment is actually a big part of what helps drive the algorithm.

01:11:09

So if you go down and tell us what you enjoyed about the show, that would be great. I want to thank you again for listening to your