Seeker Sensitive (Part 1)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome back to No Compromise Radio, a ministry.

I'm your host, Mike Abendroth, and today we're going to talk about an interesting subject. I hope they're all interesting.

Life is interesting to me. The Bible is interesting to me. God by definition is interesting to me.

I'd like to talk about the topic, seeker -sensitive churches. Now before I give you any definition of what a seeker -sensitive church is, or what it might be, or maybe you're in one, maybe you run one, maybe you're the pastor of one, let me give you a couple opening salvos so you can think about the lengths to which people would go to to get people to come visit their churches on a

Sunday. Tampa Tribune, Tampa, Florida, January 21, 2004, had an article called

Church Offers Lure of Almighty Dollar. The article says, churches are always asking for money, but we are going to turn it around, said

Reverend Tim Dyson. First of all, I'd like to scratch the reverend off of that. We're not to revere anyone, only

God, let alone a person who does this. Of Church Alive in Tampa, Florida, the church's plans on giving away checks and gift certificates to newcomers, the most of a check $2 ,004.

Friday evening's event will include clowns, a light show, and music from a rock musician,

Clint Brown. Dyson says, quote, it takes creativity to reach out to new members. Yeah, and it takes a disregard for God's word, it takes money, and it takes some nice clowns.

But I'm digressing. This from a minister who roars into services, I'm quoting from the article now, who roars into services on a

Harley Davidson motorcycle. He has delivered sermons from a boat hauled into the sanctuary, and has set up a boxing ring to fight demons of drugs and divorce.

Demons of drugs and divorce? I believe in demons, but I've never met a demon of drugs, or demon of caffeine maybe, but demon of divorce?

People will do anything to get folks into the church, and they'll do things the wrong way.

As you know here at No Compromise Radio, what we do and how we do it are both important.

There's a way you can make the cross void, according to 1 Corinthians 1, verse 17. To talk about the cross, but talk about it in such a way that would make it void and render it useless.

And this is certainly a way to do it. This man's no reverend, and this is no church, social club maybe, 501C, maybe.

It's not a church. How about Wall Street Journal, March 10, 2004. This brings it closer to home, if home is

New England here. I think we reach down into Hartford. I think we go over to Springfield. Maybe close to Boston someplace.

Who knows where the station ends up going. But Wall Street Journal says, for the first time in 10 years,

Mary Wilkinson went to church one Sunday in January. She sat in the back pew at St. Francis Episcopal, it says church, but it's a gathering, in Stamford, Connecticut, flipping through a prayer book and listening intently to the priest's sermon.

What drew Ms. Wilkinson back into the fold was a new monthly program the church introduced, and I've talked about this kind of thing before, although not this particular instance.

Holy Communion for Pets. So it's not communion, and it's certainly not holy.

As part of the service, the 59 -year -old retired portfolio manager, see she's got clout, carried her 17 -year -old tiger cat to the altar, waited in line behind three panting dogs to receive the host, and had a special benediction performed for her cat named

Purrbox Jr. If your blood pressure isn't seething, rising,

I don't know what would cause that to go up any higher than this kind of tripe.

I like that other parishioners are animal people, Mrs. Wilkinson says, Ms. Wilkinson.

With pews hard to fill, a small number of otherwise traditional clergy are welcoming animals into the flock.

Some are creating pet -friendly worship services, said the Wall Street Journal, while others have started making house calls for sick animals.

Some are starting to accompany pet owners to the vet when they euthanize a beloved pet, like I don't have enough to do now as a pastor.

If you'd like to put your pet down, I'll go along with you. I guess I could do that, but I think you could probably go do that on your own.

It's time to man up a little bit and just be the dad and kiss your grieving kids and tell them that you're very thankful that God gave you an animal, and now the animal has to die.

And that's kind of the way it would go. I'd cry if I had to put my dog down, but I'm not going to call John MacArthur and ask him if he could hold my hand out in the lobby.

Well, let's keep going here in this article. Some are starting, okay, I just said that, occasionally clergy are even officiating at pet funerals and group

Bark Mitzvahs. What is that? Bark Mitzvahs?

Well, I kind of got an interesting name, but there's another church, All Saints Episcopal Church in Fort Lauderdale.

They actually doubled attendance Sunday evenings when they start inviting pets. Well, do we give the congregation what they want?

If it's working, does that mean God is blessing things? Frank Baker in the article in Wall Street Journal said, they felt that they would be welcome because we have had a blessing of the animals.

That still happens here with Roman Catholic churches, there's all kinds of animal blessings. If you want to get an animal and it's going to have surgery and you want to pray for the animal,

I don't have any problem with that. I do have problems with Sunday worship service, and I have problems with the motivation.

How do we get people into the church? These typically are dead churches. Long gone was the gospel that Jesus Christ saves sinners and sin is an offense towards a holy

God, and there's only one way to be right with God, and that is based on the person and work of Christ Jesus, sealed by his resurrection, confirmed by his great bodily resurrection.

So when the churches give that up, who's going to go? And so nobody's going to go except the old timers, and you've got to get some people back and so you think, you know what,

I'll torque my plan towards what people want.

And so we don't do that at all. So I've got a problem with both what they do and how they do it. Well, I'm deviating quite a bit from the seeker -sensitive preaching and seeker -sensitive churches, so I should probably say what it is.

Clay Miller says, The idea is that the church should be focused on the unbeliever who is seeking, quote -unquote, rather than on the believer.

Unbelievers should feel comfortable in the seeker services. I think that's a pretty good definition for my friend

Clay Miller. You have seeker -friendly churches and seeker -friendly pastors and seeker -friendly laypeople, and they don't really want to change the what, the gospel, although that is affected.

They're trying to change the how. How do we do ministry? And very often, this is old hat now, but people still do it, come casually dressed.

We have contemporary music. It's not the boring church that your grandma used to go to. It's kind of sold that way.

You know, you want to be cool, come and follow Jesus as we follow Him coolly.

We've got all kinds of drama, and we've got Braveheart videos playing, and Gladiator, and we've got needs here.

You've got needs in the community? Well, we can meet those. We've taken polls. We've taken questionnaires and what you want in church.

We give. I'm always frightened if I look at a church on a website and see, oh, come casually dressed.

Well, I don't think you have to say that to people. If people come casually dressed, they come casually dressed.

I hope immature believers come, and I don't care how they're dressed. So for me to say, oh, come casually dressed, why do

I have to say anything about how you dress? I guess if you're in Alaska, come with your parka.

I don't know how that works. We don't want to say to ourselves, well, who cares what an unbeliever thinks?

Let's be unkind. Let's be showing no consideration to them.

We don't want to be polite at all. We put them in the back someplace. As MacArthur says, the answer, of course, is not an unfriendly church, but a vibrant, loving, honest, committed, worshiping fellowship of believers who minister to one another like the church in Acts chapter 4, but who eschew sin, keep one another accountable, and boldly proclaim the full truth of Scripture.

People who have no love for the things of God may not find such a place very user -friendly. But, MacArthur says,

God's blessings will be on the fellowship of true believers, because that is what He ordained the church to be like.

And He will add to the church as He promised, ashamed of the gospel, page 66.

When you want growth, when you hanker after growth, you will do anything to get it.

Of course, do we want new people to be saved, people to be saved? Of course we want that. But when you look at seeker -sensitive church services, it all goes back to the wrong theology.

It drives back to not really what they do, but what they believe, because those two are connected.

Show me what someone does, and I'll tell you what they believe. Your theology affects your methodology, and your methodology reveals your theology.

So the first thing that seeker -sensitive churches do is they focus on the wrong audience.

Instead of focusing on the Lord of the church, the Savior of the church, the purchaser of the church, the one who laid down His life for the church, instead of obeying

Him, the focus is turned toward people. The focus is turned toward, does it work?

Will it work? How do we get numbers? How do we draw a crowd?

And so you have people like Rick Warren, who will say in the purpose -driven church, never criticize any method that God is blessing.

So if you get a lot of people, that means God's blessing it, and so then now you're above criticism. So if you're

Saddleback, and things are going gangbusters with money and campuses and people, God is really blessing.

Well, I have a question for Rick Warren. What about Jesus? John 6, verse 66.

As a result of this, many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Jesus anymore.

So let's use the same philosophy that Rick Warren uses in purpose -driven church. Since nobody seemed to be following Jesus, the hordes were not following, many disciples withdrew.

Well, I guess Jesus' methods and maybe His motives weren't right. That is completely ludicrous.

I'd like to ask this question. Who defines God's blessing? Man, with numbers, assets, and buildings, and cash?

Or does God define that? I have a question for you. I have a lot of questions, I guess. Was Jeremiah successful?

Was Isaiah successful? Are some of the persecuted churches today in Iran successful?

The Seeker -Friendly Movement stresses the how and not the what, and they want these things to reveal themselves in numbers.

Rick Warren said, It is my deep conviction that anybody can be one to Christ if you discover the key to his or her heart.

The most likely place to start is with the person's felt needs. I couldn't think of anything more wrong than that.

We have an audience of one, Quorum Deo, the Latin, before God, in the face of God, and The ministry that you're in today, if you're in a church, should be theocentric, not anthropocentric.

No. God is the only seeker. God is the only one that we should please.

We should be well -pleasing to him, and if we're not well -pleasing to him, does it matter how big your church is numerically?

If you're not pleasing the Lord Jesus Christ and his word, does it matter how many campuses you have?

You say, well, you just got a tiny little church out in the middle of nowhere, and therefore you're dogging everybody else.

Well, the first part might be true, but I love it when I see a large church built upon the foundation of Christ Jesus and his word.

So I used to be part of a church that would have 10 ,000 people come on a Sunday, but it wasn't because of John MacArthur's manipulation, it's because God blesses faithful preaching.

God is the only seeker. There is no one who seeks for God, Romans 3 .11. So you say, well,

I've got a wrong view of man, and man's really a seeker, and then I'm going to have my ministry revolving around that.

We want to avoid that. This is not the right way to go about it. So if you look at John 4 even, but an hour is coming,

Jesus says, and now is, when the true worshiper shall worship the Father in spirit and truth. For such people the

Father seeks to be his worshippers. So there is one seeker, and his name is

God. I don't care if you have any more contemporary style or liturgy, but I do care if you have a contemporary style or liturgy that says, to get people here, we need to be contemporary.

No, please the Lord, and then if people show up, they do. If they don't, they don't.

You're to be a steward. You're to be faithful. Well, let's win them by rock music, and then we'll slip in the gospel later.

First of all, you're not being very honest, and second of all, do you think these kind of shallow people that would show up for that are going to keep staying when you switch to hymns?

No, you're going to be forever stuck with giving them this same watered -down gruel that you gave them last time.

I've actually said gruel twice today. This is Mike Ebendroth, No Compromise Radio Ministry. You can email me at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

We got rid of our t -shirts so fast I've got to order some new ones. But what

I'd like to do today is continue to talk about seeker -sensitive churches. It was a fad, kind of the emergent church came along, but didn't really do much damage to the seeker -sensitive movement overall because there are still people that say,

I'm going to get this church to grow one way or another. And you have these

CEO kind of administrator types who don't really preach in season and out of season, who are actually ashamed of the gospel because their methods show that they are, and you have a disaster is what you have.

I'm not saying everybody in that church is unsaved, I'm saying the focus for a local church needs to be, how do we please the

Lord Jesus who bought the church with his own blood? We ought not to be ashamed of the gospel in our local church services, we ought to proclaim it every single week.

For it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, to the

Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written.

But the righteous man shall live by faith. We want to please the

Lord, and what pleases the Lord is the exaltation of his Son, the risen

Savior who spilled his blood as a substitutionary atonement for all those who would believe. 1995, television interview with Bill Hybels, who was really one of the first seeker -sensitive kind of guys at Willow Creek in Chicago.

Peter Jennings on TV asked him, you don't think it was very important to have one cross?

You know, you don't even have a cross in your church, what's up with that? Hybels said, we're very serious about what

Jesus did on the cross, but to capture the essence of Christianity in a single symbol is a little dangerous, we feel.

Well, you may feel that. The feminists feel that's wrong too, some kind of gross, horrific punishment, and we don't want to capture the cross and Christianity in a cross too, but that's what

God says. I've determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, even

Him crucified. The word of the cross is to those who are perishing, what?

1 Corinthians 1 .18, foolishness. So wrap it up whatever way you'd like to wrap it up, and at the end of the day, it is foolishness.

But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

Mike Abendroth here, No Compromise Radio. I have a little pause there for a minute because I've got these quotes from people and I just think

I just don't know what they're thinking, they're too smart for this. They know better.

So if you know better and you talk this way anyway, I've even got a bigger problem. Rick Warren, quote, worship is a powerful witness to unbelievers if God's presence is felt and if the message is understandable.

What does that mean? I've never felt God's presence in my life. I felt a lot of things, but I've never felt

God's presence as a believer, as an unbeliever. How does an unbeliever feel the presence of God?

Would that be bass guitar and a rock song? Warren goes on to say, more people are won to Christ by feeling

God's presence than by all our apologetic arguments combined. Now that is a flat out lie.

If he means one to this fake Jesus that's preached at Saddleback, he just might be right.

Few people, the quote goes on to say, if any, are converted to Christ on purely intellectual grounds.

See the duck and jive there? It is the sense of God's presence that melts the heart and explodes mental barriers.

Page 241 to 242. Oh, now I get it. Now I get the mental barrier melting thing.

They didn't teach me that in seminary. All that Greek that I learned in Hebrew, systematic theology, historical theology, pastoral theology, bibliology, pneumatology.

I've forgotten melt -away -ology. It should melt them away. We've got to melt it away.

Oh, please. Romans 10 .17, so faith comes from melting away and melting away by feeling

God's presence. No, Romans 10 .17 is, so faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of Christ.

Intellectually, yes, emotionally, yes, volitionally, yes.

That is absolutely true. That is true to the core. We preach the word and God saves.

So we preach, so they believe, 1 Corinthians. So when people come along and they say, you know, let's focus on the people and how to get a big church, you can get a big church.

I think as Alistair Beggess said, any fool can get a big church. The question is, can you build a church using

God's word and God's method with God at the center? Church, in one sense, is a picture of what's going on in heaven, and that is the worship and exaltation of Christ Jesus.

You say, well, that's kind of boring. Well, I'd agree with Martin Luther who would say it is a singular subject,

Christ Jesus and Him crucified. It can be monotonous to the immature or the unbeliever, but for the believer to reflect again on Christ's death and how

He paid for our sins, how He in love laid down His life for us,

He laid down His life and He was killed, and He suffered the wrath of God in our place, and He forgave us, and through Christ's work we are justified and reconciled and redeemed, that should not be a boring topic.

If that topic is boring to you, oh, here's another sermon on the cross, then you're the boring one.

And by the way, I'm not talking about it's another, you know, King James only fighting fundamentalist church where every sermon is a watered -down gospel presentation.

That's all you get over and over and over and over and over. I'm not talking about that. But as you see the apostles, as you see the gospels, as you see the

Old Testament even, you see Christ being preached. And Paul said, we preach

Christ crucified. We don't care what people think because we preach for God, to juice a stumbling block into Gentiles' foolishness.

Some people in the congregation might say, I can't believe the pastor said that today when I've invited my friends, my unbelieving friends, and he went off on some kind of tirade against, you know, the enemies of the cross.

Well, if the cross is preached properly, it's going to offend the unbeliever.

And it will offend him to harden him, or it will offend him to begin to soften him as God convicts and God begins to do the work of converting the soul as God is drawing, according to John chapter 6.

And I believe that we preach for God. We preach Christ for God because the foolishness of God is wiser than men.

And the weakness of God is stronger than men. I would tell you that I believe

Rick Warren and Bill Hybels are men of conviction.

They're just convicted about the wrong things. They're smart. They're brilliant. They're wonderful leaders.

But I'll go with the foolishness of God any day when it comes to building His own church.

Who says, I'm going to build the church a different way. God says, preach for God, and the world is not going to come to know

God through its own wisdom. So God was well pleased with the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.

Not some feelings of melting away. I don't think I can ever eat those candies away, the candies anymore, those kind of melt away candies.

Ay yi yi yi yi. Same guy said, the problem is the longer you are a believer, the less you think like an unbeliever.

Hallelujah! Your interests and values change. Because I've been a Christian for most of my life, I think like a

Christian. I think that would be a good thing. I don't normally think like an unbeliever. Worse than that,

I tend to think like a pastor, and that's even further removed from an unbeliever's mindset. I must intentionally change mental gears when seeking to relate to non -Christians.

Purpose Driven Church, page 189. That's in a worship service he's talking about. No, I intentionally say to myself,

I want to be a man pleaser in my heart. That's a wrong thing to do, and I need to make sure

I please the Lord in this service. If no one else is happy with the service but the Lord Jesus Christ is exalted, and the

Spirit of God is driving everyone's attention to Christ and His Word, and the redemption that's found in Christ alone, and God's plan of redemption, then the

Father is pleased as Christ is exalted. It's not, well, I better, what will an unbeliever think today?

No, I want an unbeliever to repent. That's 1 Corinthians 14, to fall on his face, surely

God's in this place. We didn't get very far today, Seeker Sensitive Churches. My name's Mike Abendroth.

Why don't you ask your pastor this week to preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and that would be a very pleasing thing.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible -teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

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