Why The ‘Seeker Sensitive’ Message FAILS Completely!

Fight For Truth

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Hey guys, Colin here, and welcome back to the channel where the Bible and critical thinking meet to give you real

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Christian commentary about the things that matter. Thanks so much for watching, let's get into the video. So the seeker -sensitive, or seeker -driven, or attractional

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Church model is basically one in which the Church is meant to be as attractive to unbelievers as possible.

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In the most basic sense, it is founded on the idea that we can make pagans who despise

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God in their hearts interested in God, or sensitive to the things of God, by doing things in Church in a particularly interesting, fun, or entertaining way.

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The unbelievers, they want hope, and freedom, and support, and love, and community. They don't usually want any talk of judgment for sin, or eternal damnation, or death, or expectation of holy living in a certain way for God's glory.

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So of course the seeker -sensitive Church model wants to solve this problem, and they simply respond to this by giving them all of the things on the first list, community, and love, and hope, and they virtually ignore the things on the second list, death, eternal damnation, and sin.

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One of the seeker -sensitive pastors you might find if you go down this rabbit hole is Rich Wilkerson Jr.,

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the pastor of VU Church. He's a celebrity pastor in Miami who definitely uses this attractional

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Church model. He's also the pastor who presided over the marriage of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.

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Here's a video of Rich preaching in his seeker -driven Church. Watch this. The Greek word for victory is the word

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Nike. You ought to know that on every soul of every person stitched on their soul is that swoosh that is saying you were born to be victorious, but you've got to realize you can't find victory in your own strength.

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There is only one. His name is Jesus Christ, and he is the one who paid the price and redeemed us.

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He redeemed us. Now I know if you're anything like me, that was pretty hard to watch.

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It grieves me that this kind of preaching is what most people are getting weekly in many churches, because it's really not true, and it's certainly not theologically deep in any way.

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He says that the Greek word for victory is Nike, and on the soul of every person is the

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Nike swoosh. What? I mean, it's so odd, it's so strange, that it's hard to even respond to in biblical terms.

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The Nike swoosh is the symbol of a brand that makes athletic clothing. It has nothing to do with Christ, and nothing to do with his people.

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It's a brand that Christians are more than free to wear in their Christian liberty, but it's certainly not stitched onto their soul in any way, whatever that means.

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It's not even true in a metaphorical sense, because we know that there is no victory on our soul apart from Christ, or before we come to Christ.

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So why is he bringing up Nike, then, if it has virtually no bearing on the situation, and if it's inaccurate?

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I think the reason comes back to one of the main principles of the seeker -driven movement. And that principle is cultural relevance.

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The unwavering desire to consistently use as many pop culture references as possible, to look like, talk like, dress like, and act like the culture in every way, so that we might win people to our cause, so that people will look at our churches and look at our pastors and say,

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I like that guy, because he's just like me. Cultural relevance is at the very center of the seeker -sensitive church model.

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No doubt about that. John 15, 9 says, quote, If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own.

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But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

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End quote. We are not like the culture, and the secular culture, the secular world, with its godless desires will not be like us.

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We are salt and light in a tasteless and dark world. Our message can, and often will, rub people the wrong way.

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Using cultural relevance as a method of evangelism is actually not a goal for Christians at all, let alone a central goal.

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Should we try and spread the gospel? Absolutely. Should we love people and get involved in their lives?

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Yes. Should we actively try to remove any unnecessary cultural stumbling blocks for other people in our evangelism, as Paul often did?

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Yes, we should. Are we free to pursue music and clothing and art forms that may be popular in the culture, so long as these things are not pursued to a sinful degree?

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Yes. But does all of that mean that Christians should be bringing the Nike swoosh into our sermons and passionately trying to act like the world and follow its cultural fads so that we can be relevant and attractive to them?

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No. There is simply no indication of that in scripture. The world killed

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Jesus and virtually all of his disciples. I'm guessing that wasn't because they wanted to be like the culture, or even be a spin -off of the culture.

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Rather, it was because they wanted to radically change the culture for God's glory. People don't tend to like that as much.

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So if your church is giving Nike swoosh type sermons, I humbly want to say my encouragement to you would be to find a different church.

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The next thing Rich says in the video is that all of us were born for victory. We have victory stamped on us, as he says, in our soul.

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But we can't get this victory alone. We can only actualize it through Christ.

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This sounds biblical to some people when they first hear it, and unfortunately that's because it sounds like the way that most churches today preach.

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But it's not biblical at all. This is not the way any biblical message is supposed to sound. The Bible does not tell us that we are inherently awesome and victorious in our souls, but Jesus is necessary for us to access that victory.

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That would clearly be worship of ourselves, not worship of Christ. Christ is victorious over death and sin, but we are not.

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We are born defeated, not victorious, in our souls. And this tactic is very common in seeker -driven churches as well.

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There's this idea that Christ is not really changing you, per se, as much as he's helping you become who you always truly knew you could be inside.

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You're already great, but Christ is necessary to bring out all of your greatness. This is absolutely antithetical to the

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Gospel and to Scripture. Romans 3 .23 says, quote, All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

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We are born sinful. We are depraved as natural people, separated from God. 1

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Corinthians 2 .14 says, quote, The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him.

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And he is not able to understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. End quote. In our natural state, we do not please

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God. We don't even want to. We're sinful. We can't even understand the things of God, because our hearts are set against his holy and blameless character and law.

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This is the reason the Gospel message is needed, and this is the precondition on which the

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Gospel should be presented. Yes, the solution is Christ, but the problem is sin.

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The problem is not that you're so great and awesome and so victorious, but you can't fully realize it.

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No, the issue is that you are fully and completely dead in your sin and separated from God.

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Ephesians 2 .1 says, quote, And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.

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End quote. You are dead in sin. You're following the devil if you're not saved. You're gratifying your own flesh.

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That's all you're doing. There is nothing great or victorious about you apart from Christ at all.

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Therefore you must believe in Jesus to save you from your sins and to remove your guilt before a just and holy

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God. This, my friends, is a completely different message than the one Rich Wilkerson is preaching.

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It's similar in that they both say you need Jesus, but they are fundamentally different when you ask the question, what do you need

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Jesus for? This illustrates another major principle of the attractional church model, and that principle is to offer as much positive affirmation as you possibly can.

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Don't emphasize being dead in your sins. That doesn't sound nice. Don't emphasize your rebellion against a holy

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God. That's not how we want to portray things. Don't emphasize that the wages of sin are death, according to Romans 6 .23.

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No, put the emphasis on victory and freedom and the Nike swoosh being stitched on everyone's soul.

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That's much more positive and much more winsome and effective. So just to recap, in that short video

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I showed you, we have at least two problems. One, we see that there is a tremendous desire to be culturally relevant, and this comes at the cost of sound teaching.

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Two, there is an intentional effort to be positive and affirming at the cost of sound teaching, rather than simply standing on the truth of God's word and following it wherever it leads.

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The Bible says that your biggest problem is that you are rebelling against God in your sin and you're dead in it.

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Rich Wilkerson says that your biggest problem is that you're super victorious on the inside and awesome somewhere deep down.

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You just can't fully bring it into your life without Christ. The Bible's solution to the problem is that you must believe on Christ and accept his sacrifice and his reign.

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Rich Wilkerson's solution to the problem he made up is that you need Jesus to help you to make you even more victorious than you already really are deep down in your soul.

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You were born that way. Again, the seeker -driven church model is completely foreign to the biblical message.

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We're not talking about the same thing. We're using a lot of the same words, but our meaning is completely different.

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And I think this video demonstrates it perfectly. Watch this again. It is saying you were born to be victorious, but you've got to realize you can't find victory in your own strength.

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There is only one. His name is Jesus Christ, and he is the one who paid the price and redeemed us.

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He redeemed us. I want you to notice something on watching this a second time, because I think he negates his own perspective here.

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Rich says that Jesus, quote, paid the price, that he, quote, redeemed us. This is biblical language, and therefore the

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Bible gets to define it, right? So I would humbly ask Rich, you say that Jesus paid the price, but he paid the price for what, exactly?

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You say that Christ redeemed us, but he redeemed us from what, exactly? If the answer is that he did those things for our sin, then

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I think we need to ask the question of why sin doesn't seem to be a part of Rich's preaching or that of his contemporaries in the seeker -sensitive movement.

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Why is that? If sin is the greatest problem, why don't you ever talk about it? Romans 6 .23 says, quote,

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For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our

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Lord. End quote. Yes, Christ redeemed us. Yes, he paid the price, but he redeemed us from our deadness in sin.

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He paid the price for our trespasses and iniquities. You cannot have one without the other.

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And unfortunately, many seeker -driven church leaders like Rich Wilkerson are using those biblical phrases that we all have in common, and that makes people think that they're genuinely good church leaders.

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The problem is that they're not using those phrases with biblical doctrine in mind and with a biblical system to put them in.

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This is why they have a man -centered approach and a man -centered lens through which they see everything, and they're simply adding a

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Christian veneer to it. Regardless of the language he uses, look at the ideas with me. He uses the words, paid the price, redeemed us, soul, victory.

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I mean, he even says the words, there is only one, and his name is Jesus Christ. End quote. That's the exclusivity of Jesus Christ even being brought up here.

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That's how Christian this looks on the outside. But the message is antithetical to the scriptures.

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The message is fundamentally that you were born to be victorious. You already have victory stitched onto your soul.

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And in order to fully bring about this victory in your life, you need Christ to do it for you.

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Contrast this with the biblical framework that there is nothing worthy or holy or blameless or victorious about you.

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You don't have any level of victory in your soul at all. You're dead in your sins, and it doesn't get any less victorious than being dead.

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Your only way to be made alive and to glorify God is to believe the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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So then, the reason that the attractional church model does so much damage is not because it's totally and completely false, but rather because it sounds mostly true, but is false in some of the most important areas imaginable, as we've seen.

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So keep this model away from your church, away from your family, away from your friends and your communities.

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Lovingly warn people about this stuff and about teachers like this. This is dangerous. And remember that without the grace of Christ, we would all be following after falsehood of various kinds.

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Without the grace of Jesus Christ, we would all be struggling for cultural relevance all the time.

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I am no better than Rich Wilkerson Jr. at all. I'm a wretched sinner who needs daily grace and the daily ministry of the

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Spirit in my life. So please, let's pray that he would stop this and turn to the truth of God's Word.

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Thank you so much for watching. If you liked that video, please like, comment, share, subscribe, and hit the notification bell so that you never miss another one.

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And until next time, fight for truth, never surrender, and keep your eyes open. Thank you and God bless.