Polemics - Discernment - Emergent & Seeker-Sensitive Church

Last week we started into some things that are in the realm of evangelical Christianity, and yet you probably saw that the spiritual formation stuff is really not Christianity at all. It has kind of some Christian names and titles over the top of it, but it's ultimately just Eastern religion.

But it's being sold very well into Bible colleges and seminaries, even some that you would think would know better. Dallas Theological Seminary has been overtaken with it. Where my brother is a pastor, and I taught there some weeks ago, a neighboring church as a pastor went to Dallas, and they're teaching spiritual formation. you know, at that church.

And so some of the people that are seeing this isn't right are leaving. But an awful lot of people don't see the problem, and the pastor obviously doesn't see the problem. So it's spreading like crazy, but it's not Christianity. It's essentially, by bringing that in, you're losing Christianity altogether.

So now we get to the emergent church and the seeker-sensitive church. And so you have here some basic definitions. Anybody heard of the emergent church? You've heard the term, right? And Morgan, you raised your hand. It's more a terminology. It's a term that you've heard. It's usually paired with new age. Right, okay. So the emergent church is something that is a relatively recent development.

It seeks a friendly dialogue with the aspect of modern cultures known as post-modernism. And this is very much a subjective approach to the idea of truth. And so postmodernism rejects that there is objective truth. And one of their terms they'll use is deconstruction. And it's something we covered some months ago, just postmodernism in itself. So this is an attempt to address those who are of a postmodern persuasion.

It can be hard to define because they avoid organizational terms and forms and expressions. We meet in a building and we sit in pews and we have elders and deacons and all that and they avoid having anything that looks churchy in any form. And so you'll come in and they'll have a, there's a room and there's a bunch of throw pillows and a guy will sit around and just kind of talk about his, tell his story and share experiences and things of that sort. So they intentionally pursue a non-absolute approach and it's to appear and talk in anything but what looks like church in any usual sense.

So this Nuns, Duns, and Prodigal Sons is from an emergent church website. So here is their target audience. The nuns are those who have not had any church background at all. And I would say that's probably their primary group, those who are completely unchurched, no idea what church is about, and so they will come into this sort of anti-church environment. And so that's one group. The Duns are those who have walked away from conventional expressions of what looks like church.

And so they will be another group that is targeted by the Emergent Church. And then the other is the Prodigal Sons. Those who have walked out too, or were pushed out, Frequently because of lifestyle and things of that sort. They feel judged, etc. So these are the groups that they target. And the primary one that they are going to look at is the nuns. Those who have no religious background at all of any kind.

There are some graphics here at the bottom of page one that also convey, and this is from the same website, I'm a Christian and how you love matters more than who you love. I'm a Christian and your humanity matters more than my theology. My faith isn't about saving people from hell. Science and faith aren't mutually exclusive.

You have something to teach me. I don't have a corner on truth. We all make mistakes. No one is a mistake. I could be wrong. What do you think so far? Here's another one. I'm a Christian and I love gay people. I'm a Christian and I care about the environment. I'm a Christian and I believe in evolution. I'm a Christian and I don't want to save your soul. I'm a Christian. I have the same questions and doubts as you. And I'm a Christian. I love Muslims, Jews, atheists, and agnostics. And I'm not sure either. I screw up a lot.

You matter more than what you believe. So what do you think so far? It all sounds so familiar. Social media. It's like your everyday. Yes, there's no absolutes, there's no way to really know anything. So let's talk about, does this have anything to do with Christ died on the cross for you? It really doesn't present that, does it? Can I know anything with certainty? Is that what this says? No. So anyway, it's very much reversed from what we would say is Christianity. Yes? It's kind of a disassociated humanism. Ah, okay, that's a good way to put it. A disassociated humanism.

Top of page two, the emergent church sometimes referring to themselves as simply emergent, or as they'll just say, we're emergent. One of the, I'm just trying to think, some of the emergent churches that are about, it's hard to even see that they're a church, because they'll just refer to themselves as emergent, not emergent church, emergent. And when you hear emergent, what does that tell you? What does that make you think of?

Emergency. Pardon? Emergency? Okay. Up and coming. Yeah, up and coming. Right? Right? So, yeah, it has that idea. Now there's another that we've coupled together here. It's different, but as we'll look at the bottom of the page here, there's also a reason why we put them together.

A seeker-sensitive church. It's focused on creating a seeker-friendly gathering place for the unchurched. This is the nuns of the emergent church. So it's creating an environment in which those who have no church background will feel comfortable and welcome. Typically using facilities and staff in what would conventionally be called a church. but the gathering, say it might be on Sunday morning, the gathering at the church building is therefore primarily directed towards what would appeal to those who are unchurched and the needs of the actual church body are not expected to be met at such gatherings.

So they would be meeting like right now, only it wouldn't be focused upon building up the body of Christ, it would be focused instead on something that appeals to those who don't go to church. and they will do whatever will make the unchurched feel more comfortable. The participant or attendee is presented with modern music, speech in brief segments. One instance, they'd have some modern music, light show, and that sort of thing. Speech no more than about three minutes at a time. A little bit of music, about three minutes of speech, then flip back to some more music, and then three minutes of speech, maybe a little bit of dance coming up, but several times speaking for three minutes at a time.

So various forms of marketing and promotional activities are often tied with this approach to conduct church services. such as various forms of advertising, prize drawings, contemporary music, etc. Some of the lead churches are, one, we have Willow Creek Community Church, and that would be one, and they actually have officially abandoned the seeker-sensitive approach.

However, there's still an awful lot that's similar to what it was before. Both the Emerging Church and Seeker-Sensitive Church may include spiritual formation, as we addressed last Sunday. In its activities, offerings, and approaches, just as the Emerging Church is not monolithic, neither is the Seeker-Sensitive Church monolithic and uniform. Because the Seeker-Sensitive Church appeals to people on the basis of contemporary forms of music, dance, light shows, etc., there is a tendency to major in various forms of entertainment and to be light on content. and that's intentional.

Really good entertainment, great bands, and some of the largest of these churches have tens of thousands of people attending every weekend. They'll have numerous services on Saturday and Sunday, spread over different times, and have tens of thousands, thirty, forty thousand people attending over a typical weekend. They have a large building with a number of different services and also a lot of things going on. A lot of the larger ones will have restaurants. They're at the church building and so you get out and you eat meals there and that sort of thing. It's a way of shifting people around but keeping them there. Sort of restaurants and bookstores and media stores and those kinds of things. And care centers.

So what do they base their theology on? Obviously they don't care if they're like other emergent churches, so everyone is probably different, right? Yeah, there's some difference, but the bottom line is theological light. It's theological light. I think it's really just a big social clause.

People always want to belong to something. They want to belong to a community of some sort. And this is providing that for them. And they don't really care what they all believe in. It's an opportunity to get together with other people that you can see. regularly, and the reason for them getting together is immaterial. It's just a place where they can go, and it's a social function. Yes, it's a social function, it's an experience, and so the church puts a lot into their technology and focus on what's up front. There's restaurants, there's activities for the kids, it's just a big social club, and a lot of times those are in places that are giant cities. And so it's a way to subset that and get their own little community within that city because that's what people are wanting.

Right, and so the messages are very superficial. It's not the important part of the deal. The messages are superficial and it's more how do you feel about the pastor than what the pastor conveys, right? So the individuals who go here don't see that it's consumerism at its finest.

Oh, some do. But it's a big Christian mall. There's bookstores. There is something to sell. And so the individuals don't see that they're being that they've just been pulled into another marketing scheme? Yeah, well, that's a good lead-in to the next paragraph.

Some seeker-sensitive churches have invited people to speak or be interviewed who are high-profile, but not necessarily Christian. Presidents Carter, Clinton, and Bush, for example, have spoken at Willow Creek, which is one of the larger initially seeker-sensitive wording. Colin Powell, U2's Bono, and other high-profile media people are invited to come in and speak there or be interviewed. Other approaches have included involvement with non-Christian or political groups, such as a reform synagogue, conciliatory conversations with Muslims, and the inauguration of President Obama by Rick Warren.

By the way, he's a great speaker. Very, very funny, Nancy and I, when I heard him speak. But just very shallow in what he conveys. Very shallow. And he's one who will deliberately only speak a few minutes at a time and kind of intersperse between musical and other kinds of entertainment.

So, Willow Creek declared in 2008 that they're changing their model away from the original seeker-sensitive approach, and so now they're focused more on the church instead of unbelievers, but still keep things light, and really good entertainment, and sort of the Christian mall approach.

Like I say, both Willow Creek and Saddleback, which is Rick Warren's church, tens of thousands of people over a weekend. This church, this figure is dated, but about 36,000 a few years ago at Saddleback Church. That was the number of attendees going in and out over a weekend. So huge churches.

The seeker-friendly model was first presented by management guru Peter Drucker. Remember when I was going through business school, that was a big name. Peter Drucker's idea is fine for business, but his idea was to go, where's your market? Find out from the market what they want.

And so he actually mentored, these guys I've mentioned up here before, Heibels and Rick Warren. So here is this secular marketing guru, so to speak. So Rick Warren and Bill Heibels sat underneath this guy and said, OK, let the market out there determine what you do. and go out there and do surveys and find out what do people want to have at their church and what kind of experience do they want and what kind of things do you need to offer. And ask them what to do, people in the area, and pay for these surveys and then you go and define the church according to what people want. That's the idea. So, Peter Drucker was like say the mentor for both of these guys and his thoughts on things were what fed the approach.

And then, like Saddleback, has a church consultancy. where they come in and they start telling you what to do. And they say, put the elders and everybody aside. We're going to come in and take over and start telling you what to do. So that's where it comes. They don't see the Bible as the ultimate authority on how a church should be run or what it should be about.

So here's what's in common between the seeker-sensitive approach and the approach of the emergent church. These two movements and the externals are not alike. They don't look alike at all. The emergent church is going to look very unchurchy. The church that is secret sensitive is going to look very much like entertainment and look like a Christian mall, essentially. And so you're going to have very different appearances.

What they have in common is this. You're asking the world what the church should be like. So that's the thing that they have in common. You're asking the world what the church should be like. I have this question, did our relationship with the world change when we believed that Christ died for our sins? Yes. We died to three things, the sin nature, the law, and the world. So you're asking the group that Christ died to separate us from, How should we run church? What should church look like? What should church do? What should church do for you? So even though they're very different, they ask a similar question. They let the world define things. Let's take a look at page three, which has a title at the top.

What is the purpose of the local church? On the left column, it's a soul winning station. And so actually a lot of the comments on the left column can apply to particularly a lot of Baptist churches where they go and you've got to get the gospel every week, you know, even if you know everybody in the room is saved.

And so you'll have that model, but ultimately the emergent church and even though they'll deny it, the emergent church and the seeker-sensitive church are focused on those who are unchurched and not saved. They're centered on that. So on the left-hand column, the idea is similar. You're focused on the unsaved, and that's your focus all the time, evangelism. On the right-hand column is what the church ought to be about biblically, and that's why we have scripture passages for each of these things.

So the local church is primarily a soul-building station. Is that happening at the emergent church or at the seeker-sensitive church? No, it isn't. It's not a soul-building place, it is instead a place to reach out to those who are in church. The local church is primarily where people get taught. Jesus said, as you're going, teaching and baptizing. So you've got the baptism because they're They believe and are saved, and then they are taught as a means of soul building. The local churches to preach the word, which would include the gospel, but which should not neglect all scripture.

So what happens at a lot of churches, I'd say this is kind of the Baptist model, is I'm not sure what the sermon is going to be on, but I know how it's going to end. You sit there and every Sunday it's boring. And you have these people that come up and get saved just seven times a year. And then the local churches here are primarily for indoctrination. Feed them. Give them content.

What does the Bible say? Bring the gospel to the unsaved by well-taught believers taking the gospel to the unsaved, rather than relying upon the end of the pastor's message every Sunday being what does it, or rather than relying on turning the church into an instrument to reach the unsaved and unchurched. And then regular services of the local church have a ministry primarily for saints.

One of the things, 1 Corinthians 14.24 says, if an unbeliever should come among you, right? And that if is may or may not. So it's critical to look at, alright, can unbelievers come among us here?

Yes. Right? And they do. As a matter of fact, our church is small enough, I can pretty much, okay, that's somebody new. And the Lord has made it such that sometimes I've been able to talk to people and they've come to the Lord as a result of my recognizing that person. You know, they're new and they're not saved. Right?

But not hitting everybody over the head with the gospel at the end of every message or throughout the message. The primary goal of the local church is that the saved people might live by Christ's life. Salvation is only the beginning, as essential as it is. Once you become a believer, what's the next necessary thing? Growth, right?

So here's Peter, 1 Peter 2.2, long for the pure milk of the word that by it you may 2 Peter 3.18, next letter, he ends the letter, but grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. So growth is what we are aiming for.

Next, the elders should preach the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation. The whole thing. A next elder should give the people information on how to live the life of Christ and a Christian. How does life get lived? And of course one of the things we look at is here at Holly Hills, life gets lived entirely by grace. And it's very common for churches not to teach that. So then, saints do the work of the ministry.

This is Ephesians 4.12. When you look at it, I'm not in the ministry. I'm not in the ministry, you are. That's a key distinction here. All are ministers, essentially. Then every believer is in full-time Christian service. Then every believer is an evangelist. There are those who have the gift of evangelism. And by the way, I don't think I have the gift of evangelism, but there have been times when the Lord has, you know, seemed fit to have me involved with someone's coming to the Lord. And some of those are really neat stories. Can't take time for those now. So at any rate, let's take a look here at the top of page four. Okay, so what's the problem? Let's take a look at that.

Evangelizing the unsaved is a good thing, right? Is it a good thing? Yeah. So God has given us examples of those in the era of the apostles who went out of their way to spread the gospel, right? So with these two items as background, why should there be any question about how either of these two movements carry out the form and function of the church? What's the issue here? Yeah.

It's what they do afterwards. What they do afterwards? What do you mean by that? Well, once they gather the people, get the people coming, it's what they teach after that. Okay. Like the one earlier that said that salvation is the end goal. Right. Well, I mean, that's not... And now what? Right? Yeah. So what can I do? I just don't have anything more to do. I'm saved. Yeah, now you're safe. That's it. So is that what you do with the people that come afterwards? Yeah.

Do people have anything to grow on? Crystal? This is so anecdotal, but many, many of my relatives in Texas are from the Southern Baptist community, so I have many cousins who were raised in this environment. Not one of my male cousins who is my age. goes to church. And so they're my second cousins who are there, you know, more interesting in age. None of them go to church, but they can all tell you about Scott things.

Like, you know, and it's very, it's, it's, there's a dichotomy. You get around the old folk, the old guard. You know the language. You know what to say. You get away from them when you get in your truck, you get in your, you know, you have your beer, you have your shoe, you have your, you have your, and that's how they live, in the Baptist world. So, that's just, I mean that's anecdotal, but that's the environment that you just describe. Yes, and that's a part of the problem whether you're looking at the Baptist model or every Sunday at Salvation. It's a part of the problem with the emergent church, it's a part of the problem with the seeker-sensitive church, is that everything is targeted towards get these people saved, and the emergent church is sort of like turning everything backwards so there's nothing to react to. So it's a subjective sharing rather than an objective, you need to be saved. But in the end, there's nothing to grow on. There's nothing to go further with. There's nothing really offered that will offer something lifelong for somebody to grow on.

Yeah. But isn't it, they're saying here that each individual in the church itself will cause the salvation to happen, whereas in the true church, God is the one that causes it to happen. Ultimately, yes. So if you don't take the I out of the world and put it into Him, then you really aren't changing anything.

Like she said, it's just a social club, it's a gathering, and you're getting a lot of fun information. It's like reading a good book. It's got a plot, and it's fun to read, and it's exciting, and all this other stuff. But it doesn't take the I out of the world. You still have the self, you still have the humanism. Any other motivational speaker that you would go to hear?

Let's get famous high profile people in here, big names, to attract people to come in and listen. It doesn't matter if they don't have anything to share spiritually. I think it's a really good point they make, that the high profile person should be Christ. And I think that's where many of these ideas and these organizations miss the boat is that they do not see that the most attractive part of even coming into a building is the Lord Jesus Christ himself. They just totally missed that. One of the things that happens at larger churches is you tend to have a focus upon a particular guy. That's the guy.

And so at a lot of these I can say the name of someone and you may not even know what the church name is. If I say the name John MacArthur for example, and by the way he's not a secret sensitive guy, but if I say the name John MacArthur a lot of you will recognize that name and then can you tell me what his church name is? and many cannot. Same thing with, you know, if I didn't say Saddleback Church, you might not know what the church name was for Rick Warren. So a lot of times you'll have one high-profile guy and that's the guy that gets everybody's attention, everything's focused on him.

Interesting thing is once you get outside of the apostles and you start talking about elders, there's a lot of talk about elders in Acts and on into the letters to the churches and people. Lots of talk about elders, and it's elders, plural, at the church. It's consistently that way. But what's interesting is outside of Jerusalem, where we know that James was one of the elders, we don't know the name of an elder for sure at any of the other churches throughout the entire Roman Empire.

No high-profile guys, unlike what happens in our modern situation where we'll have these high-profile Christians, and people will listen to them, and there's this focus on these guys who are not flawless. There's focus on these guys instead of putting the focus on Christ. And then comes the accusation, oh, hypocrites. Why? Because you put the focus on a man.

That's the first thing that Paul goes after with the Corinthian church. After he just gets through saying, Hi, I'm Paul, and here's my introductory thing, bang, he goes right after these high profile guys who are trying to get names built up after them. So what does the modern church do?

Exactly that. Exactly that. Alright, so we have these... Yeah? The image that I can't shake with this is when we're born again, then we start with milk, right? And after some period of time with milk, we move on to meat. We're meat eaters. These churches that focus solely on salvation and then just repeating it. Just picture this factory where babies are being born and take the baby out, put it down on the ground, move on to the next one, and you've got all these dying babies everywhere. Yeah, just think about this, just using the analogy that you brought up. Alright, so I've got this place where babies get born.

And we got all kinds of babies. And then what do we do for the babies? Nothing. We don't do anything. Realizing that what should be happening is, OK, I get this wonderful new baby. And we rejoice and say, that's great. Hoorah. But then what needs to happen with that baby? The baby needs to be fed and everything else that goes along with it. And ultimately, so that baby grows up enough to turn around to be involved in others' growth.

But we don't do that in these models of churches. And feeding a baby is because you love that baby. And I know I got a bit all over me, which is inhuman, because I loved the baby that God gave me. And I fed that baby. And so what message does it send if we don't take care of that baby in such a way that it grows up? What message does that send?

We don't love you, but we'll give you an experience. We don't love you, but we'll come along and share some subjective thoughts and inclinations and my personal story. We don't love you, but we want you to have a lot of siblings. We'll treat you the same way. Yeah, more siblings so that we can treat you the same way.

Ultimately this growing is not something that you can outdo. If you come back and it's get saved every week, no matter how you approach it, whether it's the Baptist model, the emergent model, or the seeker-sensitive model, if it's get saved every week, or just milk for people to grow on, then at some point you know, the baby languishes, the baby starts doing not so well. Right? Yeah. Especially if milk doesn't have vitamins. Yeah. Yeah, you need more. Yeah. Morgan?

So what do you say when the speaker-friendly churches, they're like, they do this, you know, they welcome the people, and then the people get connected, but then they'll be like, well, I get my more intimate fellowship or intimate connection with the small groups. in the church. And so that's where I get fed, not necessarily the service itself. Where does that fall? Yeah, and I've seen that model where they kind of deal with people in bulk and then they'll have more of a small group where they have intimacy. A few different things. One is not everybody goes to the small group, right?

Whereas what does Colossians 1.28 say? Every. Every. Every. Three times. Each and every one. Three times it says that. So the small group thing is typically it's for certain people. Have you ever run across people who just like to stay anonymous?

And that's one thing, I like to come here to this church and experience what they have to serve, but I never really want to get connected. various environments that this would describe, none of these things are beyond what God can work in. God pulls people out of all of these situations for His purposes. There's none of these situations that are beyond His control and Him working in your life when you're in those situations.

Because there are people in those giant churches who are growing. Beyond all reasonable, somehow, they are growing. Perhaps even dragging other people along with them. So even though we look at that and think, you know, that's just such a really crummy situation, God does amazing things in some of those situations with people. That's all I want to say. Yeah, well, and I think that's one thing. God can use situations, you look at it and you say, boy, that isn't what I would do.

I know a gal that was saved in the Mormon church. Because her grandmother said, look, the bottom line is Jesus. He died for your sins, was buried and rose again. That's it. You know, her Mormon grandmother said that. So she got saved in that. Now, she came eventually out of this Mormon church, but... That's a lot of people that are going to eventually leave those in the fire. Yes, yeah. I've known people who've been saved, you know, while going to the Catholic Church, you know.

So the Lord can do all sorts of things. You know, a friend of mine from years ago He was on a Yosemite trail crew where they clean up the trails after the winter. And he was sitting down getting ready to drink beer and smoke grass like the rest of the guys were. And all of a sudden the Lord just kind of grabbed him and led him off through a trail into a little clearing where there was a gospel tract, poorly written I might say, that was on the ground. He picked it up and believed.

The Lord can do all sorts of things. So yeah, that's I think true. It's a question of what ought we very intentionally to do in the church. What's God's model? And certainly it can take different forms, but God's given us guidance as to what the church ought to be about. Next year, about this time, I will have been a Christian for 60 years.

I'm not done growing. I'm not done. God's not through with me yet. I'm still learning things. And it's because there is no growth and then plateau. in the biblical model. Still, I look at God's Word. For example, I look at Ephesians. I saw something I didn't see before. There are always things to grow in for the believer.

However, if you're stuck in baby mode, as wonderful as it is to have babies, if you're stuck in baby mode, that's not a good thing. You know, if after 10 years passes, we see this kid and he's not grown or developed or anything, that's concerning, right? We want to see that growth in physical ways and social ways and things of that sort, in mental development. We want to see that in a kid. the same thing ought to be happening spiritually, that people are growing and continuing to grow.

And unlike the physical life where you get to about your twenties and most people are about done with growth, spiritually speaking that can continue on until the very last days. My grandfather used to put it this way, he said, for the unbeliever, life is like a funnel that gets smaller and smaller towards the end. For the believer, it goes the other way. It gets bigger as you grow in Christ.

I think that's a neat analogy. As you look at it, the spiritual formation aspect of this, because there's nothing that's seen as wrong with this, with spiritual formation. So a lot of times spiritual formation is integrated into these other forms. And spiritual formation, as we saw last week, is not Christian at all.

And so that further complicates things, because you say, well, instead of giving you what you need to grow on, I'm going to give you a substitute Christianity. And it's really Buddhism and Hinduism in a Christian form, with Christian words over the top. So that becomes a further problem.

You not only give them milk, but you say, this is real spirituality, only it isn't Christian. You give them an experience with spiritual formation, but not Christ. Not Christ. One of the things that we focus on here is content, not just so you have your head full of things and know a lot of stuff, but we focus on content in order to see Christ and to have relationship and fellowship with Him.

And we do that very deliberately. We do that very deliberately. Other thoughts, questions, comments? Okay, let's pray. Lord, we do thank you for your word. We thank you for what you have laid out. And Lord, we do ask that we be indeed growing in you, growing in the knowledge of you, and not just knowledge as in facts and data, but knowledge as in personally knowing you. And we know that that, in fact, is going to be our focus for all eternity. And we just thank you for your love and care for us. We just pray in Jesus' name. Amen.