[Cal]

I guess the highest compliment I can pay John on chapter 14 is that its relevance and value are not limited to those associated with the LCs.

In fact, I sent the excerpt below to all my pastors and some other church leaders. I've already received positive feedback. (We count ourselves as a seeker-sensitive church. Although I must say we've avoided most, though not all, of the errors John sheds light on.)

Halfway through the twentieth century, seekers began complaining that in the hands of the religious faithful, the truth had become like beef jerky. It was beef, certainly enough, but religious traditionalists had cooked it to the point of being hard, inaccessible, and all but indigestible to the common man. The response from contemporary church growth gurus was a pendulum swing to the opposite pole, with too much attention paid to felt needs and relevance. These heralds of the new approach served up “how-to” seminars, sold experiences, promised riches and blessings of various kinds, and utilized the scriptures to teach what has been called deistic therapy (the use of theology for the primary goal of bolstering self-image). Still others saw the pulpit as a means of advancing social agendas and politics. The theology employed fell below being seeker-sensitive and became noticeably sinner-sensitive, avoiding themes that would convict listeners of righteousness and judgment.

These alternate recipes captured attendants and gathered them into mushrooming mega-churches by the thousands. However, their eventual long-term effects have been called onto the carpet. Statistical analyses have shown that disciples (serious, spiritual, and service-oriented Christians) were not being produced.

Fairly speaking, the ideals of the seeker sensitive approach were landmark discoveries. The people who perfected them to a high science had grown tired of the church being a country club for the righteous. Their course corrections made the Christian gathering a less threatening place for the lost. Yet, a consumer-oriented mindset slowly invaded this approach. Congregations found themselves pandering to the appetites of the very people they hoped to save. As a result, too many cues were taken from the ranks of the non-committed to answer questions like “What do you guys want the church to be?” or “What would you like us to preach?”

The inevitable reaction was on the way. A new generation of ministers in the nineties began to perceive this downward slide, and responded by throttling back on seeker sensitive attitudes. They realized that in some cases, the church had surrendered important scriptural ground.

But rather than dismiss seeker sensitivity altogether, church planters developed toward a logical next phase: contextualization. That meant presenting the Word of God in a context and setting recognizable to the prevailing culture without pulling any punches in the message itself. This trend to date has yielded an explosion of domestic church planting activity. Most of it has been effective in cultural settings as diverse as hipster, suburban, inner city, and rural contexts. Blessing always seems to rest upon the simple opening of the Bible, even when it includes all of the politically incorrect and cringe-worthy parts.

Plenty of new high profile ministries capture this fire. The Gospel Coalition, Acts 29, and Sovereign Grace, are a few that have had a tremendous influence among Christians, as well as new networks that spring into existence practically every month. These brim with youth who love to exegete the Word in the midst of missional life.