Seeker church
From Neoredemptive
An approach to church planning, growth, and culture-building that focuses upon drawing and winning the unchurched using methods and styles not traditionally associated with "church".
The seeker church is one aspect of the broader church growth movement. Its most well-known contemporary champions are Rick Warren and Bill Hybels.
Contents |
Premises
Per Tood Hunter:
Gather a crowd, turn it into a core.
Per Mark Driscoll:
(Confessions of a Reformission Rev, p.18-19)
- Culture is where the church battles to regain a lost position of priviledged influence.
- The primary culture to reach was modern and is transitioning to postmodern.
- Churches exist to meet the felt needs of spiritual consumers.
- Churches grow through marketing that brings people to church events.
- Community means the church is a safe subculture that welcomes lost people into the church.
- Lost people are invited to evangelistic church programs that target seekers.
Per Bill Hybels (...):
...
Per David Wells:
...
Neoredemptive Critique
There is a church which is self-consciously "a community of seekers" - the Unitarian Universalists. We need to be mindful of the strong tendancy of a gathered community comprised largely of seekers to drift toward a similar identity, to rally around their uncertainty and curiosity instead of gathering at the feet of Jesus Christ.
... eros spirituality ...
/todo/
... The challenge is to deliberately and consistently think theologically and redemptively about the ways we co-opt patterns from our culture (whether for leadership or for faith or for spiritual formation or for the gathered church event). ... "It works" is a useful criteria, but it can never have final say.
Do not gather a crowd for the sake of having a crowd; order everything very deliberately around a confrontation with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
/todo/
Also, get a clear understanding of what "seeker" means. A person ambivalent or hostile to Jesus Christ and His Gospel is not a seeker, and if you find yourself targeting church programming toward such a person (as is frequently the case in the self-consciously "inoffensive" seeker churches), you are actually focusing your efforts upon non-seekers, certainly to the exclusion of believers and probably to the exclusion of many actual seekers.
Other Critiques
Evangelical Self-critique
... David Wells, etc...
