Peter SmytheA Different Kind of Word Preacher

In the last two decades or so, the Body of Christ has seen the rise of what’s been called the “seeker-sensitive” movement. From news reports, Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago has been the primary mover-and-shaker in the movement. While “seeker-sensitive” cannot be rigidly defined, it is characterized by its emphasis on church growth with demographic studies, marketing research, and sermons consistent with “felt” needs. Many of the larger churches employing the move have instituted various kinds of programs linked to “need” or “interest” demographics, such as single parent groups, divorced groups, hunting groups, women’s groups, young women’s groups, business and professional groups, etc. (you get the picture).

Recently, Willow Creek released its findings of a multi-year study on the effectiveness of its programs and its “seeker-sensitive” thrust of ministry. Commenting on the study’s conclusion, Bill Hybels, the pastor of Willow Creek, said this:

We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become ‘self feeders.’ We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between services, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own. (See Bob Burney, Shocking “Confession” from Willow Creek Community Church)

While many critics of the “seeker-sensitive” movement have reveled in Hybels’s comment, we believe that their high-fives might be more of the kettles calling the pot black. Hybel’s inculcation of a passive Christian faith really isn’t too different from most of the rest of the Christian spectrum. What is so different from a mega-church employing a hundred or more passive programs for their attendees and a small church where the pastor preaches 100% of the time and there is never a moment given for testimonies or any “psalms, hymns, or spiritual songs?” In our mind, nothing much if anything at all.

Do not, then, cast away your freedom of speech, - The which hath a great recompense. For of endurance ye have need, In order that the will of God having done, Ye may bear away the promise. (Hebrews 10.35, 36 Rotherham)

One of the strengths of the early Pentecostal movement was not just the fact that people were baptized in the Holy Ghost, but its “testimony meetin’s.” Ordinary Christians, you know, those without formal seminary degrees and long “C.V.s,” would be called upon to publicly declare what things the Lord had done for them, whether it be a recent healing or just the fact that they had been saved for so many years. The testimonies brought a vibrancy not only to those who testified, but to everyone in the church.

In a first for our own local church, at a recent service the pastor called a man up to the platform and explained that the man wanted to make a confession. When the man took the mike (you could tell that he was not a public speaker in any form or fashion), he haltingly explained that he had been born-again seven months earlier, but had never made a public confession about it to anyone. He said that he (and the Lord) knew that he needed to and so he asked the pastor if he could do so after a sermon. That man’s testimony not only blessed the congregation (and the man), but it thoroughly munched the pastor’s razzmatazz sermon.

The seeker-sensitive movement isn’t the only camp in the Body of Christ that has failed to appreciate the importance of do-it-yourself “spiritual practices.” In recent years, Full Gospel churches have paid homage to the American-style seeker-sensitive church growth scheme. They would do well to revisit their spiritual roots, ditch the crass professionalism, and re-establish the old Pentecostal tradition of public testimonies (among other things).