It’s hard to be seeker-sensitive when you work for Jesus
An article by William H. Willimon (PDF) on the danger of focusing on felt needs:
We live in a consumer-driven, avaricious society where everything is turned into a commodity, even the gospel, and life is said to be fulfilled only through our choices, our ability to consumer cars and clothes and, even Christ. In such a climate, we must be careful about turning Sunday worship into just another opportunity to say, “Give me some of that.”
…Jesus is not simply about meeting my felt needs; he is also about rearranging my needs, not only about fulfilling my desires; he is also about transforming my desires. Jesus is wonderfully nonchalant about so many of my heart-felt desires. It’s amazing how many of my needs (material affluence, security, sexual fulfillment, happiness, etc.) appear not in the least to interest Jesus…
I recall that great preacher, William Sloane Coffin, telling us Yale students, “I don’t see how you can attract folk to Jesus by appealing to their basic selfishness - ‘Jesus can fix everything that’s wrong with you’ - and end up offering anything like the self-less, self-denying faith of Jesus.”
When, in Seeker Services, do we pull out the cross? When, as we’re touting all the benefits of Jesus, do we also say to them, “By the way, Jesus said that anyone who bought into his message would also suffer and die.”
I believe that today’s “Seekers” are seeking many things, but I am unsure that many of them are seeking a cruciform savior or a cruciform life. That’s fine since the Bible hardly ever, almost never depicts anybody seeking Jesus. Rather, the story is about God’s relentless seeking of us in Christ.
June 12th, 2007 at 8:25 am
Great Post!
June 18th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Yes, this is a significant problem for the Seeker-sensitive methdology. How can you preach the full council and be seeker sensitive? How can you address the sin problem and be seeker-sensitive?
Ultimately how can you be prophetic and be seeker sensitive at the same time. Someone said once…”the truth will cut when it is preached, be sure that it is the truth that is cutting and not you.”
So yes we can be sensitive, but we can’t chagne the truth which will cut….