- SEEKER
'sik.ər noun. One who’s attempting to find religion: God, truth, peace, or self-justification. - SEEKER-SENSITIVE
'sik.ər 'sɛn.sə.dɪv adjective. Caring about seekers’ feelings, hangups, offenses, needs, or lack of familiarity; adapting one’s message in consideration. - 2. Compromising one’s message to make it more appealing.
- [Seeker-sensitivity
'sik.ər sɛn.sə'dɪv.ə.di noun.]
People are more apt to listen to you if you’re like them.
Yeah, I know there are exceptions to this rule. When I’ve been on
One of the things American missionaries discovered in the 20th century (and it’s a little dumbfounding it took us so long to discover it, but it’s probably
Paul of Tarsus understood this, and when he went round the Roman Empire founding churches, he recognized the importance of adjusting himself to whatever culture he worked in. Still obeying God, of course. Yet he lived within the cultural expectations of the people he preached to. He didn’t want his obvious differences to get in the way of
1 Corinthians 9.19-23 KWL - 19 Having freedom in everything, I enslave myself. Because I could get many!
- 20 I become, to the Judeans, like a Judean. Because I could get Judeans!
- I become, to Law-followers, like a Law-follower. Because I could get Law-followers!
- 21 I become, to Law-breakers, like a Law-breaker—
- Not breaking God’s Law, but following Christ’s Law. Because I could get Law-breakers!
- 22 I become, to the weak, weak. Because I could get the weak!
- I become, to whomever, whatever. Because however I could save some of them, I will.
- 23 I’ll do anything for the gospel, so I can be a part of it.
One of the other things American missionaries discovered in the 20th century… is the United States is also a foreign culture. No, this isn’t still because racism: If you grew up in popular Christian culture, you have a mindset which
Ever took your pagan friends to church… only for that to be the week your pastor unexpectedly went off on a rant about the very issues which alienate your pagan friends? Might be politics, or social issues, or even football teams. Whatever it takes for pagans to have the knee-jerk response, “I’m never coming back here.”
Man alive, have I been there. Took months to coax ’em into the building; took all of three minutes to convince ’em hell sounds more fun.
So this is what seeker-sensitivity is about: Trying not to push people’s buttons. Trying not to alienate potential Christians. Trying to share the gospel, not our agendas. Trying to
Thing is, look up “seeker-sensitive” on the internet, and just about all you’ll find are people who are totally against the practice. Why?
Bluntly, and a little crudely, it’s
Seeker-insensitivity.
Whether they got their attitude from my way God’s way or the highway,” and any lessening of its “righteousness” is compromise. The freedom in everything which Paul wrote about?
Thanks to them, too many Christians are afraid to adapt the gospel message to new environments. They’re too afraid we might change it, and then it’d no longer be the gospel,
I understand the concern. But for the most part it’s totally invalid.
It’s because a lot of Christians don’t recognize there’s a vast difference between popular Christian culture,
I’ve heard a number of ’em claim not only should we not make cultural adaptations to reach pagans: We should double down. We should get even more traditional and hardcore and old-timey. ’Cause pagans won’t respect a watered-down “gospel”: They want all the differences and otherworldiness and old-fashioned trappings. They’re rejecting their culture to embrace Jesus; they don’t want him new and modern and relevant, but ancient and medieval and alien. And if they want to abandon today’s secular culture, why on earth are we trying to make Christianity speak to it?
One Catholic pundit in particular claims this is why more people are turning Catholic: They want these old traditions. Thing is, when you look at the stats, you find he doesn’t really understand what’s going on. Yes, people are turning Catholic because they yearn for tradition. But the people turning Catholic are Protestants turning Catholic. Not pagans. We’re talking about Christians who want to try a new religious tradition, not people with no religious tradition who want to adopt one.
And if you know any Catholic missionaries, you’ll know they’re totally seeker-sensitive. They’re trying to make Catholic tradition relevant to today’s pagans, as well as curious Protestants. But they’re not actually trying to seek and save the found. Neither should we be.
Drop the Christianese.
So if we’re gonna share Jesus with pagans, the first thing we gotta do is eliminate all the vocabulary words they won’t understand. Stop trying to sound like a Christian, and start trying to sound like them.
No, you don’t have to start using
Yeah, Christianists act like this is heresy. I’ve watched ’em lose their tiny minds when I use common English instead of the words redemption or atonement or transubstantiation. Usually ’cause once they learn what these words actually mean, it turns out they don’t really believe in them! Turns out they’re the heretics. Whoops.
Other times, I kinda see where they’re coming from. One particular megachurch tries to avoid the words cross and sin and surrender and repent in their literature and website. Wait, aren’t these concepts central to salvation? Humans are sinners; Jesus defeated sin? Sin darned well better be on a real Christian’s website. Otherwise there’s no gospel in that church.
But sin is a Christianese word. Seriously. Pagans don’t use the word! Not that they don’t totally know what wrongdoing is; not that they don’t know God forbids certain things. They certainly forbid certain things. But ask your average pagan, and they’ll think sin means “evil,” not “violating God’s command.” Your average evangelist doesn’t bother to define it either; they just assume everyone already knows what sin is. So when they fling the word around, pagans misinterpret it: To them, “All have sinned” means “All are evil,” and they can’t believe that. And that’s not what we’re trying to teach anyway. (Well, I’m not. I don’t know about
You see the problem. So the responsible thing to do, believe it or not, is to not use the Christianese word sin. Instead:
- God told humanity what he expects of us.
- People either don’t know his expectations—or in extreme cases deliberately violate them, just to show him their contempt.
- God offers to forgive us everything, and help us reform ourselves.
- God wants to create a kingdom of such followers, and live in love and harmony with us forever.
Didn’t use sin in any of that gospel presentation. Didn’t need to. And yet some Christians will insist I just taught heresy, because I didn’t use their favorite word—or because I defined it correctly, and they’re convinced it doesn’t really mean that..
Stop using proof texts.
And if they can’t handle dropping Christianese, they especially get outraged when I tell ’em to drop
Most evangelists, when they preach Jesus, quote the scriptures like crazy. As we should. But for some reason they tack on the bible reference to every single quote.
“For all have sinned—
Romans 3.23 —and the wages of sin is death—Romans 6.23 —but Christ has taken our sins and nailed them to the cross—Colossians 2.14 —and so we’ve died to sin—Romans 6.10 .”
Yeah, that’s some good proof-texting. Now, are any of the pagans you’re preaching at, gonna get out their bibles and look up any of those references? Are they gonna remember those references? Do they even have a bible?
See, pagans don’t care about the bible. Haven’t learned to care about it. To them, it’s a book. “The Good Book,” but still a book. They might own a copy, but they don’t know where it is, any more than I know where my copy of The Book of Mormon is. They already assume all the stuff we’re preaching comes out of the bible—even though sometimes it doesn’t. I once heard some pagan on a radio show express great surprise that the apostles aren’t called “St. Paul,” “St. John,” or “St. James” in the bible. Clearly he never read it, and that’s to be expected.
But for the most part, pagans don’t want to hear us quote a book. Even The Good Book. They wanna know what we’ve experienced. What’s Jesus done for you lately? And what might he do for me?
See, to us Christians, the scriptures might be living and active,
Again, critics are horrified by this idea. Proclaiming the gospel without bible references? It can’t be done. It shouldn’t be done. It can’t be anything but heresy.
Yet evangelism without the bible references is precisely what we see in the bible. Chapter and verse numbers weren’t invented yet, so when they quoted bible, the most they could tell you was “In the prophets” or “According to Isaiah” or “It is written”—and a lot of times they didn’t bother and just started quoting. For that matter, in Acts, the apostles had to share Jesus without a New Testament—they were still writing it!—and couldn’t quote the gospels, nor their fellow apostles’ letters, nor Jesus’s revelation to John.
Even then, quoting the Old Testament only worked on fellow Jews. Gentiles weren’t familiar with it, didn’t respect it (like our present day), and Paul had to resort to quoting Greek poets.
Yes, I also quote bible. Lots of bible. Directly and indirectly. I’d better be consistent with the scriptures. But I don’t throw in the addresses. To a pagan, a scripture address means, “I’m quoting an old book; I have no personal experience with this,” and so forth. And they’re not gonna look it up.
To Christianists, the bible is part of the gospel. The very first thing I should be teaching these pagans is to respect the bible as God’s word. ’Cause it’s our foundation for everything we believe about Jesus. If I don’t make that crystal clear to them, it’s like I’ve denied the scriptures.
Okay, first of all our foundation for what we believe about Jesus, is Jesus.
So our priority isn’t bible, but Jesus. We need pagans to meet Jesus, get to know Jesus, get to follow Jesus—and then they’ll wanna crack those bibles and learn as much as they can from them. Too many people already love their bibles but don’t love Jesus. Turns ’em rotten. Let’s not make more of them.
Don’t drop Jesus!
Thus far I’ve discussed false compromise. Now let’s deal with the real thing.
Every so often I’ll meet spineless Christians who can’t share Jesus without caving in. Sometimes they know this, which is why they never bother to share Jesus. Other times they plow right ahead… but preach a gospel with all the uncomfortable bits edited out. “Come to Jesus and he’ll solve all your problems,” is usually the form this takes. They never warn people that Christianity presents its own set of problems, like fighting our selfishness, struggling with righteousness, dealing with doubt, pushback from antichrists, and evading the devil’s booby-traps. Christianity isn’t easy; it’s hard. But it’s true.
Those who preach Christianity is so easy: Too often they’re avoiding the hard parts themselves. They don’t fight their selfishness, nor struggle with righteousness. They practice
Of course, presented with one of the not-so-easy concepts, some of these folks fold like a defective lawn chair. “You don’t really believe God throws people into hell, do you?” makes ’em sputter, “Uh… yes? But even so, he’s really really nice.” And they try to make hell sound not all that nasty; that it’ll be cold and dark instead of hot and stinky; that very, very few people will go there; that people in hell will be burnt up instead of suffering forever (which, to be fair, is debatable); or that hell is temporary, and after a bit God’ll let everybody into heaven. However they weasel away from the idea, it’s because the peer pressure got to them, and they don’t want God to appear unfriendly, unfair, intolerant, unpopular, or punitive.
Most of the time it’s the individual Christian who lacks a spine. But I’ve run into churches who lack one too: They don’t like the idea of hell. (Hey, I don’t blame ’em; anyone who loves the idea of hell is seriously twisted.) But while there’s nothing wrong with de-emphasizing it, ’cause it’s not a central idea of the gospel, they don’t just de-emphasize it. They deny it. They claim it’s not there, or not so bad. They also wind up ignoring Jesus’s every warning to stay away from it.
There are Christians who are more liberal than the scriptures, and Christians who are more conservative. I’ve met all sorts. They teach the beliefs they like, instead of the gospel of Christ Jesus.
Technically none of this is seeker-sensitivity. True seeker-sensitivity is about being kind to the seeker: If a truth makes ’em uncomfortable, tell it as kindly as we can. But tell it. Tactfully. Carefully. Lovingly. Graciously.
Fake seeker-sensitivity isn’t about kindness. It’s about avoiding our own discomfort. It’s about sucking up to the seeker, telling ’em whatever they want to hear, doing whatever it takes to turn ’em to Jesus. Of course, if we’ve not presented him accurately, are they really turning to Jesus?
The Jesus of spineless Christians is a spineless Jesus. One who’d never have defeated sin and death; he’d have worshiped the devil
So as you can tell, I advocate for true seeker-sensitivity. We need to present Jesus like Paul did: Whatever facilitates sharing the true Jesus with others, let’s do. Whatever makes people balk, or run away, let’s handle carefully. And everything else—the cultural differences, our individual practices, our church’s favorite emphases, the popular buzzwords, the junk—let’s set aside. That’s not the gospel. First things first.
