Anyone wanna discuss this? It’s a good point, and a vital point concerning the “seeker sensitive” trend, and how it is contributing to the DUMBING DOWN of Christianity, and making people Scripturally illiterate, but it is lacking.
Surely, if unbelievers stumbled into your Assembly you would want to preach the Gospel to them? You could spend most of the time building up the sheep, and then preach the Gospel to the goats, yes?
Ian Vincent 
May 26, 2012 at 12:34 pm
Hi Ian, how are you! The seeker sensitive approach is to church the un-churched. Not reach the lost. That is the terminology they use. I know I was there and heard it. The pastor wasn’t there for the people either. When a crisis came up in my life, the pastor just shrugged his shoulders and said “I don’t know anything about those things”. There was no response of prayer and wanting to comfort. So the main focus is institutionalizing rather than evangelizing. Programs rather than following Christ. The people in that assembly weren’t taught How Holy God is, but about relationships and other fluff subjects with a veneer of Christ dying for our sins. When I knew God didn’t want me there anymore and had decided to leave according to Revelation 18:4, the pastor was angry with me. They thought I was leaving God when the opposite was true. Yes those places are full of goats ready for the slaughter. I pray that God can truly reach some of them to bring them out. I have prayed many times over the years for that pastor. Today, he is a tired angry man. My wife ran into him a couple of weeks ago. There was still no love of Christ in his heart. No joy in the Lord. A sad thing indeed.
May 26, 2012 at 1:29 pm
According to what you’re saying, bro, it’s worse than i had realized.
But i still think that churches are not solely for the benefit of believers, to feed the sheep, but that unbelievers also could find there way there and hear the gospel.
The way JM is talking, church is just for the sake of believers.
But if all prophesy, and there come in one that believes not, or one unlearned, he is convicted of all, he is judged of all: And thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth.
(1Cor 14:24-25)
May 27, 2012 at 12:36 pm
I left that church in 2001. If it was that bad then, can you imagine the state we are getting into now? I do agree we should welcome in unbelievers so they can hear the Truth. For the Body should be the visible representation of Christ. But if Truth, Christ’s commandments and the Christ given organizational structure has been abandoned by the churches, then, it seems, there is nothing but the road to Hell for the unbeliever, except that they be led of the Spirit. When I answered the call of the Spirit I wasn’t in a church setting, and didn’t go to a church for 5 years after. Which happened to be this seeker sensitive church. But I count it as part of my spiritual education. Something I had to go through to see Truth from lie.
May 28, 2012 at 1:06 pm
Keep praying for the faithful pastors that preach the Word. I know this comment may seem off base but we should remember that these pastors are human and two, there is something WRONG in the pulpit. I agree- the church is for both the believers and unbelievers.
May 29, 2012 at 2:34 am
Yes, pray for any “pastors” as the LORD leads. It’s not a matter of personal offense if we are to separate:
1Samuel 15:35 And Samuel came no more to see Saul until the day of his death: nevertheless Samuel mourned for Saul: and the LORD regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel.
There is a separation ordained by God. Yet even still, our heart is still to be open to any such, and not count them as enemies, necessarily.
This verse is interesting:
Then came the word of the LORD unto Samuel, saying, It grieves me that I have set up Saul to be king: for he has turned back from following me, and has not performed my commandments. And it grieved Samuel; and he cried unto the LORD all night.
(1Samuel 15:10-11)
The LORD was grieved with Saul and then Samuel also was grieved with Saul and he cried out to the LORD all night.
May 30, 2012 at 2:38 am
Amen Ian, to add another part of my life to this scripture lived out, I kept in touch with this pastor I spoke of by e-mail for some years after leaving by sending scripture and other written material to show him the light I had seen. On one occasion he wanted to meet with me, but not for the sake of friendship and looking at the issue honestly. I told him specifically I would love to meet with him, but not as enemies. He never wrote back to me. My heart occasionally saddens for this man. He was the one who baptized me in water.
May 30, 2012 at 2:45 am
We can learn thru such encounters and experiences not to fall into the same trap ourselves, eh brother, knowing that we all have a flesh which needs to be denied.
The religious system is simply the manifest expression of the same flesh which we all carry around, but should be kept crucified. It is the NATURAL way we would all go if our self life was not broken, by the grace of God.
The Christian who’s life is not broken will naturally follow the system, for it exists to feed that unbroken, uncrucified flesh, and be a support system for mans pride.
So, as for this brother, who thought of himself as your pastor, but not necessarily as your brother, he will never be able to fellowship with you and really help you until he relates to you as an equal brother, and not from a position of a career choice – a job, or, of him being “in the ministry” and you are simply his project…… Anything which does not reflect the REALITY of the Kingdom, of what it means for us all to be IN CHRIST, as equals, as members of His body, with Him as our living head, will not be edifying, will not help.
May 30, 2012 at 8:10 am
The thought, what i was trying to say, gelled in me much later in the day: What i meant is that this brother, who was your pastor, would only have friendship with you on his terms, and as soon as you, apparently, didn’t meet his terms, he terminated the friendship. It’s like you are expected to play a certain role, as a “lay” member who is “under” the pastor, and providing you know the rules of that role play then they will be friendly to you, as one of “their sheep”.
May 30, 2012 at 7:21 pm
Amen Ian, I think you hit the nail on the head. It’s about power and rulership instead of submitting one to another as scripture teaches us. We can certainly show gratitude and honor to our elders who show us light we had not before recognized, but an elder’s response should always be to point to Christ as is our responsibility when we share the Light that is in us. God Bless brother! These experiences certainly have taught me alot and I love to share them so others can learn as well. Sadly, when confronted with scriptures about us all being equal, the scriptures are quickly rejected with mis-applied interpretations such as the elders ruling, etc. May eyes be opened to see and ears opened to hear.
May 31, 2012 at 12:36 am
Yes, misapplied interpretations of texts.
Let’s look at this one:
Remember them who have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their manner of life. Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever. Be not carried about with various and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with foods, which have not profited them that have been observing them.
(Hebrews 13:7-9)
…whose faith follow, considering the end of their manner of life.
With the case you mentioned of a brother, who claimed to be your “pastor”, making the condition of the relationship that you submit to him as your leader, otherwise he won’t even be your friend, this betrays that such a person does not meet the Biblical qualifications of a leader, to begin with.
…whose faith follow, considering the end of their manner of life.
You would not want to become like that guy. If you “follow his faith”, his example, it would be a disaster.
And this is the systemic malaise of the religious system: People are following wrong examples – it is a vicious circle, which then feeds off itself, getting worse all the time.
In this context, then, the Biblical meaning of what an elder in the faith is has been lost. It has been lost in the context of men seeking to make a career and get a position and a job in religion, and then using fleshly principles and Scripture twisting to maintain that position, and justify it.
It’s much easier for such men to succeed in their career path these days, as Bible illiteracy is increasing due to the great end-time falling away.
These things can only take place in an environment where people are Scripturally illiterate.
May 31, 2012 at 4:40 am
Remember them who have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their manner of life. Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever. Be not carried about with various and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with foods, which have not profited them that have been observing them.
(Hebrews 13:7-9)
The proper context for anyone to have such “rule”, as mentioned here and in several other texts, could only be in the original context of what constituted Church and how it was defined.
We need to define “rule” in the original context. How did elders (plural, never singular) “rule” in the Church?
If we study 1 Corinthians 14, on Godly order for Church meetings, we don’t see a definition of “rule” which comes even close to the contemporary definition, where a “clergy” runs a program and presides over it. We see a great freedom of the exercising of many gifts. We don’t see the elders trying to program the Holy Spirit and His gifts.
The “rule” , then, was on a “needs basis”, when rule was needed to be exercised. It was not what defined the ministry of the elders. Teaching defined their ministry, and “rule” was necessary when it was necessary to exercise, but not in a controlling or Lording-over-others way.
May 31, 2012 at 12:33 pm
To reduce it down even further, probably the essential issue here, concerning the things we’ve discussed, is over the difference between genuine friendship and fake friendship.
That’s probably the essential issue.
The NT context of Church is a context of men who were very GENUINE in their love for God’s people, not seeking anything for themselves.
But when Church and leadership is redefined in terms other than genuine friendship, then the relationships become fake.
This is why the NT context for Church, Leadership and Church Government etc. does not neatly transpose into the present religious, hierarchical systems, as they represent different paradigms.
To change the whole nature of the Church, the paradigm, the definitions, and then cite Scriptures as justification for any practice, is just plain dishonest.
If such a person demanded, by quoting Scripture, that the sheep submit to him, then the sheep should turn around and demand that he submit to Jesus Christ, and His Apostles, and the NT pattern they gave for the Church.
How can he use Scripture to demand submission when he has little regard to how the Scriptures say the Church should function?
It’s disingenuous.
But like i said, in a sea of Bible illiteracy, who’s gonna even notice or care?