# How to spot a Seeker-Sensitive Baptist Church



## Bill The Baptist (Apr 11, 2011)

Here is a fun list for all my Baptist brethren that I compiled to help us spot churches that have succumbed to that most troubling trend that is plaguing SBC churches today; The Seeker-Sensitive Church.

How to Spot a Seeker-Sensitive Baptist Church

* The Music Pastor is 40 and dresses like he is 18

* The Youth Pastor is 18 and dresses like he is 12

* The Music is really loud and the sermon is really quiet

* The invitation is longer than the sermon

* The Pastor is wearing a hawaiian shirt

* The Pastor sits on a stool and sips coffee during the sermon ,which is referred to as a "talk"

* They proudly advertise that they are the "church for people who don't like church"

* The songs have no more than ten words in them and make very little sense

* The congregation is almost as ignorant of the bible as the pastor is.

* The Pastor reads from "The Message" with a straight face.

* The deepest theological book anyone has read is "The Shack"


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## ericfromcowtown (Apr 11, 2011)

At my wife's former church everytime the pastor said the church name: Sometown "Baptist", he'd make little quotation mark hand-signs to bookmark the word baptist, to indicate that they were really beyond all that denominational baggage.


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## KMK (Apr 11, 2011)

Bill The Baptist said:


> The Pastor is wearing a hawaiian shirt



Although most of these are too mean-spirited for my taste, the Hawaiian shirt phenomenon in SoCal is very interesting. There is a contingent who vocally opposes any appearance of formality in the preacher. Upon my first public preaching engagement, an ex-pastor in attendance was enraged that I wore a tie and told me so to my face. It is very interesting how many have adopted 'tie wearing' in order to separate themselves from 'seeker sensitive' just as many a generation ago adopted Hawaiian shirt wearing to separate themselves from what they believed was a formalistic and lifeless church of a previous generation.


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## torstar (Apr 11, 2011)

Certain big seekers-sensitive people are morbidly obese and the Hawaiian look is the only thing they can wear. 

They can't buy a shirt and tuck it in with a belt or braces holding up their pants...


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## devonturnbaugh (Apr 11, 2011)

HA! Thanks for the unfortunately true-yet-funny post. I especially liked the youth pastor one but you could also add that he acts like he's twelve.


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## coramdeo (Apr 11, 2011)

What about the strobe lights and smoke from under the platform?


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## torstar (Apr 11, 2011)

Your sermons get full play twice a month on Fighting for the Faith.


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## Pilgrim (Apr 11, 2011)

Some of these are true enough, although some are over-generalizations. 

The point about the invitation being longer than the sermon is clearly wrong, at least in my experience. Long invitations and altar calls are a staple of old school Bible-thumping revivalists, which are seen as basically being the polar opposite of seeker sensitive. Rick Warren, for example, doesn't use "altar calls." They would put people on the spot by asking for an immediate decision and are generally not seen as catering to felt needs, etc. 

I would argue that the methodology of the YRR devotees of Keller and Driscoll in the SBC and elsewhere with its emphasis on contextualization and exegeting the culture are largely a new iteration of seeker sensitive and especially church growth methodology. No doubt they tend to have far more solid theology overall than the 80's seeker churches, particularly with regard to soteriology. Unlike the Warren/Hybels brand of seeker sensitive, they are certainly unafraid to speak about sin, etc. and most though not all are not afraid of doctrinal preaching. 

I'm referring moreso to their use and views regarding culture, which usually includes an embrace of hipsterism to some degree. For example, an Acts 29 affiliated church in my metro area was recently featured on the local news. They were very enthusiastic about how the story turned out, so it can't be said that the piece was slanted by the reporter. The emphasis of the story was that they weren't like a normal church, they don't have organs, that they sing contemporary songs and don't wear ties, etc. (Since when is not wearing ties in Southern Baptist Churches, especially urban and suburban ones, revolutionary? And many rural churches have men wearing jeans or their "good overalls." Many preachers still wear ties, but the story had as much reference to the congregation as to the preacher.) They proudly stated that their music leader also frequently performed at a local dive, thus promoting their hipness. Detractors would say it promotes something else.

Another example--_Is a 40 year old wearing a Mickey Mouse t-shirt any less ridiculous than the older Hawaiian shirt fad?

_Overall, this essentially seeker sensitive approach (at least when it comes to appearance and culture) is pretty much the antithesis of the more traditional Calvinism that tends to be more formal in both dress and worship than the typical evangelical church.


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## Curt (Apr 11, 2011)

KMK said:


> It is very interesting how many have adopted 'tie wearing' in order to separate themselves from 'seeker sensitive' just as many a generation ago adopted Hawaiian shirt wearing to separate themselves from what they believed was a formalistic and lifeless church of a previous generation.



Or Robes.


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