December 19, 2006
Picture This
The Seeker Sensitive movement has caused a flip flop in preaching and teaching in the church. Where once the sermon was directed toward the mature, we now find it is lighter in tone in order to attract the un-churched. Mature believers are told to look for deeper truths and instruction in the small group environment. What’s wrong with this picture? We have preachers who are qualified in explaining the Scripture, serving the milk of the Word to the spiritually immature, and then we have lay teachers trying to serve the meat of the Word to the spiritually mature. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this seems remarkably like a PhD teaching kindergarten, while the teacher’s aid takes over the lectern in a college.
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Gail;
----Let's see, now who was it that said, "Out of the mouth of babes." Well any way, you know what I mean. Like, you know, maybe that is kind of what the learning in the church is supposed to be like, ya, in small groups.
----Or not. "Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly." James 3:1. I know the degree to which this small group thing is being pushed. Either these churches must admit that what will be happening in most small groups should not be called teaching, or admit that many in those groups will be judged more strictly than what their teaching qualifications will be able to bear up. It must be one or the other, it can not be both.
----From my past experience with this ideology, I understand the support for serving pabulum from the pulpit comes from I Cor 9:22, "To the weak I became weak to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might be able to save some." And indeed Paul did do that. But it would be careless to accept the seeker-sensitive proposal on this point and procede (remember the "judged more strictly" thing).
----Let us examine one example of how Paul became all things to all men. At Athens, Paul found a good mixture of "all men". Until Paul gets to Athens, we are told nothing about his efforts to preach outside the synagogue. But Luke is careful to point out that here, Paul reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and God-fearing Greeks, and he reasoned in the marketplace with whoever happened to be there. Paul did not expect the synagogue to change its culture in order to attract to it the people of the marketplace, then preach at the synagogue to everyone. He realized that he was called upon to take the gospel and carry it like an evangelist, not to have the gospel and dispense it from the synagogue like a vending machine. Reaching the people was his goal. So going to where they were, as they were, is what he did with his opportunities. Instead of changing the church to attract the seeker, all of Paul's writings show that he was interested in changing the seeker until he found the church attractive. Just think what the church would be today if Paul would have made it the pabulumatic muddle that many are trying to make it today.
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