Recently, a gentleman by the name of David Murrow offered a blog post at 
Patheos entitled “Why Seeker-Friendly Churches are Losing Seekers.” He explains why he believes many so-called “seeker-friendly” churches are seeing a decline in the attendance of unbelievers.
Since I have long thought about, but never followed through on, writing an article about the Willow Creek seeker-targeted church strategy, and the vastly more popular compro mise dubbed seeker-friendly services, I decided to chime in on the subject here rather than procrastinate further.
Unfortunately, Mr. Murrow does not offer any evidence or citation substantiating his claim. But, for the moment, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and accept his claim. He does offer some good observations and sound advice. I recommend the article to anyone involved in a “seeker” ministry.
Mr. Murrow’s puts his finger, perhaps unintentionally, on the fundamental flaws found at the core of so-called seeker-sensitive church services, flaws which have given rise to serious misunderstandings about what it means to be a seeker-driven church.
I attended numerous leadership conferences at Willow Creek in the 1990s. I 
always took a team of church leaders with me so we could strategize together about the best ways to transform our church community back home into a church that grew by evangelism. We wanted to see people come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and then grow as committed disciples within our church community.
I was raised in a fundamentalist tradition that prized its annual week of Revival Meetings. Year after year the church brought in a visiting evangelist who spoke every evening for a week as the center piece for our revival meetings. Church members were strongly encouraged to bring their “lost” friends so that they could hear the Good News and “be saved.”
As I learned about the origins and goals of Willow’s seeker-targeted church strategies, I soon recognized that by following in the long, innovative tradition of Youth for Christ, Young Life and similar evangelical organizations from the 1940s and 50s, Willow Creek had simply devised a 
new way to conduct old-fashioned revival meetings. Except these evangelistic meetings happened weekly instead of annually. The evangelist was the teaching pastor. Instead of a tent with a sawdust trail, the gathering site was in the church building.
Here is the key: In a true seeker ministry the Sunday morning seeker-service (or seeker-targeted service) is an evangelistic meeting.
Its primary purpose is to create a place where Christians can bring their non-Christian friends to learn about Jesus Christ and his church. A seeker-service is not designed for believers. Let me say that again. A seeker-service is not designed for believers except as they become evangelists themselves, bringing their friends to hear the pastor/evangelist talk about the real-world relevance of the gospel.
Whenever I wrote seeker-targeted messages I told myself that I was going to talk about life with respect to the Bible. My seeker messages were typically topical.
Christians who were church shopping often disapproved of our seeker services, saying they weren’t “worshipful” enough. But, frankly, since the service wasn’t designed with them in mind, I never let those criticisms bother me.
Eventually, seeker-targeted churches must develop a second schedule of services for worship/praise/body-life activities that will meet the spiritual needs of disciples. Christians need regularly to praise Jesus, glorify their heavenly Father, confess their sins, thank the Lord for answered prayer, and a million-and-one other things besides.
We typically call this a “worship service.” Seekers can’t worship Jesus Christ because they don’t know him yet. So, nothing in our worship services was designed specifically for “seekers.” When I wrote a message for our worship services I told myself that I was going to talk about the Bible with respect to life. My “worship” messages were typically expository.
Worship services and seeker services are two very, very different beasts. They have different goals. They are intended for different audiences. Seekers don’t/can’t worship God, so don’t ask them to. Believers, on the other hand, need more than a weekly “revival” meeting, so don’t limit their diet to evangelistic milk.
Leaders at Willow Creek regularly warned us visiting pastors about the challenges waiting to ambush anyone hoping to move their church out of its traditionalism into a seeker-targeted method of ministry.
I cannot recall ever hearing a leader at Willow Creek encourage church leaders purposely to develop a compromise called a seeker-sensitive service. Such services were described as hybrids, a compromise, or a short-term transitional strategy used by churches having difficulty moving fully to a seeker-targeted ministry. But I cannot recall ever hearing anyone at Willow encourage leaders to develop seeker-sensitive services for Sunday morning as a permanent part of their strategy.
Sadly, for whatever reasons, it appears that the majority of churches, whether they have ever been to Willow Creek or not, have opted for seeker-sensitive worship services today. Precious few congregations have made the effort or taken the risks to create both worship services for believers and seeker-targeted services for unbelievers.
Unfortunately, it didn’t take long before people were promoting this compromise by writing books and offering seminars about the benefits of “worship evangelism.”
What a shame.
Too many church leaders have taken the easy road of becoming all things to all people gathered together in the same place at once. In my experience, that rarely works, and even when it appears to work, it is not in anyone’s best interests.
Anyone trying to become all things to all people becomes nothing special to no one in particular.
Remember that in the Old Testament, Yahweh spoke to the prophet Balaam through a dumb ass. But Balaam did not spend the rest of his life loitering around barn yards, waiting to hear his next word from God.
The Lord can certainly use Christian worship to call sinners to Himself. The Holy Spirit blows where he wills, as he wills, whenever he wills. I know a woman who surrendered herself to Jesus while listening to me deliver a message about tithing from the book of Leviticus. But that didn’t cause me to write books about the wonders of “Levitical-Stewardship Evangelism.” (No. Please. Don’t go there).
The surprising movement of God’s grace is never a sufficient reason to promote new strategies for dumb ass church services.
I am afraid that the fear and half-hearted commitment found at the origins of so many seeker-sensitive services are significant factors in the gross levels of spiritual childishness crippling large swaths of American evangelicalism.
Too many Sunday messages soft-sell the radical demands of Jesus and his gospel, for fear of offending visitors. (This should never be an issue, not even in seeker-targeted services).
Just as too many offerings of “praise music” make no attempt whatsoever to lead God’s people into the unnerving, overwhelming presence of the Lord Almighty, to whom the angels sing, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord who sits on His throne.”
The real problem is not simply that seeker-friendly churches may lose their appeal to seekers, as Mr. Murrow warns. These services also consistently fail to produce mature disciples who walk faithfully as citizens of God’s radical, upside-down kingdom on earth.
That’s a spiritual double-whammy from which no church can recover until we come to our senses and abandon the conspiracy of half-measures that make “seeker-sensitive worship” the liturgical monstrosity that it is.
