‘Seeker-Sensitive’ Conservatism

From Allan Roebuck at American Thinker

Rick Warren’s book The Purpose-Driven Life is more than a major bestseller. It’s also the most prominent manifestation of a "seeker-sensitive" movement that’s attempting, for all intents and purposes, to redefine evangelical Christianity…

The seeker-sensitive movement is a close analogy to the contemporary conservative movement. In both cases, people who ought to be offering timeless truths that can save individuals and societies are instead using market research to craft a product that appeals to consumers, telling them what they want to hear rather than a truth that is initially painful but ultimately liberating. Even if you are not a Christian, you should be concerned about a mass movement that thrives by suppressing many important ideas that it once believed in, especially because the same error tempts other idea-based movements, such as conservatism.

Bob DeWaay, pastor of a non-denominational church in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area, recently spent two years studying the seeker-sensitive movement…DeWaay’s analysis is presented in his book Redefining Christianity, and it is summarized in a 15-part radio series that is archived and can be listened to (for free).

DeWaay’s basic conclusion is this: The purpose-driven movement begins with the premise that the only way to attract non-Christians to church is by offering to meet their felt needs, rather than their real need for salvation through Christ. If a non-Christian "seeker" visits a church where he hears the traditional Gospel message that he is a lost sinner in need of a salvation that can only come from personal repentance and trust in the atoning death of Christ, he will be repelled by the challenging message, and will not return. To prevent this failure, so the theory goes, a church must conduct market research into what people in its area want, and then find a way to give these seekers what they want.

Read the rest here.