are there any "unchurched" people

[indianrock]

This has to do with Philosophy of Ministry. If the leadership of a church believes that there are no truly "unchurched" people ( at least in the U.S. ) how does that affect the notion of being seeker-sensitive etc?

Our pastor believes that those who do not attend church are not "unchurched" in the sense that they need to be reached with the Gospel. Rather, they have simply heard the Call and turned their backs on God.

If this is true, then there is no need to make your services or worship seeker-sensitive. You certainly wouldn't "water down" your sermons to avoid slamming the sensibilities of those who are not ready to hear the full truth. And you might not do anything in particular to make your worship music "attractive" since the only new people you expect are those who have been broken and driven to their knees by God -- so they are ready for deep, worshipful songs.

I struggle with this whole concept, but I think it is the basic philosophy I'm working under as a worship leader.

Obviously this could impact your song selections: would you ever do a Today is the Day or I will Boast -- hopefully it doesn't mean there could be no rousing, full-on praise songs. But it could certainly have a "damping" effect. I'm just trying to understand it's implications and decide how to respond to this view.

[Kitty]

I think every church has to realize what is the purpose of their main service or services.

Is it a time for believers to gather together and unreservedly worship God, being transformed and refined themselves in the process? Or is it a fun event to invite your friends and neighbors to so that maybe they'll become interested in knowing more about God?

I'm sure there are plenty of other possible choices, but these seemed to be the two that were always clashing together back when I was involved. You can probably tell by my wording which way I leaned.

Kitty

[indianrock]

I guess you do this part "Or is it a fun event to invite your friends and neighbors to so that maybe they'll become interested in knowing more about God?" at an evening service or something. I don't want to confuse " jamming with friends " with ministry. I guess I like to think they're not mutually exclusive. I just discovered www.bandmix.com -- I've often felt that one should have their "musical fun" elsewhere so their music ministry is not burdened by other wishes/desires/hobbies. Not that music ministry can't be fun, but it is constrained in many ways, by design.

[refin]

I have found several musicians on bandmix.I'm on there myself!

[maestrovert]

This has to do with Philosophy of Ministry. If the leadership of a church believes that there are no truly "unchurched" people ( at least in the U.S. ) how does that affect the notion of being seeker-sensitive etc?

Our pastor believes that those who do not attend church are not "unchurched" in the sense that they need to be reached with the Gospel. Rather, they have simply heard the Call and turned their backs on God.

...../.....
I struggle with this whole concept, but I think it is the basic philosophy I'm working under...../.....
I'm just trying to understand it's implications and decide how to respond to this view.

?!
if i understand you correctly, your Pastor is basically negating "The Great Commission"(Mk 16:15), claiming there's no need for preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the least, the last, the lost....
am i understanding you correctly ?
if so:
Shame on him.....i'd be finding another fellowship, real quick.

The Church's whole reason for existence is the "Ministry of Reconciliation" Paul wrote of in 2Cor 5:18....
we the church, are supposed to be a recruiting station and a training center for recruiters, not a glorified social club. period.

Yes indeed, fellowship with other believers, comforting, strengthening and being strengthened by one another IS important, but it is not the primary raison d'etre for our fellowship in the Body of Christ. i am firmly convinced that it is every believer's duty and responsibility to be spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and that such duty is not limited only to the formally schooled "trained and ordained" clergy...

[indianrock]

Hi there maestrovert. We do have various types of outreach, encourage our members to bring friends/neighbors, support missionaries and our Pastor takes several outreach trips per year. But again, his view is that we aren't going to turn the normal church services upside down ( seeker sensitive seems to be a touchy subject here ) to draw in those who should already know they're lost, but turned their backs on God.

That's the best I can describe this view. It's that we shouldn't turn the worship service into a rock concert to draw those folks in. Actually if they in fact have turned their backs, they wouldn't come regardless of the music, coffee, doughnuts or watered down preaching. Again, under this view, they will come when and if God drives them to their knees. At that point they won't be seeking watered down sermons or rock concerts -- they'll need salvation and healing.

I'm just trying to explain this view but it has seemed pretty odd to me also, but it may be correct. YMMV

[Wally]

Hi there maestrovert. We do have various types of outreach, encourage our members to bring friends/neighbors, support missionaries and our Pastor takes several outreach trips per year. But again, his view is that we aren't going to turn the normal church services upside down ( seeker sensitive seems to be a touchy subject here ) to draw in those who should already know they're lost, but turned their backs on God.

That's the best I can describe this view. It's that we shouldn't turn the worship service into a rock concert to draw those folks in. Actually if they in fact have turned their backs, they wouldn't come regardless of the music, coffee, doughnuts or watered down preaching. Again, under this view, they will come when and if God drives them to their knees. At that point they won't be seeking watered down sermons or rock concerts -- they'll need salvation and healing.

I'm just trying to explain this view but it has seemed pretty odd to me also, but it may be correct. YMMV

If his view is as you explained it above, I agree for a couple of reasons. First, I think too many churches have become confused about evangelism and worship - to the degree that when taken to an extreme they have turned their worship services into an evangelistic tool that contains little worship.... and unfortunately not much evangelism either as the gospel has been watered down in an effort to be "seeker sensitive". We (the church) are called to evangelism (go forth and proclaim the gospel) and a proclamation of the gospel should be a regular part of worship, but I believe that worship is primarily for believers to gather together and worship our Lord through prayer, song, study and preaching of the word and communion.

So if worship is primarily for believers, then why try to tailor it to those who do not believe - as they cannot participate in worship of a God that they do not believe in. This seems particularly silly to those of us in the Reformed tradition as we believe that people respond to God only when He calls them (note that this does not negate the call to evangelism).

So I think music should be chosen that will be useful to the worship of the believers gathered - and I think there is certainly a place for upbeat and rousing songs of praise.

[indianrock]

I just had a nice chat with our Youth Pastor. I think what we agreed on is that the notion of "no unchurched people" is a little out of date. Look at our economy. If our business and government leaders had a slight "Moral Compass" perhaps we wouldn't be where we are.

I've read before about how the Christian underpinnings of our society is not what it once was -- and we now actually have many growing up with virtually no spiritual background at all. Now, God can certainly affect their conscience, but I guess the question is whether the game has changed.

So if there are many out there who actually never heard the gospel, never went to sunday school as a child, we might need to do a little more to make them feel wanted. Not water down the sermons. Perhaps multiple services with one being more "seeker sensitive."

[Kitty]

if i understand you correctly, your Pastor is basically negating "The Great Commission"(Mk 16:15), claiming there's no need for preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the least, the last, the lost....
Only if you believe that the Great Commission is only supposed to be accomplished inside the sanctuary for an hour or so on Sunday mornings (or whenever the particular local Body happens to gather). Aside from that, I don't see the point of view as negating anything except maybe misguided marketing strategies.

Kitty

[Teleguy]

Our church started as a ministry to poor people, which no other church in the area seemed interested in at the time.

Very quickly we found that the best help we could offer poor people was help with their substance addiction problems, so the emphasis became the Program, and church is not mandatory for residents in the Program.

Therefore, those who DO show up on Sunday mornings are either interested in "checking this Jesus thing out," or are returning to a form of the religion of their family history from childhood/youth, or are there in support of the residents as "normies."

The staff is trained, certified, and monitored for co-addiction issues.

The services on Sunday begin with a brief Scriptural reading and very brief comment and prayer, then the Worship teams leds the assembly in about 5 contemporary Worship songs that most of you would be familiar with. Then occasionally a "special" (or extra song, not necessarily sing-a-long).
There follows corporate prayer time, followed by the "message," which is usually a study of the path of redemption starting in the Old Testament and continuing seamlessly through the New Testament.

If you aren't moved by the presentation of the Gospel as our Pastor does it no amount of hanging contemporary values on it will help. He doesn't do Powerpoint or Psych 101 from the front of the assemblage.

People still get "saved" and baptised at our lil' ol' dysfunctional gathering of imperfect Christians, and many lives and extended families -though still dsyfunctional on many levels- begin to experince the Kingdom of Heaven, and become aware of God's love.

We select songs for a general Christian Worship experience and people Praise in various ways, or not.

We don't have a lot of high drama or demonstrable so-called evangelical calls to the alter, and any who feel they're having a "Pentacostal" type moment are encouraged to not disrupt good and proper order. Program is the priority, not culture shock.

Even so, the Lord is still on the job and people are experiencing His Grace in various ways. Generally speaking the Spiritual aspects of things follow the 12 steps in practical application.

[Wally]

Only if you believe that the Great Commission is only supposed to be accomplished inside the sanctuary for an hour or so on Sunday mornings (or whenever the particular local Body happens to gather). Aside from that, I don't see the point of view as negating anything except maybe misguided marketing strategies.

Kitty

Kitty - I think we are in agreement on this issue :)

I just realized that my first post in this thread didn't answer the question of are there any unchurched people left. I say yes.

[maestrovert]

Only if you believe that the Great Commission is only supposed to be accomplished inside the sanctuary for an hour or so on Sunday mornings (or whenever the particular local Body happens to gather). Aside from that, I don't see the point of view as negating anything except maybe misguided marketing strategies.

Kitty

Heya Kitty !
as my entire post makes clear, no, i do not think evangelism is only for an hour or so on Sunday inside the sanctuary....

Indianrock's post stated that his Pastor believes that there are no unchurched people who need to hear the Gospel, only those who have already rejected it.
i cannot disagree with his Pastor's viewpoint strongly enough !

[Micter]

I personally dont think being "seeker friendly" or whatever you want to call it actually draws people to Christ. It does however draw them to religion or church. The bottom line is we are called to preach the gospel in it's entirety. The seeker friendly stuff has left many with a form of Godliness and no power! Jesus never minced words with people!

[indianrock]

Heya Kitty !
as my entire post makes clear, no, i do not think evangelism is only for an hour or so on Sunday inside the sanctuary....

Indianrock's post stated that his Pastor believes that there are no unchurched people who need to hear the Gospel, only those who have already rejected it.
i cannot disagree with his Pastor's viewpoint strongly enough !

What I meant to say was that my Pastor believes everyone needs to hear the Gospel, but that the church doesn't need to turn itself inside out ( and possibly fail to feed the believers who do attend ) to draw the non-believers in. When and if they decide not to reject the call of God, they then need to hear the Gospel somewhere/anywhere. They are lost and need to hear the Gospel, but "unchurched" implies they have no idea there is a God and have never felt any twinge of conscience. In the past this was seen as unlikely, but now with many in a whole new generation growing up not having had any spiritual input to speak of ( a more secular nation than before ), this idea may be out of date.

We still aren't justified in watering down our sermons or forming the worship time strictly to attract the lost, but we may want to do more than in the past.....more outreach, worship teams playing in parks, multiple services with one service being more "seeker-sensitive," etc.

Interesting topic which I've probably beaten to death now. My thoughts about this grew out of at least two things: 1) blogs I've read about how the modern church is blowing it by not doing more to attract men ( too much emphasis on soft, lovey-dovey songs that probably don't appeal to men, especially young non-believing men ) and 2) this "no unchurched" idea being a justification for designing worship that primarily appeals to old believers.

[LesStrat]

Gotta agree with Michter on the "seeker-sensitive" movement. We tried it at our previous church for about 6 months until we realized we were hiding WHO we are.

If God leads a person to the service, one of two things will happen:

1. HE has prepared their hearts to receive, and lives will be changed.
2. The person's heart is hard and will be hardened.

Dude, you're in the Republik of Kalifornistan. There are PLENTY of unchurched people, especially there. It 's not that they have not heard the gospel, but that they probably have heard a distorted, mixed, or watered-down gospel.

Our pastor has been preaching some "hard" messages lately. Most of it does not directly apply to me at this time, but I STILL get excited with the gospel. Personally, I don't believe the gospel should EVER be presented as "gospel-lite." Jesus spoke about this.

[Kitty]

I think the term "unchurched" fails as a way to communicate what each of us is really talking about. It's a label that can mean so many different things that it's really meaningless now.

I'm "unchurched" myself, as a matter of fact. :) In the way that I mean it.

Kitty

[ptrallan01]

There are many unchurched people who are saved but don't have a "church Home". There are many churched people who are not saved.

The real issue is conversion.

I only remember two sermons from the church of my youth. Our minister was an excellent teacher and I remember many great discussions regarding church, theology and history but only two sermons.

The first was the empty tomb which he preached one Easter and even though it didn't move me to conversion at that time it stuck in my mind for almost twenty years until it helped me to love Christ.

The second was that no one is born a Christian every Christian is a convert.

I grew up in church, heard the gospel message every sunday for many years and finally in my mid 30's accepted Christ.

There are some people who have rejected the gospel, there is nothing we can do for them. Sad but biblical.

There are some people who have accepted the gospel, they will worship in church or out.

There are some people who have never heard the gospel, they need to be told the story.

There are some people who have heard the gospel and haven't chosen or rejected but need to be given the opportunity on regular basis to explore their thoughts and have the message repeated until they understand the requirements of having heard the gospel.

Seeker sensitive is a good way to get large numbers of people in a building but may not be a good way to get Jesus into people.

In truth the music, the comfortable seats, the pretty buildings, the beautiful paintings are all secondary to telling the story of the savior! You can do it a million different ways through sermons, lectures, prophecy, music, dance, theatre and best of all through daily living. The important thing is to tell the story and get out of the Holy Spirit's way so He can convict the heart and the person can accept or reject Christ.

[Kitty]

Spot on, dude. :up:

I'm not sure how much this discussion has really helped Indianrock with his original worship-leading-philosophy question, but it's a great discussion nonetheless.

[indianrock]

Well put ptrallan01. What was my original question? LOL I think I asked a somewhat selfish question about wanting to use more up tempo 'rockin' songs and pretty much got my spiritual bottom spanked here ( probably needed it ).

You have all raised the level of this discussion to something of consequence. So, for my own little 'needs' I'm going to add a 'walk-in' song just before service that will let our team explore a bit. Plus I found bandmix.com and will try to get my 'rock n roll' muscles exercised outside of any 'church' venue so I don't bring baggage to the worship team.

One last thing, we do need to fellowship with other believers and hear the Word, but it doesn't have to happen in a "church."
Randy

[Crunchyriff]

If you open with a more uptempo song (such as "Today...") I think it can be a great song for a walk-in number to get folk's eyes & hearts open and focused on a Sunday morning, and allow them to leave their cares, & burdens aside to mentally focus on worship- then you can bring-in the more uh, worshipful (whatever those songs of choice may be) material to really lay the foundation of drawing close to the Lord. OTOH, as a worship leader I've also used more slow numbers to open the worship with, too... that were very impactful.

For me, really it's all about "what do you want sung to you today, Jesus?" That's how I approach it. I ask the Holy Spirit to pick the material. It's amazing, as our Sr pastor never leaks to anyone what he's teaching on, on a given Sunday- not even me (a worship leader); and it is awesome to see and hear the result of just asking the Lord to choose the songs, and then see the correlation between the worship and the particular message that day. Just blows me away.

That said, the Lord essentially can use any style & tempo he so chooses... at any moment. It really doesn't matter of the tempo itself- what really matters is "is this song a great conduit to connect folks with the Lord?"

Any song that directs the listener fully towards the Lord and doesn't distract from that is a great worship song, IMHO, whether fast or slow in pace.

[Teleguy]

+1 to all the above.

It's uncanny when the music "I" chose -after trying to discern the Spirit- dovetails into the message.

[Zhangliqun]

Maybe a better word than "unchurched" would be "un-gospeled"?

[Telejazzer]

+1 to all the above.

It's uncanny when the music "I" chose -after trying to discern the Spirit- dovetails into the message.

This has been happening to us lately, well mainly myself really. When I am preparing for what songs to play, I pray and ask the Holy Spirit for guidance, asking everyday what songs to play on Sunday. Last Sunday one of the band members asked me what the order of the songs and I said I have no idea, I said just follow my lead.

It was awesome, even with the mistakes and everything. I just make sure I remember that the Holy Spirit knows more than me, everybody as a matter of fact and if I allow Him to guide me then I don't have to worry about anyone else. I will still prepare and practice 'cause I enjoy it.

[Rubsoul]

Crunchyriff wrote: If you open with a more uptempo song (such as "Today...") I think it can be a great song for a walk-in number to get folk's eyes & hearts open and focused on a Sunday morning, and allow them to leave their cares, & burdens aside to mentally focus on worship- then you can bring-in the more uh, worshipful (whatever those songs of choice may be). I couldn't agree more.
A little off topic, what songs do you play? Do the songs have to go along with the daily message?
Currently at our church, if the message has to do with a "lighthouse of hope", there will sure to be a song with anchors, lighthouses, or storms in it.
I feel people like to sing songs they know and have meaning, than a song that was buried in a hymnal for a hundred years and now is kinda out of sync with the times. Don't get me wrong, I love the old die-hard traditional hymns. (And I do see the messages from these songs) What's your view on song choice?