#58. Calling people "seekers."
Feb 28th by Jon
Dear person that does not go to church,
I don’t know how to say this, but when you’re not around, we call you “seeker.” We say things like, “what kind of music will seekers respond to?” or “is that drama seeker focused or not.” And when you show up on Sunday, if our church is small enough, our seeker spider sense tingles a little and we really hope the service reaches you. But before you get mad, please know that the alternative is to call you “lost” or “unsaved” or “sweaty philistine.” OK, we don’t say that last one. A lot. But my friend Joel said something to me tonight. He said, “you know who the lost were in the New Testament? They were the people Jesus hung out with and loved on the most.” So tonight, even though I’m in marketing and I might want to treat you like a target audience or a demographic, I’m retiring the words “seeker” and “lost.” From here on out, I’m just going to call you “the people Jesus loves.”
Comments
So true. Interestingly, our church doesn’t do the seeker thing. I sort of worried about it at first, but our leadership explained that “If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto myself…” and they don’t worry about the seeker thing. They got that philosophy from a reliable source, by the way…
amen amen amen!! if our churches aren't drawing people to the Lord, then is He being lifted up correctly??
http://www.belovedbelove.wordpress.com
Oh crap…your blog is really funny! I actually laughed out loud and I usually laugh “in my heart” except at movies like “Hot Shot.”
This post is great. I always though the “seeker” thing was weird although I am so guilty of saying it and the others on your list except “sweaty Philistine” of course.
amen!
THANK YOU. THANK YOU from the bottom of a very grateful heart.
People in my college fellowship used to refer to “pre-christians.” As in, “I’m holding a discussion of the biographies of Jesus with a few of the pre-christians who live in my dorm.” I hated it. It’s so presumptuous!
Forgive the late comments, I’m just now getting around to reading your earlier posts. When I read “sweaty philistine”, I laughed so hard I scared my cat! I’m a bit under-impressed with the whole “seeker” format. I’m not suggesting a 12 week series on Leviticus, but I think you can serve milk AND meat if the sermon is well crafted. Also, I think the days of expecting “seekers” to come to our churches in big numbers are a thing of the past. The Body of Christ needs to get off our collective, pew-shaped buttocks and go be in the world, but not of the world.
I recently read a book by Vince Antonucci called “I became a Christian and all I got was this Lousy T-shirt”. In it he says:
“We need to be the good news before we share the good news so that our gospel has integrity. We need to make the gospel beautiful again. We need to lose all the trappings so that people can experience the natural beauty of God’s good news. We need to show people what life in God’s kingdom is like before we invite them into it.”
Can I get an AMEN?
AMEN!
and Amen
haven't got through the whole list yet so I don't know if that one comes up, but amen and amen was a worship leader's standard for a few years there and it drove me nuts!
Just found your site a few days ago and am working my way from the beginning. Hopefully I can read faster than you write! Very funny stuff. Very funny.
This one gets me, though. The whole "seeker" movement is really about making people who want to go to church simply because they think it's a good thing but don't want someone telling them they need to change their habits the other 6 days of the week feel comfortable. We're supposed to fear the Lord, not feel comfortable around His Holiness (Isa 6:5, Luke 5:8)
And the name is all wrong, also. no one understands: no one seeks for God (Rom 3:11) How can the lost be seeking after God if no one seeks for Him?
We had a chapel speaker who talked about how we are like the lost sheep and the prodigal son and the lost coin, three parables that are all kind of squished together, and that "lost" people were described as TREASURE by Jesus.
Ugh, pre-Christian is the worst. Not such a fan of seeker either. My old church tried to be so "seeker-sensitive" that they never tackled any difficult topics and none of the now-Christians got anything out of it. Some of them end up as post-Christians.
Even worse… Unchurched!
Ah, church buzzwords. Seekers is a word that I have been around a lot, but at my church we just call them "people". We love people.
Yeah, do one on church buzzwords. It's like we have our own language and dialect–"Christianese."
I love "the people Jesus loved".
Thanks for that! He loves them…