Phil and John Discuss the Seeker Movement
Selected Scriptures
JOHN: Hi, this is John MacArthur. You know that my commitment is to teach the Bible verse by verse to the congregation of our church every week. And we've been doing that for 35 years. Grace To You, our radio ministry, takes that teaching and transform it into radio programs and sometimes into books and articles and, of course, always those messages are on CD and tape and MP3. Most of the time we're doing those expositions. But sometimes, in fact seemingly more often now than not, there's a movement or a trend that comes along that is very high profile and very effective, it's sort of sweeping and influential and at the same time troubling. And so I feel that when that happens that I need to address that issue in a way that I can't when I'm preaching in the pulpit. And I know that many of these issues get to you, our listeners, and our family out there in Grace To You and I just feel like I have to take the opportunity from time to time to help you to perhaps have some insight into what's going on.
And that's why I'm here today in the studio with my friend and colleague, and fellow pastor, Phil Johnson. Phil is Executive Director here at Grace To You and a long time fellow preacher and teacher of mine and dear friend. And we're going to talk about an issue that's critically important and an issue that is very clear to us, you, our ministry family, wants some help to understand. So, Phil, thanks for sort of prompting my thinking on the subject and being here to help us clarify some of these things today.
PHIL: Thank you, John. Today we want to talk about ministry philosophy, the way we do church. And there's a growing movement actually for the past ten years or so it seems the largest growing, fasting growing segment of evangelicalism today is going after a philosophy of ministry that's variously called Market-Driven Churches, The Seeker Movement. There's a famous book by Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Church that more or less outlines this philosophy of ministry.
Tell us exactly what this is.
JOHN: Well, I don't know if I can cover, you know, all that ground, but I would approach it this way. This is a redefining of the leadership of the church, along lines that appear to me to be far more entrepreneurial than biblical. This is importing into the church the cultural success patterns, looking at corporate America, looking at successful CEOs, looking at successful businesses, everything from Ben and Jerry's to Microsoft and trying to find the triggers, trying to find the avenues, trying to find the access, the hot buttons that allow them to sell their product to the degree that they do and to be so successful in corporation life.
And so, the church in those last ten or fifteen years has basically been in many ways co-opted or commandeered by the entrepreneurs. And the guys who can really pull it off, the guys who are the clever guys, the glib guys, the smooth communicators, the guys who are really savvy to the marketing strategy, the guys who have a lot of money at their feet who can access a lot of money and pull this off are becoming the success models for the church. And now they're getting all the kudos, they're selling books by the millions, they're creating massive websites and sucking up all kinds of other pastors and churches into the vortex of these entrepreneurial kind of culturally driven quasi churches. It isn't that everything they say is wrong. It isn't that everything they do is wrong. It is that the church is being run by market savvy entrepreneurs. That in itself has no connection to Scripture.
You know, the simple question is: what ever happened to the man of God? What ever happened to the man of God who is known as a man of prayer, as a man of deep understanding of Scripture, who is known as a Bible teacher, who is known as a godly man whose life is a pattern to follow, who is a discipler of others, who's a builder of spiritual leaders? And even going deeper into the issue, whatever happened to the understanding of the church as the body of Christ over which Christ is the head who Himself as the Lord of the church has already defined the ministry of the church and the content for that ministry and the leadership for that ministry and how that leadership is to function? It just seems as if we've pushed aside the biblical model. We've pushed aside the man of God. And because some of these guys have been so successful, you know, beyond what has ever happened, certainly in the modern era in the church before, and because there is a seductive element in success and bigness, this thing has become a movement that has gained immense speed. The fallout is that it's very hard for most people to pull off this kind of entrepreneurial church. They don't have the cleverness, the creativity. They don't have the resources financially and personnel wise. They can't quite pull it off. They don't have sort of a clean state...slate to start their deal in and so what they try to do is a vain attempt at this and it winds up fracturing a church, or splintering a church, or creating conflict in a church. And very often a guy will try it, fail and leave. And there's a congregation sitting there now divided with no idea of who their next leader should be and chaos very often ensues and the church is on a path of very difficult recovery.
So, there's a lot of fallout to this movement. And I think the bottom line is it redefines the church in cultural terms, in turns the church into a marketing agency that says what it thinks its supposed customers want to hear.
PHIL: So you have a problem with the philosophy of the church that underlies this and the approach to leadership. It seems to me as you describe it, too, there's a major problem with this idea that the gospel is a commodity to be peddled.
JOHN: Yeah, there's no question about that. But that is the underlying idea. The underlying idea is the gospel is a commodity. We're selling this just like people sell magazines, just like they sell, you know, basketball shoes, just like they sell tires, cars, or whatever else they sell.
PHIL: And there's lots of people though that would say, "You can't argue with success." I mean, you know it yourself that a lot of these churches are huge and...
JOHN: Yeah, and that's the seduction. That's the draw. If they weren't, there wouldn't be anybody listening. If they weren't, there wouldn't be buying into the website. The question is not "can they get a crowd?" You want to get a crowd? There's a lot of ways to get a crowd. They have figured out how to get a crowd and call it church. There's a big difference between a crowd and a church...big difference. And if the truth is known in these seeker-friendly environments, one would have to ask the question: is there in here somewhere a true church in the midst of the crowd? I mean, Jesus drew crowds, massive crowds.
I'm right now teaching through Luke 12 and the crowds based upon the language there in chapter 12 verse 1 could have numbered in the tens of thousands. He could draw the crowd, but it says there that He was talking to the disciples. And eventually what He said to the disciples caused the crowd to turn on Him, it caused some of the disciples, so-called disciples, to leave Him very early in His ministry, those who were disciples wouldn't walk with Him anymore. But eventually the crowd not only left, the crowd came back with a roar and forced the crucifixion. So the point is this, the idea is not to draw a crowd and then to somehow redefine the crowd as a church. If you want to draw a crowd, preach...figure out how to draw a crowd, that's fine, but make sure you preach the clear, pure, unadulterated, unmixed gospel of Jesus Christ and trust the Holy Spirit to do His work. After all, salvation is the work of the Spirit. It doesn't come by the cleverness of the preacher. That's why Paul said he did not speak in clever words of human wisdom.
PHIL: You've been writing and dealing with this subject for at least 15 years and I've read or edited practically everything you've said on it. It seems to me that one of your main complaints about this whole movement is what you just said, that it tends to diminish preaching. It tends to push the pulpit off to the side and replace the preaching of God's Word with other things.
JOHN: Phil, you know because you know me and because you're the same way, I'm driven by the truth. I'm compelled by the truth. I'm obligated to the truth. The truth is what matters. I'm never concerned...and this is Pauline...Paul says, "You know, I'm going to preach the gospel." It's going to be the foolishness of the preaching, you can't replace preaching. I was just asked a question on the radio: Can contemporary music replace preaching? And I answered it this way, nothing can replace preaching, nothing. It is by the foolishness of preaching that those who believe are being saved, 1 Corinthians. So has the church come to the conclusion where it doesn't believe that anymore? We've got to get the preaching out and turn it into cool talk, or cool speak, or contemporary vernacular. It is the preaching that does the work and Paul would not be intimidated by the Corinthian expectation of clever speech because it existed in their day as well, and oratory and all of that. He continually goes back to the fact that he must be faithful to the preaching and that the content of that preaching is to be the Word of God, nothing more and nothing less. And I think that's where this thing goes astray.
It goes astray at its view of biblical authority and the power of the Word of God. It questions...it has to question the authority of