I am going to embark further into a topic that I whisked over in yesterday’s post, the seeker sensitive church.  As I look across the church landscape today, I am really amazed at the number of churches that are getting on the sensitive seeker bandwagon.  This is a movement that has been around strongly for the past 15-20 years and it seems that some people are hearing about it for the very first time.  As I said yesterday, I believe that the mega-seeker sensitive church is getting close to have run it’s course as we know it. I mean maybe within the next 10-15 years. When I say close, I don’t have any Barna statistics to back me up, (like that makes it right if I did), but my thoughts come from talking to church attenders and networking with other church leaders. Many leaders would argue that the seeker sensitive movement is just getting started and hasn’t reached it’s peak. I do not argue that there will be more mega churches that are seeker sensitive that will appear on the scene. My belief is that the seeker movement will have no more to offer than it does now in terms of programming and especially in discipleship/mentoring.

The seeker sensitive church has done an excellent job of drawing people who were turned off by church for whatever reason they might have had. This "movement" has changed the landscape of the church in the late 20th century and the early 21st century and for years to come. I believe that some elements of the seeker sensitive church will remain intact, ie… music, and casualness.  I believe that the seeker that has been transformed by God’s grace will start to hunger.  I have learned as a pastor that a constant diet of life application teaching will not take people where they need to go.  You may say, "that’s what small groups are for" and you are right, but if a group ministry is focused on six week published studies all the time, they become full of fluff. One of my favorite sayings that I lifted off of Warren is, "God didn’t give us the Bible to make us smarter, but to change our lives."  Life change happens when we read, study, memorize and exegete the scriptures.

Over the past year or so, I have deliberately left the word seeker out of our leadership meetings and our services. I have done this so we don’t become seeker focused.  Instead of being classified as seeker sensitive, I want us to be people sensitive.  Being people sensitive means regardless of where you are in your spiritual journey, I am going to recognize and hopefully affirm you where you are. People Sensitive churches will go out of their way to love, encourage, and accept that person regardless of their belief system, looks, and social status.  They will encounter, engage, and encourage people in the marketplace, neighborhoods, and communities.

Encountering people where they are is an intentional lifestyle where we as believers will go out of our way to get in someones way, just like Jesus did. We will not wait until they walk through the doors of the church, or movie theater in our case to encounter them.

We will not talk church to them when we engage them because they look at church as a building with rules and rituals. Engaging them means we will have conversations with them about their journey called life here on Earth over a Mt. Dew or a cup of coffee. We will engage them with the topic of Jesus, and about life after death, and with spiritual conversations.

As we encounter, then engage them, I believe we must encourage them. Encouraging these precious people will mean that we challenge them with the truth that we have discussed.  All three of these these E’s will not and should not happen in a 30 minute time frame, but will probably take place over days, weeks, months and maybe years.

You can become a people sensitive person.  All it takes is loving like Jesus.