daily java

Daily Java:

And the leaders of the church had nothing to add to what I was preaching. (By the way, their reputation as great leaders made no difference to me, for God has no favorites.) Instead, they saw that God had given me the responsibility of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as he had given Peter the responsibility of preaching to the Jews. For the same God who worked through Peter as the apostle to the Jews also worked through me as the apostle to the Gentiles. (Galatians 2:6-8)

I just read a comment by someone in which they didn’t like seeker friendly gospel messages. I got to thinking about it. Is a gospel message that is seeker friendly really a bad thing in and of itself? Is it so bad to have a gospel message that is concerned with how people perceive it?

Sometime people get to seeing the gospel as a separate entity, something divorced from culture or anything else. And they see a seeker friendly gospel as being one that is automatically watered down because of the simple fact that it is concerned with how people perceive it.

What is a seeker friendly, or a seeker sensitive gospel message? And is it necessarily wrong? Is there something wrong with tailoring your gospel message and presentation so that people will receive it?

The gospel message is a simple one: Jesus died so that we could have our sins forgiven and come back to God. That is it. It is a simple pronouncement of the love and grace of God.

But how do you deliver it? And is the delivery important?

In times past it was delivered differently than today. When I was a child, door-to-door Bible studies with charts were big. People sat in their living rooms and listened to a delivery and many times accepted.

Door-to-door studies are gone now. People hate it when you come to their doors. So we do it differently.

In times past, there were two and three week gospel meetings and revivals that people attended every night. They listened and in the climax of the last few days, they accepted it. Nobody wants to go to those anymore and they are gone.

There were invitation songs, sung in a strong heart felt way to get people to realize their need, there were thundering presentations to try to scare people in coming to Jesus. None of these things, for the most part, are used today. We see some left-over variations, but in general, no.

That, it seems to me, is where the seeker-sensitive part comes in. People do not relate to certain things as they did, so we go to different methods of proclaiming that ancient gospel. And if they work, no matter how odd they may be perceived by some, they are good. To paraphrase the apostle Paul, it does not really matter how the gospel is preached. What matters is that it is preached and that people hear it and respond.

The objection to it may come from the fact that sometimes it gets a bit watered down in the presentation. But I think that much of the objection is from the simple fact that it is not like what we remember. We object because it is not the old-time gospel preaching we liked, but that quite frankly, we would hate having to listen to. Bombastic preaching gets old after a while.

Presenting the gospel in dance, in music, in drama – in anything is good as long as the gospel is presented. To insist on one style over all others is to go counter to Paul’s comment in 1 Corinthians 9:22 where he said: When I am with those who are weak, I share their weakness, for I want to bring the weak to Christ. Yes, I try to find common ground with everyone, doing everything I can to save some.

All do not receive it the same, some even have absolutely no spiritual context with which to receive. They do not even now how to do so. They are approached  totally differently than those who know a little or even know a lot and have turned away.

The point is to seek and to find. As long as the gospel message remains pure, it does not matter how it is presented.