Attract Them To Jesus

One of the most popular church growth movements in this day involves what is called seeker sensitive services. These services are based upon what has become known as the attractional focused ministry. Those who use this attractional outreach claim that the most important job of the church is to find the needs of the unsaved and then meet those needs. Basically this means, “The church serves as a purveyor of religious goods and services.”1 The job of the church then becomes “bringing people from their culture into the church to partake of the programing that targets their felt needs.”2

Churches who use this outreach claim that it comes from the public ministry of Christ. He met the spiritual needs of great multitudes through preaching. But he also met their physical need of hunger by feeding 5,000 with a few loaves and fish.3 According to them this proves that Christ, “appears to be modeling attractional church growth strategies of doing what was needed to gather many people to hear the preaching of the Gospel.”4

This attractional outreach is much like the entertainment method I have written about in an earlier post. The entertainment type ministry is totally focused on creating an emotional response and make the people feel better. That attractional type finds what the unsaved want, and gives it to them.

The problem with this outreach method is quite clear. Scripture no longer is the final authority for what is done in the church. Instead the unsaved people the church tries to reach are it's authority. The end result of this method is not very different from that of the entertainment one. The people will come only as long as their needs are met. They don't attend the church because of love for God or other members. They only come to consume religious goods.

The attractional method is used in many ministries other than church growth. The difference in using the attractional outreach for other church ministries is that the saved are consumers instead of the unsaved. Just choose the kind of people you want to involve in the ministry (youth, young adults, singles). Then you find what they want in a ministry, and give it to them. Large ministries can definitely be developed using the attractional philosophy. But that does not change the fact that the needs of people decide which decisions to make instead of God's word.

It would be easy to find out what Believers in local churches want the CTT ministry to become, and then give it to them. But that ministry philosophy would create religious consumers who take classes as long as their needs are met. That does not mean I don't think that the needs of others should be ministered to. But the true motivation for taking a CTT class should go much deeper than just getting what you want.


1 Mark Driscoll, Confessions of A Reformission Rev, pg.25, par.4, ln.2
2 Mark Driscoll, Confessions of A Reformission Rev, pg.25, par.4, ln.4
3 Mark Driscoll, Confessions of A Reformission Rev, pg.27, par.1
4 Mark Driscoll, Confessions of A Reformission Rev, pg.27, par.1, ln.2