Granger Community Church's Mea Culpa!

August 14, 2008

Segment 1- More Tom Foolery from Rick Pino and Dutch Sheets. (view the video)

Segment 2- Granger Community Church's Mea Culpa. Is this definitive proof that the seeker-sensitive model is impotent at making disciples?

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Comments

[Miriam J. Nard]

A couple observations:

The pop beads had intrinsic value to the girl as a small child, but she was not mature enough to value real pearls until she grew older. For a church whose stated purpose is to reach the unsaved for Christ, it doesn't seem WRONG to provide pop beads, only to not have recognized sooner that eventually new converts become mature and need to graduate to pearls. While Jesus did condemn those who followed him around seeking merely for their physical needs to be met, that didn't stop him from feeding them and healing them to try to engage them initially!

Has your church taken the Reveal survey? How does it measure up?

GCC's findings are similar to the findings of recent surveys conducted by Pew and George Barna, both of whom surveyed a wide sample of churches, conservative to liberal, seeker-sensitive to main-line. The empirical data does not support a conclusion that any one particular TYPE of church is better than another in making disciples for Christ. The most recent Reveal survey results, as reported in Follow Me, are also similar, BUT THAT SAMPLE ALSO INCLUDED churches that classified themselves as "conservative" and/or "non-seeker sensitive." I am not aware that such churches have been empirically proven to be any better than seeker-sensitive churches at disciple-making. A more logical culprit to blame than seeker methodology is the materialistic culture in which we live.

In fact, it seems to logically follow that a church whose attenders are 57% seekers would not hold to orthodox Christian doctrine by the margins quoted. Doesn't it make sense that if 57% of a church's attenders were seekers that at most only 43% would believe in salvation by grace, the authority of the Bible, and hold to orthodox views of Jesus? It wasn't clear from what Mark Beeson said that those percentages applied only to the 43% who identified themselves as growing Christians or Christ-followers, which would admittedly be a much worse scenario; however, Chris Rosebrough repeatedly stated that the %'s were of the "people who attend Granger Community Church," 57% of whom were identified as non-Christians to begin with!

Clarification of the population of the sample for those questions would enable a more informed conclusion.

Your radio program was linked to by at least 2 sites who concluded that these statistics are "undeniable proof that GCC is producing false converts." That is not a logical conclusion based on the points I raise above, and is just another example of "journalism" that lacks integrity and credibility. The logical conclusion is that seeker churches are guilty of enabling immature believers, not making false converts.

It is not clear whether you agree with their conclusions, although your scorn for the seeker-sensitive movement is quite clear from the tone of your editorial comments.

I much prefer to listen to facts presented objectively as opposed to a voice dripping with sarcasm, by the way, but I'd be interested to know what you think of the conclusions to which other ministries came to based on the content of your radio program.