Preach Magazine Issue 5 - Preaching to the unconverted | Page 38

38

FEATURE

IT’S NOT WEAK TEACHING,
IT’S JUST REALLY SIMPLE
TEACHING. I MEAN, THERE
IS NOTHING COMPLICATED
ABOUT THE GOSPEL. JESUS
LOVES YOU, GO AND WORSHIP
HIM AND LOVE YOUR
NEIGHBOUR. THERE’S NO
EXCUSE FOR LAZY TEACHING;
YOU WANT TO GIVE PEOPLE
MEAT AND I DON’T THINK
A GOOD WAY TO ATTRACT A
NEW SEEKER IS TO ALWAYS
GIVE MILK.

A

ccording to
dictionaryofchristianese.com
the terms ‘seeker-friendly’ and
‘seeker-sensitive’ emerged in
the 1980s and 90s. This was around
the time churches such as Bill Hybels’
Willow Creek Church in Chicago and
Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church
in California began experimenting
with ways of drawing non-Christians
into church by offering a brand
new, contemporary kind of church
experience.
The dictionary says: ‘The seekersensitive strategy has had its fair
share of critics in the past 20 years,
but even the critics have to admit that
the changes introduced by seekersensitive churches brought a lot of
new people into church…’
Should we alter services in order to
reach people who may not have a
Christian background? And if so – how?
One Anglican vicar has created an
entirely new church in his home town
using a drastically different model to
what has become ‘traditional church’.
The Reverend Paul Oxley’s community
has met in various different venues
in Milton Keynes; a cinema, a former

nightclub now owned by a secular
youth charity, and a bar. St Mark’s
held its first public service three years
ago at Christmas, and the focus from
the start was on the seeker.
Rev’d Oxley was completing his curacy
when he visited his mum at home one
Christmas and saw plans to expand
the city.
‘There were 20,000 new people being
added on to the east and west side
of the city and I remembered Rick
Warren who said you go where there
are large migrations of people… plus
I knew not everyone was going to
their local church in what could be
described as the least churched city in
the country. So I thought let’s try and
start something that is different and
is all for people who don’t go to church
or who don’t want to.
‘I have this belief that most people
believe in God. They’ve either got
lost looking at the stars or they’ve
held a newborn baby. Maybe they’ve
been at a hospital bedside or they’ve
been late for an interview or their
auntie’s got cancer or something and
at some point everyone’s gone – oh
God could y