It's hard to be seeker-sensitive when you work for Jesus

This post is from the defunct blog "Dying Church"

An article by William H. Willimon (PDF):

I recall that great preacher, William Sloane Coffin, telling us Yale students, "I don't see how you can attract folk to Jesus by appealing to their basic selfishness - 'Jesus can fix everything that's wrong with you' - and end up offering anything like the self-less, self-denying faith of Jesus."

When, in Seeker Services, do we pull out the cross? When, as we're touting all the benefits of Jesus, do we also say to them, "By the way, Jesus said that anyone who bought into his message would also suffer and die."

I believe that today's "Seekers" are seeking many things, but I am unsure that many of them are seeking a cruciform savior or a cruciform life. That's fine since the Bible hardly ever, almost never depicts anybody seeking Jesus. Rather, the story is about God's relentless seeking of us in Christ.

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