Based on my post from yesterday, someone asked about my take on the seeker sensitive method I discussed. I will do my best to tell what I believe the seeker sensitive model to be and why I believe it is a problem.
From what I understand, the methodology took a rise in the 70’s when Bill Hybels started Willow Creek Community Church. He went door to door inquiring as to what people wanted in a church and took note. Some desired older hymns and preaching. Others preferred a drama or stage play. Some wanted a round table discussion. Others wanted something else altogether. He then created a church where all of these requests were offered.
Personally, I have no problem with promoting to encourage someone to do right. I am not opposed to giving a child a lollipop for coming to Sunday school. I am not against feeding breakfast to adults to encourage them to come to Sunday school. Jesus fed those who came to hear Him teach and preach. God Himself rewards choosing Jesus with Heaven and rewards certain behaviors, choices and acts of service with crowns and rewards.
I do not agree with giving a reward for someone accepting Christ or being baptized. These are personal decisions to follow Christ that must remain untainted by carnal enticement (although I did get saved to avoid going to hell.) I also do not agree with rewarding someone for being the one to lead people to Christ or encourage them to be baptized as I have seen it lead to false professions of faith and baptism.
Where I see the seeker sensitive model go wrong is as follows:
One, they are asking the opinions of unsaved and non Christians how the Christian church should be set up. This is absurd. God alone has the right to describe how the church Jesus Christ died for should be run.
Two, an environment is being created of corporation and customer. If I create a church that appeals to you on the basis of what you want, I must give you exactly what you want and only what you want. What if God commands me as a pastor to preach a passage from His Word that my “customer” doesn’t want to hear? I must now either risk losing my customer or compromise my integrity with the One Who called me to preach. Nowhere in the scripture does God ask man what He wants in a relationship with God and then sets out to give it to him. God does not meet us on our terms, we meet Him on His terms.
Three, a church that is based on customer service is not a church at all. A church is a community of believers just like a city is a community of citizens. It takes everyone working together to labor and serve one another to make a great community. When the church is divided into the servants and the served, you create inequality and resentment. This is not unlike the scenario we are facing in our nation today where one segment of the population is expected to work and provide for another segment that is unwilling to pull their fair share.
The trouble that comes when a pastor such as myself raises these kinds of arguments, is that I am perceived as jealous. The attendance of the church I pastor is around 115 people on average. Those using the seeker sensitive model often become quite large and even “mega”. So, when the peon pastor of the puny church mentions the unscriptural nature of this model, we are relegated to jealousy and envy.
The truth is that size doesn’t equal success with God. Lady Gaga concerts fill arenas, but that doesn’t make her a pastor of a new testament church. If size equals success, then Isaiah, Jeremiah and Hosea were all failures. Incidentally, just because an independent fundamental Baptist church is large doesn’t mean it is successful either. Success with God is tied to faithfulness to God. The “well done” commendation of Matthew 25 is based on being faithful over a few things.
Bill Hybels and Willow Creek looked into the nature of their model and found it to provide numerical growth, but people lacking in spiritual growth and maturity.
I choose to submit to God’s instruction and direction as to what the church should be and how it should be administrated. That’s preferable to the choices of anyone lost or saved, myself included.
Joel Stiff's Adventure 
From what I know about the seeker sensitive model, it seems to be more about people having their felt needs met over giving their lives away to Christ, and I may be wrong, but it seems to be more numbers and entertaining people than the quality of discipleship and raising people to a healthy relationship with God.