Karen's Comments on Leaving Church

Couple of days ago, I blogged about reasons people leave church (Letting the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya) Karen had a great comment that got me thinking, and instead of just commenting, I thought I'd dedicate a new blog to the topic and my thoughts on it.

Karen's comments are here (Link)

When Karen asks why don't people seek God first on where to attend church, I totally agree with her point. However, only to the extent of life being lived in a vacum. In a perfect world, people would spend time seeking God's desire for their life in every aspect of it, church attendance included. Unfortunately, people are not such devout seekers of God. I would venture to say that of the people who attend church, any church of any denomination, less than 10% spend time with God about their decision. Instead, people are lead by their emotions and personality preferences.

This causes a problem for churches because part of their job is to reach those who are not spiratually mature and help them journey to a higher level. The problem is that people who aren't spiritually mature become easily turned away because they don't understand the will of God for their life. And when the church tries to communicate to them God's will doesn't involve them leaving because they don't like the style of something it offends them or turns them away even quicker. As a result, the church ends up acting like a kid holding a handful of sand. The harder the kid squeezes, the more sand slips away. So, it becomes the tendency of churches to loosely hold the sand in hopes of keeping it and on some level effecting their lives.

In my opinion, this is where most churches who call themselves "seeker sensitive" mess up. Now I think a true seeker sensitive church is right on its approach, but when things get watered down as the environment becomes less intimidating for the seeker, you end up with a Reader's Digest sermon and lots of frills.

I guess to sum up this never ending blog, people are wrong for not seeking God, and churches are forced to chase these people. Can anyone say Conundrum?