Seeking the Lost

In Luke 19:10 Jesus said the reason He came was to seek and save the lost. There is tension that exists within the church today between those congregations that feel they are seeker driven (crowd to core) and those who are primarily focused on equipping the congregation (core to crowd). This week in Grad School, I started becoming friends and having good conversations with a great guy who comes from a different philosophical starting point than I do.

The “crowd to core” philosophy says that a church organization should do everything it can to first draw a huge crowd for the weekend services and then start moving people in that crowd towards the core of deeper discipleship. The “core to crowd” framework focuses first on equipping a core of believers to go out and reach as many friends, family, neighbors and coworkers for Jesus as they can.

I think a healthy church can draw crowds and develop cores—I can see positive in both things. Jesus certainly drew huge crowds to his ministry. He used parables to speak to these multitudes in a way, and with words, they could understand. And many of his core disciples seemed to be a part of these crowds before they gave up everything to follow Him.

However, though Jesus was understandable in His language, the Savior uttered some pretty difficult things that drove people away (check out John 6 for example, where he lost the crowd). In fact, at the end of His ministry, the thousands upon thousands of followers had dwindled to 120 for a few months before the trajectory reversed itself on the day of Pentecost when exponential growth started happening as a result of the overflow of the Holy Spirit.

Ultimately I believe we should be sensitive to the culture we live in. Let’s take a cue from Jesus and use language that is not religious and tell stories that the lost can connect with. Let’s express love, acceptance, and forgiveness to all kind of people who are bound, broken, and burdened. Let’s be careful to not allow our personalities or styles or methods of communication to be offensive to the world who may be coming into our gatherings to see what God is all about (1 Corinthians 14:23).

But let’s also not forget that sometimes the gospel itself is offensive. In 1 Corinthians 1, Paul writes that the cross can prove a stumbling block and offense to unbelievers. I don’t think we should intentionally drive the crowd away, but we can become so afraid of losing the crowd that we end up avoiding the very words that might bring them life.

So, I want to stay sensitive, friendly, and understandable to the lost; but I don’t want to be seeker-driven, I want to be Spirit-driven. If that is true of me, I believe the Holy Spirit will drive me to be a reflection of Jesus who gave his life to seek and save the lost!