When I was growing up, I frequently invited my friends to church. But there always seemed to be one problem: I never knew from week to week if the pastor would be preaching an evangelistic message or an edification message. Whenever I brought a lost friend, it seemed the message would be on tithing or some other growth issue. But on the weeks I didn't bring someone, the message would be about salvation! I never knew which week would be "safe" to bring an unbeliever with me - so I eventually gave up.

Today, this problem is repeated over and over in churches around the world. This Sunday morning glance around the worship service and estimate how many visitors are there. If your church is average, there probably won't be more than a handful of lost people in attendance.

Even when the sermon is evangelistic, we are most often speaking to the already convinced.

So, when I started Saddleback Church, we decided to specialize our services, having one targeted for the purpose of growing Christians and planning another one specifically for reaching our non-believing friends. We call our evangelistic-targeted service a "seeker-sensitive service."

A seeker service is an evangelistic service specifically designed for two purposes:

First, so that people without any religious background will understand everything that takes place, and second, so that members are proud to bring their non-believing friends to it.

Our members are constantly on mission to bring their friends and neighbors to these weekend seeker services.

You might wonder if we've attracted all these visitors by watering down the Gospel, but we haven't! Being seeker sensitive does not mean compromising the message - it just means you communicate it in words that non-believers understand! Jesus drew enormous crowds (called "multitudes") without compromising the message. He was just clear, practical, and loving.

Seeker-sensitive also doesn't mean shallow preaching. Whenever I hear someone say that the felt needs of unbelievers are shallow and superficial, it just tells me they haven't spent much time lately talking to unbelievers. If you really listen to lost people, you'll discover that their felt needs are quite deep. They have the need for meaning; the need for purpose; the need for forgiveness; the need for love. They want to know how to make right decisions, how to protect their family, how to handle suffering, and how to have hope in our world. These are deep issues!

Another common criticism against evangelistic seeker services is that they cater to consumers. But the truth is that every style of worship service caters to someone: A traditional service caters to those who grew up in that tradition, a formal service caters to formal people, and an emotional service caters to emotional people.

If you want to know what consumers your church is catering to just try changing your worship service next week, and you'll discover very quickly who they are! So then it really comes down to who you're targeting. We should not be surprised that most members never bring lost friends with them to church when everything we do in our services is geared to the long-time Christian who understands all the phrases and knows all the tunes. Even in churches that have evangelistic sermons, you often find every other part of the service is geared for members. When we send mixed messages, we get mixed results.

I believe the most overlooked requirement for starting an evangelistic seeker sensitive service is spiritually mature members who are unselfish. You'll never be able to start an evangelistic seeker service until your members are willing to limit their own preferences and worship style in order to reach lost people for Christ.

If you have an evangelistic seeker service, where do the needs of members get met? At Saddleback we offer in-depth Bible study through our small groups, and an extensive C.L.A.S.S. program geared for the deepening and training of our church members.