Seeker Churches: Promoting Traditional Religion in a Nontraditional Way. - book review

Sociology of Religion, Summer, 2002 by Thomas C. Langham

Seeker Churches: Promoting Traditional Religion in a Nontraditional Way, by KIMON HOWLAND SARGEANT. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000, 252 pp. $20.00 (paper).

There is an emerging religious movement in the United States comprised of churches that design their services and programs to attract those who are unchurched. Churches that have opted to become a part of this movement are known as seeker churches. Kimon Howland Sargeant, a sociologist working for the religion program at the Pew Charitable Trust, in Seeker churches: Promating traditional religion in a nontraditional way, explores what being a seeker church means. Sargeant states that the purpose of his work is thoroughly sociological, that is, it is intended to gain an understanding of how culture is produced. He accordingly explores why seeker churches make an effort to recruit seekers and how they go about doing so. Sargeant points out that what makes seeker churches particularly notable is that they focus on customer-sensitivity and innovation in church programming rather than on specific denominational concerns of traditional Protestant churches.

Arguably the most important seeker church, according to Sargeant, is the Willow Creek Community Church of South Barrington, Illinois, an affluent suburb of Chicago. Willow Creek each weekend attracts more than fifteen thousand persons to its worship services. How did this church become so successful? That, Sargeant says, is the secret of the seeker church movement and the attraction that its approach holds for other churches. Willow Creek has attempted to recruit new members through targeting persons it calls "Unchurched Harrys (and Marys)," white-collar professionals, between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five, who do not attend church.

The key strategy that Willow Creek uses for recruiting involves holding a one-hour professionally produced service for those persons, "seekers," who do not belong to the church and who do not even profess to be Christians. Entry into the church is made easy for seekers for they are allowed to attend in anonymity. No one asks names or attempts to seat them. The only participation required of them is that they sing a few songs. The seekers are, however, given a bulletin that lists not only the order of worship, but that also announces a wide variety of upcoming activities intended to meet diverse needs. Willow Creek thus makes entry into its community easy for those not familiar with church. This is Willow Creek's secret strategy for success.

What also is particularly interesting about Willow Creek, Sargeant observes, is that it has worked to share its success with others. Willow Creek has led the way in the institutionalization of the seeker church movement with its formation of the Willow Creek Association (WCA) in 1992. The WCA has grown to include more than five thousand member churches. What do member churches gain from the association? The WCA provides a wide variety of services that include conferences, seminars, regional round tables, consulting services, membership lists, newsletters, employment exchanges, and resource materials.

One of the most fascinating characteristics of the WCA is that it does not advocate a denominational orientation but rather provides a methodology, rooted in marketing, to attract seekers. About 30 percent of all churches that affiliate with the WCA are Baptist, while 26 percent describe themselves as nondenominational, 32 percent conservative protestant, and 10 percent mainline Protestant. The theology of the pastors of the seeker churches, Sergeant reports, proportionately corresponds to their denominational representation. The pastors are firmly evangelical in their theology, that is, virtually all believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God and that personal salvation through Jesus Christ offers the only hope of entering heaven. Although the WCA does not hold out itself to be a denomination, clearly its member churches pretty much share, at least superficially, a common religious outlook.

The greatest weakness of the seeker church movement, Sargeant argues, may be that it relies on a consumerist methodology, rather than religious purpose, to guide it. Sargeant observes that implicit within the seeker church movement is a faith that "stresses a subjectivist and therapeutic understanding of religious participation that is based less on duty or obligation and more on whether it meet people's needs" (p. 164). The end result may well be that the seeker church movement gains more followers, but that those followers might be less committed to the spiritual content of Christianity. In turn, this may lead to a kind of secularizing cultural production that emanates from within seeker churches and that threatens the historic Christian spiritual trajectory.

If you wish to take a look at a work that well illustrates the seeker church movement's strategies and objectives, but that predates the WCA just a bit, you will want to pick up a copy of Robert H. Schuller's Your church has a fantastic future: A possibility thinker's guide to A Successful Church (1986). You will, of course, also want to read Sargeant's book. Students interested in a sociological perspective on contemporary religious issues will find this book a good read. Sociology professors might most appropriately use it as a supplementary text to upper division or graduate courses that focus on contemporary religious problems.