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“There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
Seeker sensitive churches are not part of an organized denomination but are more part of a ideological movement which goes all the way back to the “New Thought” movement of Phineas Quimby. The Seeker Sensitive or Seeker Movement is a collection of churches which nearly all embrace specific distinctives from Biblical Christian churches.
Unlike Bible-based churches which were built on the foundation of Christ and His word the Bible as places for believers to come together and encourage one another, Seeker Sensitive Churches are designed and operated to create a pseudo-church environment which would attract unbelievers into church. To accomplish this they must adhere to most, if not all of the following principles (keep these in mind as you read the history and background of the Seeker Sensitive Movement to spot their origin!):
Truth for Saints founder and author Andrew Hamilton has published a book which equips Bible-believing Christians with a literacy of God’s word so that when an objection or question is raised about the Bible, you will be ready to provide a ready defense for the hope that lies within you ( 1 Peter 3:15). This book is like 7 books in 1!
This book provides the following 7 essentials:
I will provide a brief history of this storied movement and a brief list of many of the seeker sensitive churches that I am aware of including one of the churches that I worked for 20 years ago.
Phineas Quimby
Most historical articles and videos for the Seeker Sensitive Movement tend to begin at Norman Vincent Peale which is fine, he did indeed play a major role in this movement. However, we only need to go back one step further from Peale to see the really dark roots behind this movement.
Norman Vincent Peale’s primary influence was a man named Phineas Quimby who was a mentalist and proponent of mesmerism, positive thinking, speaking and self-help accompanied with hypnotism to bring about health and healing. Quimby’s “mind faith” practices became foundational to a movement known as the “New Thought” Movement.
New Thought Movement
This movement accumulated wisdom and philosophy from Ancient Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Chinese, Taoist, Hindu, and Buddhist religious philosophies as they pertain to the interaction among thought, belief, consciousness in the human mind, and the effects of these within and beyond the human mind.
Adherents of this movement share a set of beliefs concerning metaphysics, positive thinking, the law of attraction, healing, life force, creative visualization, and personal power.
The primary beliefs are:
Quimby and New Thought would leave a tremendous legacy of aberrant faiths and dangerous belief systems in their wake. In the following chart we can easily see how Anton Lavey, founder of satanism can write that the credo of Satanism is to “do as thou wilt and to thine own self be true.” while at the same time that Rick Warren can write in a national article that the 5 principles of self-esteem are to “Accept yourself, love yourself, be true to yourself, forgive yourself and believe in yourself”. Warren purports to be a Christian yet his documented philosophy is identical to that of satanism. The reason for this is that the two belief systems of seeker sensitive “New Thought” and satanism share a common ancestor as shown in this chart:
Norman Vincent Peale
Phineas Quimby and the New Thought Movement would also have an incredible influence on Norman Vincent Peale. who is most famous for integrating these New Thought mind techniques into Christian teaching with his book “The Power of Positive Thinking”. In this book, Peale integrated much of the hypnotist Quimby’s ‘mind control self-improvement’ with psychology of the early 20th century along with his own brand of Methodist Christianity.
Peale also embraced the idea of “human potential” which he received from the liberal theologian Henry Fosdick. This would later be embraced by his young protogé Robert Schuller. It was Peale’s Arminian Methodist background that would be credited for much of the ‘positive thinking’ methodologies needed to change one’s life. His book was a massive best-seller and continues distributorship today in 2025! However, in its day it would be heavily criticized for including many anecdotes which could not be corroborated or supported in any way. Despite this lack of credibility, Robert Schuller and Rick Warren would both go on to cite Peale’s work as instrumental to their ministries.
Donald McGavran
Donald Mcgavran was a Dean of World Missions at Fuller Theological Seminary with a Disciples of Christ background who saw caste and economic social conditions as barriers to church growth in Christianity and in missions. As a missionary growing up in India he saw entire people groups coming to faith and wanted to learn how and why this was happening.
He then developed the “homogenous unit principle” which states that people are more likely to convert to Christianity as a group when they share similar demographics. He founded the first-ever Institute of Church Growth at Northwest Christian College and the American Institute for Church Growth which followed his groundbreaking principles for explosive church growth:
C Peter Wagner
C Peter Wagner was a pupil of Donald McGavran at Fuller Theological Seminary. He was instrumental in helping McGavran set up the American Institute of Church Growth. Wagner was driven by Dominion Theology now known as “Kingdom Now” theology which states that it is the role and responsibility of the church to ascend to a controlling position over 7 key spheres of influence in the world. This idea was birthed by way of a dream/vision given to Lorne Cunningham who would go on to found a worldly missions organization called Youth With a Mission or “YWAM”. In 1976 Wagner wrote “your church can grow” which would be embraced by Robert Schuller, Bill Hybels and Rick Warren.
Peter Drucker was a German writer on Business Managment for 20 years and explored how people are organized in a management sense. Because of his management innovations, he is considered the inventor of the modern corporation.
He was not, however, a Christian. Rather, Drucker was dedicated to the transcendentalism of Soren Kierkegaard which espoused “no absolutes”. Along with existentialism, Drucker’s religious philosophy was formed through Zen Buddhist, Confucian and German mysticism. He spent the very last part of his career seeking to make inroads and influence on Christianity – a part of which he never considered himself.
In the 1960s, He pushed for a new open and equal society and openly spoke of the new concept of the megachurch (McGavran’s principles) as vital to his new society. He believed that churches needed to give people (believers and unbelievers) a new society and new community and NOT religion! He believed that this was necessary to meet the ‘felt needs’ of society and was the most effective agent of change in American life. He taught of the importance of a 3-legged stool:
To promote his ideology, he took on 3 disciples: Rick Warren (who echoed the 3 legs in his P.E.A.C.E. plan for the world), Bill Hybels and Bob Buford (leadership network). Drucker was the architect behind the vast and explosive growth of both Hybels and Warren’s churches.
Norman Vincent Peale and Henry Fosdick’s most lasting contribution to the seeker sensitive movement would be the profound impact they would have on a young Reformed Pastor named Robert Schuller. Schuller would go on to become the “grandfather” of seeker sensitive churches everywhere. In 1955 he started a small church in a drive-in theater and was the first to start fully integrating Peale’s ‘mind power’ into his preaching and theology, even going so far as to invite Peale to speak at his small church.
Schuller adapted Wagner’s principles of growth and joined them with Peale’s positive thinking while abandoning the preaching of sound doctrine. He built the first “mega church” for 2000 people and called it the “Crystal Cathedral” (pictured). He was the first to combine the theology of self esteem which he picked up from Peale along with the marketing techniques of Drucker and Wagner.
He also pioneered the practice of discouraging students from looking into Bible prophecy and eschatology in light of pursuing interests of here and now. This would become an earmark of the seeker sensitive movement. This makes sense as Bible prophecy says that in the last days men will arise and be |lovers of self (self-esteem) 2 Tim 3:2-9. This is quite damning of the entire Seeker Sensitive self-esteem platform.
Willow Creek Community Church
Bill Hybels was a graduate of Wheaton College with a background in the Reformed Church and was a disciple of Peter Drucker’s non-Christian approach to Christianity. He also looked to incorporate Schuller’s methods of mega-church growth into his own church which he planted in 1975 which he called Willow Creek Community Church.
He began to incorporate many practices which became a blueprint for the Seeker Sensitive model going forward:
Because of these unbeliever-driven practices, Hybel’s church blew up and in 2004 he built a 7200 seat auditorium that in 2015 averaged 25000 per week. He had a vested interest in the development and “bankrolling” of other seeker sensitive churches including the new Emergent Churches pastored by Rob Bell, Doug Pagitt and Brian McClaren. Because of this involvement, he would not speak negatively of them despite the anti-biblical stance taken by many of these false teachers.
Hybel’s Willow Creek was originally driven by the youth movement as he famously replaced senior roles in the church with younger “leaders” from his youth groups. Along with many other seeker sensitive churches, Hybels took great offense to criticism and discouraged the practice thus eliminating accountability. This unbiblical practice would lead to a horrific fall into sin for him like many other Senior Paster-led churches.
Photo by GlennDavis, Wikimedia Commons CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
In 2008, Willow Creek conducted a follow up survey of church members after 20 years of the seeker driven approach. It revealed that members wanted more of the Bible and how to read it for themselves. They did not want someone giving them snippets on Sunday to tide them over until they returned the following week. It revealed that the seeker sensitive model was bankrupt as people wanted qualitative growth and not quantitative growth.
Saddleback Church
Rick Warren was a Baptist Pastor who took the principles of the non-Christian Peter Drucker (in Warren’s own words, Drucker was a 20 year mentor to him), Robert Schuller and C Peter Wagner and conducted a poll of unbelieving sinners to find out why they did not like going to church in Saddleback. The main responses were boredom, speaking of money, crosses, blood, sin and hell. So in 1980 Warren planted Saddleback church as a church for people who do not like church. In addition to the characteristics of Bill Hybel’s Willow Creek, Rick Warren incorporated the following:
Optimus125, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Warren’s style of preaching includes hopping around from translation to translation usually landing on a paraphrase like the Message to get it to say what he wants it to say.
He wrote a National best-selling book called “The Purpose Driven Life”. In this book he starts by saying “It is not about you.” then proceeds to make the entire rest of the book at you and what you need to be doing etc. He removes repentance and instead invokes a magic prayer which somehow guarantees salvation. There is no discussion of the cross, sins leading to hell or hell in general in Warren’s false gospel. He then concludes with “You’ve just become a member of the family of God”
He believes that to reach an unbeliever you must meet their “felt need” which is a quote from the unbeliever Peter Drucker and his marketing appraoch. This is contrary to the Bible which says, “For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ. (Gal 1:10)
He popularized a changeover from “Christian”, which is Biblical term for a believer to “Follower of Jesus Christ” or “Follower of Jesus” which can mean anything a person wants it to mean.
Like other seeker sensitive churches to follow, criticism of Warren was not taken well and the following phrase, “I will protect the unity of my church” was written into church polity.
Warren would write books speak at seminars and present programmes to mainline denominations on how to grow a church which caused the seeker sensitive movement to spread across the denominational spectrum.
Like Hybels, he had a vested interest in Emergent Churches led by Rob Bell, Doug Pagitt and Brian McClaren and would not speak negatively of them despite their unbiblical heresies.
He once offered a 60 day trial of Jesus to Alan Combs on National television, laughing “Your money guaranteed back”. A disgrace to anything called Christianity.
In an article he wrote for Ladies Home Journal “Learn to love yourself” he inadvertently revealed the similar doctrines between seeker sensitive churches and satanism (see new religions chart above). He claimed that there are 5 truths of self-image:
Anton Lavey writes in the satanic bible that the whole of satanism is to “do as thou wilt…and to thine own self be true”. Almost identical to the seeker sensitive credo of self-esteem and both equally contradictory to the Bible:
But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power.
Warren spoke on TED Talks which, for a Christian, is a golden opportunity to share the Gospel. Instead he spent the majority of the time boasting on that he had done and gave. The only message was one of works not the gospel. This despite his book stating “It’s not about you” “it’s about making the world a better place”
He often quoted the unbelieving transcendentalist Peter Drucker’s 3 legged stool for a world order. He spoke at WEF and UN and presented his own PEACE Plan:
Amidst riffs and controversies with the Southern Baptist Convention, Rick Warren would retire from Saddleback church and Andy Wood would take over the “Lead” Pastor role.
Lakewood Church, Houston, TX
Joel Osteen took over for his father in the typical “heir loom” model of passing a church to a family member.
Osteen does not share the Gospel found in the Bible but shares the typical seeker sensitiver false gospel that God wants you to “live your best life now” which is a title for one of Osteen’s book. In response to this, Dr. John MacArthur said, “If you follow Joel Osteen’s gospel then you indeed will be living your ‘best life now’ as it will only get worse from here.” I couldn’t agree more.
Joel was cornered on national secular television to provide a statement on the exclusivity of Christ i.e. are Mormons or Jews or Muslims going to heaven? The Bible says that NO one goes to heaven apart from faith in Christ and Christ alone but Osteen responded with a milqutoast “I don’t really know, I just try to stay in my lane and let God deal with that”.
Joel Osteen is a false teacher leading a false church and no one is more faithful to the Phineas Quimby and Norman Vincent Peale roots of the Seeker Sensitive movement than him.
Elevation Church
– Stephen Furtick so-called “evangelism” is at center of church mission – bring in your unbelieving friends, families and coworkers and we preach a false gospel to them comfortably.
– Once “saved” the church is no longer for them. This is in opposition to making disciples of Christ and encouraging one another in the faith
– Elevation website says “We serve a “lead” Pastor who seeks and hears from God” which shows that they are BIG into the “vision casting” element of seeker sensitive churches
– Volunteers must sign non-disclosure agreements or face legal action
Life Church
Craig Groeschel – Life Church 1996
– 85000 weekly today – he claims to have been influenced by Hybels and Warren
He does not use the Biblical name of “Christian” but instead adopts the so-called non-offensive term “followers of Christ” which is not the Biblical definition of Christian.
North Point Community Church, Atlanta, GA
Andy Stanley – North Point Community Church
– create a church that unchurched people LOVE to attend. “Follower of Jesus Christ”
– The title “Pastor” needs to go away as it was only for Jesus’ day (this despite numerous passages)
– Taught that Christians should “unhitch” themselves from the Old Testament
Granger Community Church
Mark Beeson, Granger Community Church
– Feed me! High chair mocking the Biblical Church looking for Biblical teaching and genuine discipleship.
Central Church, Henderson, NV
This was originally a church plant from Willow Creek. The founding Pastor was Gene Appel who left to head up Willow Creek for a time.
I was hired by this “church” to help establish the second Cenrtral site as an “HD” Virtual site in Northwest Las Vegas. It now lists 9 sites and is the 10th largest mega-seeker-unbiblical church in the United States.
It is currently listed as being led by Jud Wilhite but the actual church ‘owner’ of sorts is a man named Mike Bodine.
Like the other seeker sensitive churches, Mike is not comfortable at all with criticism and anyone disagreeing with anything the church embraces. He is quoted as saying, “We tell our staff… if you are happy or aligned with 70% of what we’re doing as a church, then lay down the other 30% and embrace what God is doing.”
Apparently Bodine is a big believer in the bizarre seeker sensitive practice of ministry nepotism whereby the controlling “Pastor” treats his church or ministry as a family heirloom which he can pass to his siblings or children.
20 years ago when I was on the leadership team as Director of Media Mike Bodine’s son Drew was a “worship Pastor”. Today, his son Nick is an “Executive Pastor” which is contradictory to scripture in that the qualifications of a leader or elder in the church is to be “above reproach” which would include the awarding of cushy made up roles to filter money from the church to your own family.
Back then, this seeker sensitive church was called “Central Christian Church” but in keeping with the seeker sensitive move away from anything resembling Biblical Christianity, they removed the word “Christian” from their name. They are now called “Central Church”.
Church on the Move, Tulsa, OK
Willie George – Church on the Move, Tulsa OK
– Originally founded by Willie George in 1987
– Now the “Lead Pastor” is George Whit
– They are infamous for demonic performances in church
Woodlands Church, Woodlands, TX
Kerry Shook, Woodlands Church, Woodlands, TX
The Crossing Church, Elk River, MN
Eric Dykstra – The Crossing Church – Elk River, MN
– Has a vision that he “got from God” to argue with Eric is to argue with God. “we will aggressively defend that vision”
National Community Church, D.C.
Mark Batterson – National Community Church of wash DC
– “vision casting” loved David Yongi Cho’s quote, “Show me your vision and I’ll show you your future”
Harvest Bible Chapel, Chicago, IL
James MacDonald, Harvest Bible Chapel – Chicago, IL
– “a factious man is a danger to the church” build a catapult and put it in the church parking lot. “Holding accountable is a power move”
Fellowship Church, Dallas, TX
Son of Pastor Ed Young Sr., Ed Young Jr., senior pastor at Dallas-area megachurch, Fellowship Church.
Second Baptist Church, Houston, TX
Ed Young Sr. recently retired from the 82000 weekly attended multi-site church. He passed the massive church down to his son Ben Young as if it were a family heir loom that can be “kept in the family”. This is against the Biblical order whereby overseers are based on a strict set of criteria.
New Spring Church
Perry Noble, New Spring Church
– complete obedience to the Pastor. “The jackass in the church is the one that wants to go deeper. You’re only as deep as the last person you serve.”
– Boasted about working to AC/DC Highway to Hell referring to it as “awesome”
– 1Pet 4:4
Today, according to an article on sermoncentral.com listing the top 100 largest churches, the largest church in America is a Pentecostal seeker sensitive church called Lakewood Church at 43,500 visitors per week. Lakewood is followed at a distant second by a Baptist seeker sensitive church called Second Baptist Church with 23,500+ attendees and third by a church called Northpoint Community Church, founded by Andy Stanley, the son of Charles Stanley, a prominent mainstream Southern Baptist Pastor. Willow Creek, founded by Bill Hybels comes in at number four with a weekly attendance of 22,500 but in 2008, according to an article on Willow Creek Shifting Focus, Christianity Today reports that Willow Creek has, through the same straw polls that founded its irreligious approach, recognized the deficiency of the seeker sensitive doctrine in bringing about real fulfilling discipleship and “closeness to Christ” and has begun to move away from the irreligious appeal to offering Bible and theology courses during its mid-week services.
Cultural Relevance = Spiritual Irrelevance
No one receives eternal life and eternal presence with God, from who all good things come (James 1:17), by belonging to the right church, denomination, world religion, or by having a particular world view. Rather only those who trust in the Lord Jesus preached by the Apostles in the Bible, for their own sin. We will not trust in a Savior for sins that we either don’t believe we have or that we think aren’t deserving of hell. But the Bible says that ALL have sin and the wages of that sin is eternal separation from God (death). The good news is that the Bible says that you can know that YOU have eternal life. Click the button below to see if you are genuinely saved from your sins according to the Bible: