Kensington Church in Michigan is the template of the Satanic seeker friendly, purpose driven church model. Oh and they sing Lionel Richie during worship.

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What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written:"None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. - Romans 3: 9-10 (ESV)

"Kensington is a place where everyone can belong, contribute, and make a difference. Our goal for you is that once you walk through our doors, you will feel welcome as well as feel like this place is like home to you and your family. Our hope when you are with us is that you will feel the warm welcome and hospitality of a group of people that are excited you are there and interested in getting to know you."

If you read the above quotes from a website but did not know what Kensington was, could you tell it was a church? Could it just as easily be talking about a new community center or neighborhood program? Is there any mention of God at all? These are actually three snippets from three different site pastors of Kensington Church in Michigan. They currently have seven sites and an annual operating budget of 10 million dollars. You know, just like Jesus designed in Acts, sigh. In fairness, some of these pastors did at least mention God but whenever He was referenced it was always couched in seeker speak to assure those unsaved readers that church is not there for God. It is all about you:

"We believe that God loves everybody (I mean everybody) and He has an incredible plan for your life. I hope you'll check out the Orion Campus and discover a Jesus who loves you and a mission worth your life."

Now beloved let's not get lost in the weeds here. God does love everybody. He loved them so much that He sent His only Son to die for their sins. The problem is that most people do not truly love God. Sure they love the bumper sticker God they create. They love God as long as He does not try and actually be God in their lives. The cold harsh reality is that we love our sins more than God. So we excuse our sins. We marginalize them. Make ourselves feel better about them by comparing them to other people's sins. God? We simply recreate Him in our own image. To fit our sins. To truly be what we seek after - ourselves as God.

Does God have an incredible plan for your life? Absolutely. For Peter that plan was to be crucified upside down. For Dietrich Bonhoeffer it was to die in a German concentration camp while proclaiming Christ. Do you want to know the real incredible plan God has for your life? To save it. Eternally. To see you come to penitent faith in His only Son.

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. - 2Peter 3: 9 (ESV)

So yes, God does have an incredible plan for your life but I do not think we understand what that actually might mean. For the Apostle Paul, God once said that He would show him how much he must suffer for His name. The problem with the seeker friendly, purpose driven church model is they pretend that this purpose is about you when it is supposed to be about God. The king of the seeker friendly world is Joel Osteen and his wife made headlines last year by admitting that even the act of worship for them was a selfish act when she said this in a service:

"I just want to encourage us to realize when we obey God, we are not doing it for God. I mean that is one way to look at it. We are doing it for ourselves. Because God takes pleasure when we are happy. That's the thing that gives Him the greatest joy this morning. So I want you to know this morning - just do good for your own self. Do good because God wants you to be happy. When you come to church. When you worship. You're not doing that for God really. You're doing it for yourself. Because that's what makes God happy. Amen?" - Victoria Osteen

No Victoria. You do not get an amen for making worship to be about you. But that is the slope that the seeker friendly, purpose driven churches are on. When you make church out to be about the unsaved then you are no longer about the Father's business. Instead, you have traded that in for the entertainment business. All of the sermons must be culturally hip and relevant as opposed to biblically accurate and convicting. The true purpose is no longer about saving souls but rather it is about expanding your church membership. To do that, you have to make the unbeliever feel as if their life of sin is OK. That this "Jesus thing" is something they can just try out. Hang out for awhile, see if you like it. What blasphemous nonsense. As Victoria indicated however, true seeker friendly, purpose driven worship is no longer about God. It is about entertaining unsaved goats. We saw this earlier in the year when one mega church played Miley Cyrus' "Wrecking Ball" and Hillsong London performed the club hit, "I Like to Move It, Move It." During corporate worship. Kensington Church will not be outdone however. Here is a clip from an opening part of a recent "worship experience" at Kensington:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIkv08dAWWI

Yes beloved, that was All Night Long by Lionel Richie. The song about life being so good you just have to dance in the streets. Jamming all night long. I remember the song growing up in the 80s but I do not recall it ever having anything to do with God. At all. Like not even close. So why one should ask, is this the opening song of a church service? Because that is the false teaching of seeker friendly, purpose driven church growth plans. One pastor actually played ACDC's "Highway to Hell" before giving a sermon this year. Another church had a live rodeo in the sanctuary where the pastor rode a bull. Yes, a live bull. Another church turned the sanctuary of God into a motocross track and had professional motocross personalities there to perform jumps for the congregation.

But Kensington is not all about false worship. They are also about false messages. They follow the blueprint for seeker friendly, purpose driven church and then some. On their website you can find a "Getting Started" manual, which is chock full of absurdities that fly in the face of the Bible but would make Rick Warren proud. The first page openly admits that they are messy imperfect people who just want to have a dialogue with you. So "check em out" and "let's talk." If this language sounds familiar it is because you can hear it at every single seeker friendly church in this country. When Carl Lentz, site pastor for Hillsong NYC, was asked to state where his church stood on gay marriage his answer was that they had a stance on love and everything else was a conversation. It reminds me of the Garden of Eden. The mistake Eve made was before she ate the fruit. It was in engaging in the conversation. But despite being messy, imperfect people, Kensington promises that you will receive "relevant messages, backed up by top-notch music and creative arts." This is another staple of seeker friendly, purpose driven theology. That there are no more "sermons." Instead there are messages that strive to be relevant to the unsaved. In order to accomplish that of course you have to be relevant to the world, even though the Bible says to be friends with the world is to be enemies of God. Nevertheless, Kensington marches on and in case you think I am kidding, here are the titles of the last four messages given:

"The Best is Yet to Come"

"Needy People (Why you and the church need each other)"

"Thou Shalt Party"

"Created for Greatness"

Beloved, if we think this is no big deal then I am afraid we have missed the urgency of the Gospel message. Tomorrow is promised to no one and when we actually find the unsaved in a church building we are going to tell them they should party? We should assure them the best is yet to come without preaching Christ crucified for their sins? We should puff up their ego by telling them they were created for greatness? The banner at the bottom of page four of this welcome manual exclaims - "Because You Matter"; and you do! You matter so much to God that He gave up His only Son to save you. But instead of hearing that you are dancing to Lionel Richie and hearing a message about how you need the church instead of how much you need God! This is just tragically sad. The manual actually brags that Kensington leadership is "thrilled to have a high percentage of people who are just kicking the tires of the Christian faith."

Kicking the tires? Investigating the claims of Christ? What world are these people living in? beloved this is the new church model for this generation. There are plenty of mega churches who ask unbelievers to "try Jesus out" for a small period of time. If He is not for you, no big deal. Like Jesus is a new car you are considering buying except they are encouraging you to lease Him instead. The next two portions of the welcome manual are standard for seeker friendly, purpose driven churches. First is the plea to serve. The insistence that we were not meant to be alone, which we were not by the way. Their solution however is always the same and exists of two prongs. The first is some form of small group connection. When you are dealing with tens of thousands of congregants there is simply no way to properly shepherd the flock so the vision casting CEO Pastor-Dude sets up these groups. It is packaged as "community" but it essentially is a way to manage a large base of people who you need to keep coming and paying their tithes. The second part is always some form of social justice action that the mega church supports. So we have the appearance of being the hands and feet of Jesus to the poor and needy in this world. I remember when I posted about Creflo Dollar's pitch to have his congregants pay for a 70 million dollar luxury plane I had people who attended his church defend it by saying he gave away free backpacks to kids in need. That is the level of disconnect we are talking about. The church may even arrange "missions" trips, although they usually make those who volunteer pay their own way. At Kensington for example they have three opportunities for you that they are involved in. One involves adopting a school by mentoring or volunteering. The second is a program called Helping Hands, where Kensington connects people who can help with physical needs such as painting, to people in the community who need such help. The third thing offered is to get involved in a possible missions trip.

Now, all of these things are noble efforts and I am not against a church being involved. But without the Gospel none of it matters. You end up with mentored kids who are still going to hell. That leaky faucet is fixed but you are still going to hell. Yes perhaps you get to build a playground in a third world country but traveling across the world with a false gospel saves no one. Even Jesus taught this:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. - Matthew 23: 15 (ESV)

But look at the ingenuity of these schemes. They are designed to give the maximum public relations exposure for the church as a whole, with the least amount of effort expended by the church itself. Everything is outsourced to the congregants to do. Small groups outsources the direct leadership. Adopting a school is not done by the church but by the individual on behalf of the church. The Helping Hands is simply organizing community needs with community resources and as previously pointed out, the missions work is usually funded personally and the church gets the overall credit for "touching the world,"

The next part of the seeker friendly, purpose driven plan is to provide the appearance of being biblically concerned. Leaders are not stupid. They realize that amidst the goats there will be real sheep. So there will of course be men's and women's groups where the promise of going deeper will be offered along with a weekly service devoted to prayer to show how pious they all are. Still no Gospel mind you. Usually the men's groups, women's groups, and small groups are operated under pre-selected curriculum of course, not an actual Bible study. These are fill in the blanks teachings designed to provide a cover of bible-ness without all the messy doctrinal issues. Going deeper really means sitting down in the wading pool. One mega church pastor this year referred to the people in his church who want to go deeper in the word as "jackasses." Another said they were the "excrement in the body of Christ." Even in the Kensington new attenders course Jesus gets second billing:

New to Kensington and wondering what's next? Join us for a brief overview (under an hour) of our history, mission, and opportunities to help you better plan your next steps. Offered one Sunday per month after services, Start is an interactive class for new attenders (and everyone else) that covers the history and vision of Kensington, what it means to follow Jesus and more

The history, mission, vision and opportunities at Kensington, oh and that Jesus guy. If that was not bad enough the next class is called "digging deeper" where you can "experiment with issues of faith." Yes, that is what unsaved people need. To experiment with faith. To kick the tires on Jesus. Kensington is the model of everything wrong with the church today and shows brilliantly how Satan has invaded God's church. What is always worse however is that the seeker friendly, purpose driven models always believe in spreading their disease. Multiplication is part of the devil's design. To get people so convinced that their marketing scheme is not only of God but what the world needs. In their manual, Kensington gives the prototypical pitch:

"Planting new churches is a major way we express God's urgency to reach the world -- with relevant, culturally sensitive churches, locally and globally."

God is not urgent to reach the world with Lionel Richie. He is not urgently try to reach the world with messages relevant to a world that is consigning people to hell. The Gospel transcends culture. It transcends time. It is entirely relevant on its own. The arrogance of these schemes! As if God's Gospel was somehow deficient! As if it just needs some help. Some re-engineering. As if it just needs a good marketing team or a fancy new hashstag. Planting new churches that use the same heretical model that you do only ensures that more people will be unsaved.

Beloved, the rest of the manual had traditional seeker friendly pablum. There is the obligatory shout out for giving as worship because when you have a ten million dollar budget someone has to pay the bills. Smoke machines and skinny jeans aren't free you know. Then there is the page devoted to what they believe. Amidst the usual correct doctrinal beliefs that they apparently never preach on is this lead off nugget:

"We believe that you matter to God. The same awesome God who created the universe (and those pesky mosquitoes) created you. He wants to give your life true meaning and purpose."

So we have come full circle. This is at the heart of the seeker friendly, purpose driven church growth theology and it is simply wrong. Not in the statement but in how they define it. We do matter to God and that is why we ought to be about His business by preaching the Gospel, which is the only power unto God for the salvation of men. No other way for him to be saved. None. Your true meaning and purpose is not to serve in the Parking Ministry at some mega church. It is to proclaim the living Gospel of Jesus Christ. The entire premise of seeker friendly is unbiblical. The base belief is that there are unsaved people out there who are seeking God but turned off by traditional church. Except read the key verses for today.

No one seeks God.

Period. No one truly seeks God. The reason why the unsaved are turned off by traditional church is because the Gospel offends. It is supposed to offend. No one wants to hear how bad they really are. How filthy their sins really are. How reprobate and wicked their hearts really are. Because deep down we all want what Satan wanted. To ascend to the throne and be God. We want to make our own rules and say what is right and what is wrong. But despite the Kensington Churches of the world, God will always be God and only His Gospel has the power to save. All night long.

Karamu, fiesta, forever.

Reverend Anthony Wade - September 26, 2015

Authors Bio:
Credentialed Minister of the Gospel for the Assemblies of God. Owner and founder of 828 ministries. Vice President for Goodwill Industries. Always remember that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.