Have you seen the roll-out for The Donut Church?
It's not a real church, of course, just a wickedly humorous sendup of the distressingly common flaws to which the seeker-sensitive and felt-needs ministry paradigms are prone. The design and copywriting people behind the website have a sardonic wit, albeit not a particularly subtle one. The humor with which they critique the seeker-senstive paradigm is more bludgeon than stiletto in effect. More whammy than whimsy, one might say.
The seeker-sensitive and felt-needs models of ministry are, of course, not above challenge. All church leaders, no matter how successful, no matter how convinced of the past efficacy of their methods, should champion any good-hearted attempts by others to point out where our ministry methods have gone awry, even if delivered on the end of a skewer rather than a helping hand. As Solomon wrote, "Faithful are the wounds of a friend" (Prov 27:6).
The early Reformers championed the value of being open to correction, and willing to correct course, crying out "Ecclesia semper reformanda est!", which phrase simply means "the church is always to be reformed." The value being expressed was that the church must always be in the process of renewal, of coming back to its roots. No church can assume what was true or right or effective in the past is appropriate in the present let alone in the future. Our methods, even our theologies, must constantly be examined for need of realignment and conformity to the faith once and for all delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3). (An ideal, ironically, that many modern Reformed leaders seem to ignore).
But I digress. The creators of The Donut Church have served up a tasty confection to be sure. One does wonder though, all that creativity, the insight, the work hours, the money expended in completing and launching the site--how much more might the team have accomplished had they expended all that effort on innovating an ancient-new, better, paradigm of ministry? What if they had employed all their gifts and not-inconsequential assets in setting a table of ministry before the church, instead of merely upending one at which many are already seated, for little more than chuckles?
In many respects, creation is far more difficult than critique. Maybe doing so is next on their agenda. One can hope.