Bait And Switch Evangelism

"In 1998, I thought it was the church's responsibility to make church services accessible for everyone. Do the seeker-sensitive thing. Make it completely inoffensive. Make sure everyone was comfortable. By 2001, I had done an about -face. I began to think, maybe, in order to be true to what God called us to be committed to, we need to make it as difficult as we possibly can to follow Jesus, and go from there. Instead of trying to remove the difficult aspects of Christianity, what we did was to put these challenging parts front and center.

When someone makes a decision, they know what they are getting into. The American church participates in bait and switch. They get new people to come in the door and make a commitment, and after they make it, they show them what it is really about. It is offensive. It is not honest! When businesses bait and switch, they get shut down. But the church accepts this kind of thing. Successful churches tell us that if we care about outreach, we must bait and switch all day long, offer a soft-core gospel on the front end, hook them, and then give them the hard-core stuff. I don't think this is faithful to how Jesus modeled discipleship. We really try not to bait and switch people. When people want to know about following Jesus, we put the cards on the table. 'This is what the commitment is. It is hard. It is a narrow path. It leads to death and even to hating brothers and sisters.'

We lead with that stuff. That way, in five weeks or so, when they hear more of the real stuff, we don't need to worry that they will leave. Yes, in the short run, it is more difficult. But I don't think we are going to know the results for years to come. In ten years, I would rather see a deep level of discipleship for a few believers than a surface level for a huge number."

- Mark Palmer, quoted in the book Emerging Churches