BEND, Ore.—Tom McMahon, executive director of The Berean Call, is concerned with the rise of market-driven evangelical churches in the U.S. and is speaking out against the "seeker-friendly" way of doing church.

According to Agape Press, McMahon isn't alone in his belief. Christian researcher George Barna has stated that such an approach is essential in a market-driven society, but says attracting unbelievers to church with gimmickry is not how the gospel should be preached.

"There's a phrase, 'What brings them in, keeps them in,'" McMahon said. "If you bring them in with bells and whistles and all kinds of programs, then you're really appealing to their fleshly appetites, and you have to keep increasing that.

"On the other hand, if you bring them in and preach and teach the Word of God—well, that's the way to go."

McMahon believes the greatest risk with such feel-good approaches is such churches are often forced to water down scripture. He says pastors should not be viewing their church as a center for the lost, rather "scripture tells us we're to be disciples in the Word; we're to grow in the word. A pastor should train his people to be disciples and then go out."

Worse yet, seeker-friendly approaches can affect believers within those churches because a scripture-centered mess is downplayed.

"Once you have the idea that you're attracting the lost into the church, then you have to water down the message," he says. "You have to because you don't want to offend them, you don't want to bring them under conviction too fast. Well, that's a problem."

On his ministry's website, McMahon said the root of the issue is an attempt to force and Jesus Christ into a marketing strategy.

"For example, if the lost are considered consumers and a basic marketing 'commandment' says that the customer must reign supreme, then whatever may be offensive to the lost must be discarded, revamped, or downplayed," he said.

In addition, McMahon said many seeker-sensitive churches attempt to impress the unchurched by looking to and quoting psychologists and psychiatrists as experts in solving emotional and behavioral problems.

"(I)t is denying the sufficiency of God's Word when we have to look to all kinds of worldly ideas and worldly programs," he said. And nothing in the history of the Church, he added, has undermined the truth of the sufficiency of God's Word more than the introduction of the "pseudo-science of psychotherapy."