God's Seven Hair Care Tips

Relevant leaders don't want to preach dry, boring messages straight from scripture. It's important that they identify "felt" needs and appeal to those. Later, after the unchurched seekers become regular attenders, you can hit them with the gospel, or not.

The important things is to focus on felt needs. And what is felt more than hair? Face it. You're always touching your hair. You always leave the house wondering if your hair looks okay. Hair care is one of the TOP felt needs.

So, how does God want us to care for our hair?

1. First, God wants us to HAVE hair, even if it's just a little. He's got the number of our hairs counted. That means, he expects us to have hair, enough to count anyway.

2. The fact that he cares about something as seemingly insignificant as hair means that little things are important to him. Yes, even hair care and hair style.

3. Is it okay for men to have long hair? Yes. Some of the greatest Bible heroes like Absalom and Solomon had long hair. God's okay with that.

4. How should we care for our hair? Well, we know that kings had their hair anointed with oil. That means that hair care products are biblical. Use some gel every once in a while. Anoint your hair and make it look good. You are reflecting God if you claim his name. Are you a Christ-follower? Then, look your best.

5. Don't spend too long in the salon. Both Paul and Peter warn women against taking too much trouble with their hair and focusing on outward beauty. Still, you don't want to look like a slob for God.

6. You can serve God with your hair. A woman in Luke used her hair as a drying cloth to wipe Jesus' feet. She served God with her hair. Make your hair a focal point (I wish my hair were ten-feet-high!) and you might just open up an opportunity to discuss spiritual things.

7. Gray hair is not a problem. Scriptures talk about gray hair as a good thing, a revered thing. So, if you're going gray, that's OK.

Seeker-hostile churches thrive on rejection, alienation

Welcome to the seeker-hostile church movement. Instead of greeters, we have bouncers at our doors. Instead of coffee bars, we serve Geritol. We don’t have visitors fill out welcome cards; we have our regulars fill out UN-welcome cards and then we send hate mail during the week, listing their sins.

At seeker-hostile churches, we seek to turn people away from helpful advice. We love it when people are miserable. Instead of dimming the lights and playing soft music as the pastor wraps up his sermon, we flood the worship center with strobe lights and blare loud music. We save the soft stuff for the beginning to create a morgue-like atmosphere when visitors first take their seats.

At seeker-hostile churches we replace both pews and padded seats with narrow, school cafeteria benches. On our overheads we flip through the songs at a clip so fast that no one can finish the first line before another power point page is up on the screen. We cycle through four times and then go backwards, all at a rapid pace.

Our youth groups force kids to eat pepperoni pizza every week, no exception, and the only activity is foosball. Every week. More pizza and foosball.

Announcements at seeker-hostile services last at least a half hour and we repeat the word “fellowship” at least a dozen times with each announcement.

We make sure that visitors are forced to shake hands with total strangers at least three times each service; then we pass out hand sanitizer.

When it’s time to go, our exit greeters shout out “good riddance” when each individual walks out the door, just to make sure visitors aren't tempted to return.