Lately I have been thinking about all the entertaining church services I have suffered though. I have not always been a Christian. But in the short time I have been “churching” as my family likes to call it, it seems as though I have seen the church go from faithfully telling the truth of the gospel (for the most part) to the whole worship experience fad of the late 80s and 90s, to now an era of bringing in the clowns, drums and electric guitars to draw crowds and keep people coming back on Sunday mornings. Typical Sunday mornings see the “sanctuary” so dark when the service is going on that you cannot see your hand in front of your face let alone the person next to you. The room quivers with thundering music and colored lights. Smoke machines give an eerie atmosphere while the band rocks and rolls out the name of Jesus. Entertaining and humorous videos keep everyone in high spirits while still managing to throw in a little dose of spirituality that helps make people feel good about giving up their Sunday mornings to come to church.
Then, to top off the icing on the hype, the pastor delivers his “talk”. He expounds upon the love of Jesus and how all God wants is for people is to be happy and to have true fulfillment. He tells them that if they have faith and really believe that God only wants the very, very, best for them, that they will experience all the blessings God has for them right here and now. There is no mention of persecution for the sake of Christ or any of that stuff (too inconvenient). – End of service – Forget evening services, they don’t happen anymore (too inconvenient).
People leave the morning service feeling mighty lifted up I must say. After all, wasn’t that a “great message”? And the worship band!! My! They DO know how to lead worship and praise the Lord!! (you get the disdain here right?)
THEN these poor souls, still in the grip of their sin, still unregenerate and bound by their carnal nature, go out into the real world to face the devil. They have never repented. No, nor have they been told they should. They feel no sorrow for their sins. Yet 2 Corinthians 7:10 tells us: “But Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.” They go back into the world to face the devil without the armor of God that is given to us when we repent. You see, repentance brings forgivness of sins (John 3:3) and forgiveness of sins brings salvation and salvation brings a new creation.
Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3:1-21 that a person MUST be born again. When we are born again we become a new creation and are FREED from the bondage of our sins. Entertainment or flattery does our neighbour no good; it just keeps them in bondage. Speaking the truth in love to our neighbour and letting the Holy spirit do His transforming work is what saves our them.
If we just entertain people with the assumption this will keep them coming back but never tell them they are sinful, that we were all born sinful, and are destined for hell, if we do this because we are afraid of offending them, then do we really care about them? Do we really care about their eternal salvation? The scenario I have described above is not a new one my Christian friend. The great preacher of the nineteenth century Charles Haddon (C.H.) Spurgeon battled this same foolishness. In fact this is a deception of the enemy as old as the gospel itself. I will end my ramblings with Spurgeon’s short sermon on this topic:
“An evil is in the professed camp of the Lord, so gross in its impudence, that the most short-sighted can hardly fail to notice it. During the past few years it has developed at an abnormal rate, even for evil. It has worked like leaven until the whole lump ferments. The devil has seldom done a cleverer thing than hinting to the Church that part of their mission is to provide entertainment for the people, with a view to winning them. From speaking out as the Puritans did, the Church has gradually toned down her testimony, then winked at and excused the frivolities of the day. Then she tolerated them in her borders. Now she has adopted them under the plea of reaching the masses.
My first contention is that providing amusement for the people is nowhere spoken of in the Scriptures as a function of the Church. If it is a Christian work why did not Christ speak of it? ‘Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.’ That is clear enough. So it would have been if he had added, ‘and provide amusement for those who do not relish the gospel.’ No such words, however, are to be found. It did not seem to occur to him. Then again, ‘He gave some apostles, some prophets, some pastors and teachers, for the work of the ministry.’ Where do entertainers come in? The Holy Spirit is silent concerning them. Were the prophets persecuted because they amused the people or because they refused? The concert has no martyr roll.
Again, providing amusement is in direct antagonism to the teaching and life of Christ and all his apostles. What was the attitude of the Church to the world? ‘Ye are the salt,’ not the sugar candy—something the world will spit out, not swallow. Short and sharp was the utterance, ‘Let the dead bury their dead.’ He was in awful earnestness!
Had Christ introduced more of the bright and pleasant elements into his mission, he would have been more popular when they went back, because of the searching nature of his teaching. I do not hear him say, ‘Run after these people, Peter, and tell them we will have a different style of service tomorrow, something short and attractive with little preaching. We will have a pleasant evening for the people. Tell them they will be sure to enjoy it. Be quick, Peter, we must get the people somehow!’ Jesus pitied sinners, sighed and wept over them, but never sought to amuse them. In vain will the Epistles be searched to find any trace of the gospel of amusement. Their message is, ‘Come out, keep out, keep clean out!’ Anything approaching fooling is conspicuous by its absence. They had boundless confidence in the gospel and employed no other weapon. After Peter and John were locked up for preaching, the Church had a prayer meeting, but they did not pray, ‘Lord, grant unto thy servants that by a wise and discriminating use of innocent recreation we may show these people how happy we are.’ If they ceased not for preaching Christ, they had not time for arranging entertainments. Scattered by persecution, they went everywhere preaching the gospel. ‘They turned the world upside down’. That is the only difference! Lord, clear the Church of all the rot and rubbish the devil has imposed on her and bring us back to apostolic methods.
Lastly, the mission of amusement fails to effect the end desired. It works havoc among young converts. Let the careless and scoffers, who thank God because the Church met them half-way, speak and testify. Let the heavy laden who found peace through the concert not keep silent! Let the drunkard to whom the dramatic entertainment had been God’s link in the chain of their conversion, stand up! There are none to answer. The mission of amusement produces no converts. The need of the hour for today’s ministry is believing scholarship joined with earnest spirituality, the one springing from the other as fruit from the root. The need is biblical doctrine, so understood and felt, that it sets men on fire.” – C.H. Spurgeon
The Joyful Slave 