The American church’s fascination with gimmicks and shows is well documented as well as deeply distressing. Too much effort is given to having the biggest/greatest/neatest show and too little is given to actually living out the gospel in healthy relationships where people know one another and hold one another accountable under the word of God.
This all comes back to mind with some of the things that will take place this weekend. One church’s plans for “special shows” this weekend illustrate this well. The site states:
During the five performances of the Independence Day Celebration at Cornerstone Church, thousands will gather to celebrate America’s freedom with Nashville’s largest indoor fireworks display, state-of-the-art laser light show, and–new this year–an IPRA-sanctioned professional rodeo… all held within the confines of the church sanctuary!
There are two videos on this webpage.
Here is the first one with the basic info:
4th of July Rodeo Commercial from Cornerstone Church on Vimeo.
Is it appropriate to describe your church as “the most dynamic” in your city? Is this verifiable? Is it intended to a factual statement about this church in contrasts to hundreds of others in the city or is it just promotional jargon?
Here is the second video giving a little more background:
This video refers to these performances as shows but then lists as one of the shows the meeting at 10am on Sunday. This “show” taking place during the time of corporate worship will be a gathering “to celebrate America’s freedom.” The promotional poster says this will be “a legendary salute to the greatest Country in the World.”
We need to give up on the flashy shows and embrace simple gospel ministry. We also need to be clear about the distinction between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man.
Joel, you are right that the defense would be that this reaches people. But I’d like to ask if this is really the case. Sure you can gather a crowd, but does this really reach people or does it encourage people to not take the church seriously. Do we not think the watching world sees how shallow and silly this is? Will people look to people who do this for answers to the great issues of their souls?
$10,000 in prize money?! Are you kidding?
I’d like to know how they define “dynamic” and how their definition would compare with the Jerusalem church in Acts 2.
Of course all this is defended with the idea that this is what it takes to reach non-believers in the 21st century. In business, there is a saying, “what it takes to get ’em is what it takes to keep ’em.” If we sell people on entertainment vale then we’ll always have to compete with other forms of entertainment to reach that audience. My suspicion is that we all just want to be though of as “cool.”
We have our own set of issues in Canada, but wow – this is very disconcerting.
amen.
Totally agreed. Well said.