Many churches do a little something special on Easter. They crank up the choir or play an inspirational video or perform a dramatic reading.
Sometimes it’s an entire theatrical production with tickets and everything.
I understand this impulse. The resurrection of Jesus is THE central event that defines our faith as Christians. We want to signify that with some “special” elements in our worship services. We did a few things like this at the church I serve.
At the same time, there can also be a more questionable impulse at work. Here’s what it is: sometimes we are simply attempting to impress the influx of visitors we assume we’ll get.
We want to pull out all the stops and put on a show that will get these sporadic visitors to become regular attenders (probably not a bad thing in and of itself, by the way).
But in our desire to impress, it’s easy to cross a line. Instead of leading people in worship on Sunday, we find ourselves merely entertaining people in an effort to get them to come back next week.
In other words, it’s easy to become entertainers instead of pastors and worship leaders.
It’s easy to look at your congregation on Sunday morning and feel like the pressure is on.
They got up early instead of sleeping in. They got the kids dressed and ready for church. You’d better show them it was worth it, or you won’t see them until Christmas.
Here we are now, show us a sign
I remember when I first heard the 1990s alt-rock band Nirvana. I was watching MTV at a friend’s house and the video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit” came on.
I was transfixed.
They repeatedly chanted what they saw as the anthem of a relentlessly bored youth culture:
“Here we are now, entertain us.”
Nirvana saw that this is the world we live in. We are accustomed to being amazed. Blown away. We seek out that which we’ve never seen before.
We hope the season finale shocks us. We love watching the games that go down to the last minute. We love to have our Minds. Blown. We want something to talk about at work the next morning.
Worship as entertainment?
So of course it’s easy for us to bring this same expectation into our worship services. We think we’re competing with Netflix and NFL football and Game of Thrones.
The cardinal sin for many churches is that someone would say their worship service was boring. Everything must be fun and upbeat and exciting, lest we (*shock/horror*) bore people!
People expect to be blown away by our music and preaching and kids ministry, etc. And we try to deliver this!
The upcoming series is going to be the best thing we’ve ever preached! You are NOT going to want to miss this weekend’s service project! Our kids’ ministry is off the chain! Etc.
This is simply taken as obvious truth in many churches. Sit in on a staff meeting and listen to the topics of discussion. It will be almost entirely about the “weekend experience” and how to make it awesome-er.
In other words, “Here we are now, pastor. Entertain us. Impress us. Show us something we’ve never seen before. Blow us away.”
Jesus refuses to entertain people
In many ways, this isn’t new. People have been acting on this impulse to be impressed for thousands of years.
Many in Jesus’ day were exactly like the people Nirvana lampooned in their song. They looked at Jesus and said, “Here we are now, entertain us!”
“Show us a sign!” they repeatedly asked Jesus. Prove your awesomeness, Jesus. If you’re truly the king we’ve been looking for, just show us!
Do a miracle. Make bread rain down from the sky. Heal someone right now. Display your greatness! Prove your authority! Blow us away!
This is the impulse to impress. To entertain. To amaze.
Jesus is asked these kinds of questions over and over in the Gospels, and he says no every single time. Every. Single. Time.
Jesus flatly refuses to entertain people.
Entertained people don’t become disciples
If you do a cursory walk through the Gospels, you’ll see that the crowds were often amazed at Jesus, but that amazement rarely turned into discipleship.
In John 6, Jesus multiplies bread to feed a hungry crowd of thousands. They people are amazed! Entertained! They try to make Jesus king but he refuses, instead withdrawing by himself.
The next day, these amazed and entertained people seek Jesus out (they came back the following week to church, in other words!), and ask him to do it again.
Give us more bread. Impress us. Entertain us. We want to be amazed again.
Jesus refuses. He tells them he himself is the bread they really need. This is not what they want to hear, and they leave.
“From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him,” is how John puts it.
Generally speaking, entertained people do not become disciples of Jesus.
They might become fans of your church. They might invite their friends. They might even become volunteers or leaders at your church.
But they probably won’t become disciples of Jesus.
Entertainers don’t make disciples
But there’s something else at work here. It’s not just that the crowds want to be entertained. It’s that we want to entertain them.
Luke tells us in Acts 8 that a man named Simon had “amazed all the people of Samaria” with his sorcery. He was an entertainer, basically.
Philip came to Samaria, proclaimed the good news of the kingdom, and many people believed and were baptized, including Simon.
When Peter and John came to Samaria, they placed their hands on these believers and they received the Holy Spirit. This so impressed Simon that he offered to pay them money so he could obtain the same ability.
Peter rebukes Simon fairly harshly because he thought he could “buy the gift of God with money.”
Simon still had an entertainer’s heart. He still wanted to amaze the crowds. He still loved impressing people, having them come back week after week, calling him the “Great Power of God.”
I think if we’re honest as leaders, we have at least a little Simon in us.
We want to amaze the crowds. We want to “make Jesus famous” (and, by extension, ourselves!). We seek greater influence and wider impact.
In a consumer culture, people want to be impressed, and we want to be impressive. The reason it’s so tempting to give people the entertainment they’re looking for is that it feels so satisfying to be an entertainer!
But just like entertained people don’t become disciples of Jesus, entertainers don’t make disciples of Jesus, either.
Awesome church without Jesus
Why is this? Because all the stuff about your church that entertains people is stuff you don’t need Jesus for.
You don’t need Jesus to create an amazing weekend experience.
You don’t need Jesus to play high-quality, cutting-edge music.
You don’t need Jesus to create a fun, engaging children’s ministry experience that your kids will love coming to every week.
You don’t need Jesus to sing beautifully about Jesus.
You don’t really even need Jesus to preach eloquently about Jesus.
Let that sink in for a few minutes. All those things are mainly what people “look for” in a church. They’re the things we as pastors feel pressure to deliver.
And we don’t need Jesus for a single one of them.
Is the gospel powerful or just important?
The issue is that we just don’t trust that the gospel is actually powerful.
Paul wrote that the gospel is the power of God, which means that simply proclaiming the good news of the kingdom releases God’s power into people’s lives.
But typically we don’t think about the gospel that way. We think of it as important information, but not powerful in and of itself, so it needs to be propped up with “wow moments” and dressed up with entertainment.
Worship is better than entertainment
A.W. Tozer said, “A church that can’t worship must be entertained; and people who can’t lead a church to worship must provide entertainment.”
I have no idea if Simon repented, but I know I can. Every time I feel the impulse to impress, the eagerness to entertain, I can choose to rest in the easy yoke of Jesus instead, and lead people to worship.
I lead people to worship by simply proclaiming the good news. Jesus is Lord. God is love. The Spirit is here. The good life is ours. Grace is available.
I simply announce these things, trusting that God’s power works as I speak, that I don’t need to give the gospel an entertainment boost.
So what’s the difference between worship and entertainment?
- Entertainment depends on my skill. Worship depends on God’s presence.
- Entertainment draws people to me. Worship draws people to Jesus.
- Entertainment causes amazement in the talents of people. Worship causes awe in the love of God.
- Entertainment leads to repeat visitors. Worship leads to discipleship.
Entertainment would be all fine and good if churches were media production companies. But they’re not. They’re churches. Churches are churches.
If you keep trying to entertain people, you might get raving fans and willing volunteers, but you won’t get disciples.
If you lead people to worship, your church will go from being “attractional” to simply being attractive.
What attracts people to your church won’t be the things that any other production company could pull off, but the things that only Jesus can do in a community.
Our job as pastors and leaders is to look at people who say, “Here we are now, entertain us,” love them by refusing to do so, and gently call them to something better.
Thanks for this Ben. Spot on, as usual. Will be sharing with my staff this week for reflection and mining out “kairos”.
I know for us after years of being “seeker” or “attractional” we saw lots of people coming and even people accepting Christ but not being transformed. It was the exception, not the rule to see someone really engage God and be changed. At the same time we have to face the reality of the culture we do live in. As Paul said he tries to be all things to all men so that some might be saved.
There is no doubt that in the last few years we have been through a huge transition in terms of knowing how to engage people in discipleship and point their lives and identities towards the mission for which they were created. At the same time we still believe for many people in our culture, if they are seeking God (or God is seeking them) they will most likely show up on a Sunday morning unless they have been engaged relationally by someone already.
We are still trying to have a high level of quality and programming in our weekend services but now we also have pathways to lead people past that into a dynamic relationships with Jesus. It has been so encouraging to see people moving from the weekend only into families on mission together and at the same time see people coming to a missional community that end up going to a weekend service and realizing they have a bigger spiritual family than they realized. For now we believe there will be power in the two working together towards the same goal. We have only been at it with both of these approaches “firing on all cylinders” for about a year, so the jury is still out but we like what we are seeing. We are trying hard to tell stories of what is happening when people move beyond the weekend and into life with Jesus. I feel like that moves us beyond entertainment to proclaiming the gospel and inviting people into that kind of life. I guess I would say we are trying to make things quality, compelling, and engaging rather than entertaining.
Sorry, I think my response was longer than your post. It was helpful to think through it. Thanks Ben.
Ben,
I thought about this a lot as we planned a weekend filled with worship and activity at our church. The worship service was full and special, but it was full with testimony to the work of God in and through our people. We celebrated a great event serving our community the night before, planting seeds in new ground for us. We celebrated the work our youth had done helping a nearby church plant prepare for their first worship service yesterday and had a our youth pray for that new mission. We celebrated our commitment to justice and are sending the entire day’s offering back out to support our partners who are helping to fight human trafficking around the globe. it brought me a tremendous amount of joy that a big day with our family celebrating together was spent actually celebrating our family and what God was doing rather than trying to convince guests to stay and think we are awesome.
Thanks for the post-
Greg
REALLY good reminder, Ben…especially coming off the biggest weekend of the church year. thanks, brother.
Thank you, Ben. I believe you are right talking about the abuse of authentic ministry by this cultural requirement of entertainment to the point where we can no longer out-do ourselves. It does seem that the result of authentic ministry may sometimes actually look a lot like what Jeremiah the weeping prophet experienced…a shrinking crowd – where people are looking for all the wrong things like having their ears tickled. That’s ok. Better to join God in the still small voice experiences than to wear ourselves out with counterfeit christianity. At least when growth is experienced, it will more than likely be the real deal. To counter my own argument and yours, I think the sower did sow in ways that could look like a “75%” failure rate. So maybe a fragment of the “attractional” church is not all bad and will make a course correction toward authenticity still bringing on some fruit that remains. Whatever any of us do, prayer is vital. Apart from God, we are nothing and powerless. All our righteousness and excellence without Him is filthy rags and laughable…to keep from crying.
So ….how does one “produce” God’s presence? How do we draw people to Jesus? How do we cause an awe for God’s Love? How do we disciple?….Worship? this mystic thing called worship is still being talked about like a production and man -made. I have just been worshiping for so long that I see all of it as is. Man’s attempt to get to God. Its broken. The church is broken and no one wants to say it. The something better is the trick……its illusive and can’t be pinned down.
dpelz Thanks for your questions. You ask four questions in a row that seem to indicate you’re asking the same kind of thing in each question, but I see two of them as legitimate and two of them as illegitimate.
I think trying to “produce” God’s presence and “cause” awe are wrong-headed. One is idolatrous and the other frustrating and futile. Both are attempts to control, and thus they have no part in God’s kingdom of non-coercive love.
But the other two questions are what my whole ministry is about… drawing people to Jesus (not forcing them or coercing them), and making disciples… as I said in the post, we simply proclaim the good news of the kingdom (and live according to it as God enables us, so people SEE it embodied even as they HEAR it proclaimed), and then we watch to see what happens in people as we do so.
For those who scoff or turn away or shrug, we simply let them do so.
For those who lean in, or ask questions, or want to learn how to worship, how to live in God’s kingdom, we joyfully train them to do so.
So I’m not talking about a process of engineering and control, I’m talking about living in responsiveness to God’s presence in our lives, and simply inviting others to do so as well, training them to respond to God’s presence and live more fully in his kingdom.
johnnyprettyman Yes, the crowd may shrink! Like it did for Jesus in John 6. I’ve worked with churches that have seen this happen as they’ve transitioned to a discipleship-focused model. The parable of the sower has been one of the most important paradigms for me in church ministry… knowing my job is to simply sow the seed and watch for good soil has been very freeing.
GwenDeSelm Thanks Gwen! Good to hear from you.
Griff Ray I have loved seeing what’s been happening at Crossroads, Griff! It’s often important for people to remember that high quality music and preaching doesn’t necessarily equal entertainment. It has less to do with externals like that, and a lot more to do with what “levers” are being pulled, and what our goals and motivations are.
In that regard, I really think you guys are leading the way in terms of wrestling with the right things instead of succumbing to “black and white” thinking. Keep up the good work, and thanks for taking the time to comment!
bensternke dpelz Kind of funny……I just rewrote the questions you wrote down
Good talking with you
dpelz I see what you’re saying. I wasn’t suggesting, though, that we can “manufacture” any of these things. Worship depends on God’s presence, but that doesn’t mean we try to “produce” God’s presence. That’s actually the temptation we need to resist. I’m able to control entertainment, but worship is, like you say, a bit more mystical. So what we focus on as leaders is simply creating environments where most of the hindrances are out of the way and people can worship.
@Greg ARthur Sounds like a great Sunday, Greg! Thanks for a concrete example of what this can look like.
@Ernie Hinojosa Glad it hit home for you, Ernie. Blessings!
dpelz You too!
As a worship leader of a small church – aprox 75 attendees every Sunday – we would love to draw in more people. However, with just a me at the piano, a bass guitar player, a percussionist (not a drummer, but tambourine, eggs, etc.) and a handful of vocalists, we couldn’t make it a “show” if we wanted to!
We pray first. We ask for God’s guidance and the presence of the Holy Spirit. We start with our own hearts and why were are there – to invite people to worship God, because He’s worthy of our praise.
We are a simple team of decent musicians, with the right heart for worship and the Holy Spirit is regularly present. If you worship, they will come. If you preach the Truth, they will come.
Thanks for the great post!
Marie Larsen
Worship Leader – Peace Chapel, Morris, IL
Blog writer – There’s a Bug in My Coffee
reebop I love hearing about your approach, Marie. Many times smaller churches labor under the weight of feeling like they need to “live up to” what they hear on worship recordings, etc.
These is a great message that we are not called to entertain but to make disciples of Jesus
Excellent. Excellent. This article is spot on!
Thanks Alexis!
Great article! Thanks Ben.
One of the main problems today is that most pastors care much more about seeing their churches grow in numbers than seeing God’s power in the church or even seeing people grow spiritually.
A lot of focus is put on the quantity rather than the quality.
Thanks for sharing this great information.