WORSHIP-ENTERTAINMENT
The danger
for us is that we will want to keep up with our entertainment culture and its
focus on the eyes by turning our worship into a religious stage show. We must
walk a fine line between offering worship that is appealing and engaging
without becoming simply a splashy performance, and worship that has depth
without becoming tedious and flat.
Many churches
have de-emphasized preaching and worship in favor of entertainment, apparently
believing they must lure converts by appealing to fleshly interests. As if
Christ Himself were in some way inadequate, many church leaders now believe
they must excite people’s fancies in order to win them.
John MacArthur
Preface
from Our Sufficiency in Christ, 1991, Crossway Books, a division of Good News
Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, www.crosswaybooks.org.
p. 21.
Worship
services in many churches today are like a merry-go-round. You drop a token in
the collection box; it’s good for a ride. There’s music and lots of motion up
and down. The ride is carefully timed and seldom varies in length. Lots of good
feelings are generated, and it is the one ride you can be sure will never be
the least bit threatening or challenging. But though you spend the whole time
feeling as if you’re moving forward, you get off exactly where you got on.
John MacArthur
Religious
Hedonism in Our Sufficiency in Christ, 1991, Crossway Books, a division of Good
News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, www.crosswaybooks.org.
p. 151.
There is no
place in a worship service for entertainment. The people are not in need of
seeing how clever man is, but how holy God is… In entertainment the focus is on
man, while in worship the focus is always on God.
Ron Owens
The Worship Service: A Hindrance or a Highway
for Revival, Revival Commentary, v. 2, n. 2.
A steady diet
of performances by soloists or even choirs can have the unintended effect of
undermining the corporate, participative nature of our musical worship. People
can gradually come to think of worship in terms of passive observation, which
we do not see modeled in the Bible. Such a diet may also begin to blur the line
between worship and entertainment, especially in a television-sopped culture
like ours, where one of our most insidious expectations is to be always
entertained. Of course, this blurring is hardly ever intended. But over time,
separating the “performers” from “the rest of the congregation” can subtly
shift the focus of our attention from God to the musicians and their talent – a
shift that is frequently revealed by applause at the end of some performance
pieces. Who is the beneficiary of such applause?
Mark Dever and Paul
Alexander
Music,
taken from The Deliberate Church, © 2005, Crossway Books, a division of Good
News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, p. 117, www.crosswaybooks.org.
By definition worship must be about
God, not my amusement… All up front, the service performed on behalf of an
audience relaxing in theater-style seating… Much of what passes for worship
today is nothing more than lightly baptized entertainment, and therefore is
idolatrous. It is idolatry from which serious churches must distance
themselves.
Terry L. Johnson
Pluralistic
Worship, Tabletalk, June 2008, p. 64, Used by Permission.