Is the Word Not Enough?

The 19th-century Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon was speaking of our day when he prophetically remarked “A time will come when instead of shepherds feeding the sheep, the church will have clowns entertaining the goats!”

You may have seen the headline about a Flint, Michigan minister who has allowed a tattoo parlor to be opened in his church. He states that the traditional church is irrelevant to most people. Does this mean the Word is no longer enough?

A New York City church held what they called a Clown Eucharist. The rector, dressed in full clown attire, administered communion – the Lord’s Supper. This service also included circus music, outlandishly dressed ushers blowing soap bubbles at worshipers, and choir members wearing Viking horns, red wigs and painted-on grins.

Many churches now loudly play a form of rock music to attract people to their worship service. One minister told me that if he stopped using this type of “praise music” he would lose half of his congregation. Does this mean the Word is no longer powerful enough to bring people to worship and keep them there?

This is our own fault. We Christians have come to think the worship service is for the saving of souls. It has become an evangelistic service. We have abdicated our personal responsibility to spread the Gospel. We just let the preacher do it.

Over the years, this has led the church to employ worldly marketing schemes to appeal to the unsaved mindset. Again, it appears that we have abandoned the thought that the Word has all the power needed to draw men unto Him. Sadly, we Christians have subscribed to also needing more than just the Word, as proclaimed by godly pastors and teachers in Biblically sound churches, and instead clamor and search for those churches which will meet our unbiblical needs.

Acts 2:42 tells us the four elements of the earliest church gatherings. “And they (the followers of Christ) continued steadfastly in…….

You will note that this list does not include any grand form of entertainment, coffee shops, special programs, or tattoo parlors. And yet, somehow, in the early church this group of simple worshippers set the world on fire with the Gospel of Jesus Christ!

“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” – II Chronicles 7:14
Pray for the Church. Pray for our nation.

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