What is the primary task of the church–entertainment or preaching?
The Bible tells us that preaching is the primary task of the church. Jesus commissions his disciples “…that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name unto all the nations…” (Luke 24:47).
In the Acts of the Apostles you will find the same thing everywhere. In the fourth chapter we see the apostles speaking the “word of God with boldness” (Acts 4:31). In the eighth chapter we are told of a great persecution which had arisen in Jerusalem: What did the apostles do? Verse four states that they “…went about preaching the word.” In the Epistles, similarly, the Apostle Paul reminds Timothy that the church is “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1Timothy 3:15). And in Paul’s Second Epistle to Timothy he tells him to take that truth and preach it! (2Timothy 4:2).
Today the “street walker” in America is the “professing church” prostituting preaching and truth for entertainment. What motivates this? Simply put, a lust for more numbers, more nickels and more noise! This is an evil so gross, so brazen in its impudence, that even the most near-sighted of spiritual men can hardly fail to recognize it.
Special music, sing-spirations, Easter productions, puppet shows, and “walks to Emmaus” have taken the place of God’s appointed means of maturing the saints and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, converting the lost.
Paul writes in 1Corinthians 1:21-23: “…it was God’s good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save them that believe. Seeing that Jews ask for signs, and Greeks seek after wisdom: but we preach Christ crucified, unto Jews a stumbling block, and unto Gentiles foolishness.” Truly, the foolishness of God is much wiser than the wisdom of men. What would happen, even, if pastors stopped orchestrating, and began preaching Biblical truth; if they stopped manipulating, and began proclaiming “Christ crucified?” Oh how we need to forget about numbers, nickels and noice and return to God’s appointed means of bringing the good news to a dark world.
The devil has seldom devised a more clever devise than suggesting to the church that part of her mission is to provide amusements for the people. How easy it has now become to sit and gratify the flesh and yet maintain an easy conscience…for the preaching of Christ crucified has been exchanged for a costume, or a puppet show, or for a resurrection musical.
Where are the converts who have been won by puppet shows and rap music? All the scoffers and skeptics to whom a sing-spiration was God’s appointed means for salvation please stand up. Let adulterers and drunkards to whom a dramatic presentation has been God’s first link in the chain of conversion please raise their hands. Let the weary, and heavy laden who have found peace through the musical, no longer remain silent. And let the men and women, boys and girls who have received Christ through the reversal of apostolic methods shout the same! But there is none to answer, for entertainments, amusements and recreations have claimed no converts.
Let our exhortation be made to those who, rejecting every other method, have staked all on the preaching of the word of God, who through the power of the Holy Spirit, will produce God glorifying results. And let those who love the numbers, nickels and noise of the “professing church” be warned: “…I will spew thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and have gotten riches, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that though are the wretched one and miserable and poor and blind and naked” (Revelation 3:16,17).