Entertainment In The Church

By: Donna Kazenske

I went to a church service at a particular church a short time ago and was totally amazed at what I heard and saw. I have been to many church services throughout the years that were very similar to this one, but for some reason God opened up my spiritual eyes to see in a way that I had never seen before. It’s one thing to see something with your natural sight, but when God takes the veil away and allows you to see something with your spiritual eyes, it is something totally different.

The so called "worship team" started the whole thing off with an instrumental secular hard rock song. I was so shocked, I could hardly believe what I was hearing. Then they proceeded into the "worship service" singing Christian choruses with loud twangy guitars and resounding bass guitar etc. The music was loud and annoying to me personally. There was NO anointing whatsoever on the music they were calling "worship". They finally slowed things down a bit and began to sing an old Dallas Holmes song and the anointing of God broke through. What really got my attention was that the anointing did not come UNTIL they quit playing the loud twangy lead guitar and began to mellow things out. Was that a hint from God regarding what He likes or what?

After the worship service, the preacher got up and started talking about money...you know the scoop....if you give you get....etc. There are certain truths regarding giving, but when you have to give to get healed, something is not quite right with this theology. Scripture says, "By His stripes, we WERE healed." We don’t have to pay for healing. It was all done and paid for on the cross. We should give because we love God and want to see His Kingdom expand in the earth.

The preacher then proceeded to preach his sermon, which was a good message with a lot of interesting things thrown into it, but somehow, seeing things through spiritual eyes changed my whole perception on this meeting. I was pretty much grieving through the entire service and couldn’t wait for it to get over.

When I returned home I had to cry out to God for mercy. "Lord, start with me. Change me. Create in me a heart for YOU and YOU alone. Don’t allow me to want to be entertained by music that does not glorify your name. Don’t allow me to just go through the motions of playing church instead of BEING the church. God forgive me and deliver me from those things that hinder what you want to do in me and through me."

When God opens our eyes to see things as they really are, it’s both good and bad. Good in a sense that we are now able to see things the way God sees things - reality check. Bad in the sense that it’s very hard to deal with these issues in our finite minds and physical bodies.

I don’t know exactly how to word what I need to say, so I will call it a "spirit of entertainment" for lack of a better term. The body of Christ loves to be entertained. If it doesn’t have a beat or doesn’t arouse our flesh, most of us don’t like it. We call it boring. Teenagers don’t know what to do with themselves when they go to church because they think it’s boring most of the time (and it very well might be boring). Why are they bored? Are they so used to being entertained that nothing else will move them?

Why can’t we just invite the Holy Spirit to come into our services and allow Him to show Himself to our teenagers? Why are we not seeing God move in so many of our churches today? Why are the services boring? Is is because we are a prayerless people? Is it because we have our own agenda and refuse to allow God to move? Is it because we are in a spiritual stupor and really don’t give a rip what happens at church? Are we just going through the motions, doing our good deed for the week? Are we going to church to be entertained or are we going because we want GOD?

I ask these questions in this article because I see a church today much like the Laodicean church in the book of Revelation. They thought they had verything and were in need of nothing, but God told them otherwise. He told them they were blind, poor, miserable, wretched and naked. They couldn’t see or understand what God was telling them because they were spiritually blind. They were a mess and didn’t even perceive it. How many of us are spiritually blind to spiritual things today?