CHILDREN'S CHURCH

I attended a church service a while back and after it was over, I could have sworn that I'd attended their children's church, not the adult church. And, as the saying goes, thereby hangs a tale.

When I entered the nice building, a friendly and smiling usher gave me a bulletin with an outline with blanks to fill in during the sermon. Also in the bulletin was a listing of the week's activities by which I learned that the church was a beehive of activity everyday of the week except Saturday. Tucking the bulletin into my Bible, I navigated my way through the people who were milling around in the spacious foyer, meeting and greeting one another before the service. It was a foyer of wall-to-wall smiles and friendly "hellos."

I settled into the auditorium and waited for the service to begin. I chose the front row, front pew, center section. A man strode to the transparent pulpit, and after a friendly greeting, announced the tally for the morning. He told us how many had been in Sunday school and how many of that total were visitors. When the congregation heard the figure, they burst into a round of applause.

THE SOUND SYSTEM

The pleasant speaker then told all of us to meet and greet one another while a singing group of six people, in addition to the choir, sang. People came up to me from left and right and introduced themselves and I reciprocated. But I have no idea who those people were, nor did they catch my name either. The reason was that the music rendered by the chorus and choir, although not heavy metal, was of heavy metal volume through the high tech sound system amplified by those in the chorus, each of whom held a high tech microphone and the various microphones dangling in the choir area. None of us could hear anything understandable from anybody, although we were a few inches away from each other because the singers were belting out "Away in A Manger" as if in a rock concert in front of thousands.

WHERE I WAS NOT

One other thing you need to know: I wasn't in a megachurch among thousands. No, I was in a moderate-sized auditorium with some empty pews and others only half-filled.

After many a song and a well-done solo, it was time for the pastor to speak and speak he did over the high-tech sound system which he rendered superfluous because he spoke like the choir and chorus had sung--he yelled, even though he was using one of those high tech mics Bruce Springsteen would wear. The thing was, in that moderate-sized auditorium, there was no need to yell. I (and he and anyone) could speak in a reasonably moderate conversational voice and be heard by one and all, no problem; no mic really needed.

WONDERING ABOUT CHILDREN'S CHURCH?

Now, this is where children's church comes in. As the sermon progressed at full-throttle (it was a yelling of the Christmas story) people were dutifully filling in the blanks of the outline which had been included in the bulletin. This was neither difficult nor challenging because a high-tech power point projector was throwing complete outline on two walls, one either side of the front of the auditorium as he went along.

Besides that, before each blank in the outline the first letter of the word was given, such as, "There was no room in the i_________." "She laid Him in a m_________." If I couldn't figure out the word for the appropriate blank when the pastor said, "inn" and "manger," if I couldn't get it from the given first letter, there it was on both of the walls behind the speaker. I got it.

SAY IT AGAIN, SAM

Occasionally, the pastor would encourage us to speak up. He did this by yelling things like, "Joseph was faithful--say, 'faithful.' Most people said, "Faithful." One one occasion, he said, "Theophany, say, 'theophany.'" (We had trouble with that one; it wasn't as easy as "faithful.") This, "say it routnie" was interspersed throughout the sermon, not often, but every once in a while.

At one point the speaker began a long, rapid litany of descriptive words, saying all in one breath, "God is faithful, wonderful, loving, sustaining, giving, providing, guiding, protecting, leading, wise, all-knowing, all-powerful, delivering, and saving" and as he finished, literally panting, the congregation burst into applause, with "Yes, Yes." After that, his lungs were thirsty for air.

I wondered if, at some point later in life, the pastor's vocal cords would need medical attention. The strain must have been great for this 40-minute yellfest. That aside, he deserved a long nap that Sunday afternoon. What he did was exhausting.

Now, you may be thinking, "What charismatic church were you in?" Ah, but I wasn't. It was no charismatic church, it was a Southern Baptist church in the Bible Belt, USA. It was a church which showed the influence of the charismatic movement.

SO, WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL?

What's the meaning of this? In her revealing book,  The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt, the author reveals an astonishing documented trail, proving that "education" in America is a tool of deliberate dysfunction. (She worked in the U.S. Department of Education during the Regan Administration.) She calls this "educational abuse" and says it's massive and while many see through it, many others do not. The same thing is happening in churches to the extent that we may call it, the dumbing down of the church.

Melissa Cain Travis asks, "How often do you hear serious theology or doctrine discussed in a Sunday School class? At the last retreat or conference you attended, were there challenging ideas of substance being taught and discussed, or was it not much more than a 'Yay, God rocks!' rally that would have been foreign and perhaps repellent to a non-believer?" She has a point.

Dr. William Lane Craig laments, “Our culture in general has sunk to the level of biblical and theological illiteracy…But if we do not preserve the truth of our own Christian heritage and doctrine, who will learn it for us?”

"I must be frank with you: the greatest danger confronting American evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism.." So said Charles Malik, speaking at the Billy Graham Center Dedication Ceremony.

What masquerades as a Bible "study" is a 40-minute emotional bath which by-passes the intellect to emphasize personal feelings, the scratching of itching ears, thus leaving the hearers theologically illiterate with no grasp of the nature of Christian teaching and ideas.

Whatever happened to Luke 10:27: "Love God with all our minds"?

The service was childlike--fill in the blanks (the words will be provided by the spoken word, by the hint with the first letter of the word, and with the power point). Put the completed outline in your Bible, go home, come back next week for more of the same. The problem is that, as Warren Wiersbe has pointed out, life isn't lived by an outline.

Outlines are neat and orderly, but life is messy. No one lives their life by bullet points. The literal, grammatical, historical, dispensational, and premillennial teaching of the Bible demands all the intellect we've got and more (Dr. John F. Walvoord). Peter mentions that Paul wrote some things "hard to understand." (This shows us that Peter had read all of Paul's epistles.) Some of what Paul (and the Apostles) wrote needs further study. Prophecy would be a good example.)

What to do if your pastor will not dive deeply into the Word of God with intellectually careful and doctrinally precise sermons? The usual procedure is to "go talk to him." But talking to him won't change a thing.

Get out. Get out now. You aren't going to change the church. You're wasting your time. Life is too short to spend your years in children's church.