This time of year, Easter, we get mail from various local churches about joining them for their Easter service. I've noticed a common thread in each invitation. One church sent out an invitation to "Come 'Chick' Us Out." Another encouraged my attendance for an Easter egg hunt. Then there was one church that wanted me to attend so I could "experience" something. There was going to be an "experience" for the youth and an "experience" for the adults but exactly what that was to be was left unspecified.
One suspects that whatever the experiences were to be, they were part of something wider, a common denominator--"Come to our church because it's fun!"
No matter the occasion, a current theme is that when you attend, you'll have fun. This is evident in the recent spate of churches on what's become a national holiday--Super Bowl Sunday. The Super Bowl Sunday "services" by many a megachurch are advertised as over- the-top -fun. A prime example was the now infamous service which opened with a man and a woman facing each other while a referee in full garb presided over a coin toss on the platform to see who would receive and who would kick off.
And what was the kicking team to use for a football? A Bible. Yes. One member of the team puts a Bible or a facsimile of a Bible (it makes no difference) upright on the platform -- he kneels as he hold the Bible upright, in place and the kicker approaches it and kicks the Scriptures as hard and as far as she (the pastor) could, to the delight of the fun-loving crowd.
Now this wasn't some devilish place masquerading as a church. It was what people today would call and refer to a a church, the big one on the street with thousands of attendees every Sunday..
It gets worse. As the music plays, a man dressed as a referee swings back and forth riding on a wrecking ball before the cheering crowd. (What that had to do with anything connected to football, your guess is as good as mine.)
The time the staff must have spent on the pyrotechnics, orchestration, equipment, rehearsals, and money on all of this would be beyond our imaginations. "Money" meaning people's offerings to support such a monstrosity as that church put on.
You can see this descent into madness or, better yet, into blasphemy by going to https://www.youtube.com/shorts/l3nAzUh_3wI.
Keep a discerning eye out for the invitations you receive this Easter or any other time from various churches and note what's missing more often than not--are they inviting you to attend a service featuring expositional teaching of the Word of God? Does the invitation say anything about preaching? A good guess would be, "No."
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