After seeing this sign for a church FunFest last week, I realized that our church must be missing all the fun.
Note to self for next ministry planning meeting: fireworks, inflatables, Bingo, and beer garden.
What a perfect picture of the vapid and aging condition of the church today. When it’s hard to discern between the church and the county fair you know the purpose is lost.
Of course, this is not new. American churches have been doing this for decades, and religions have been attracting people with the fun of the flesh for millennia (modern holidays anyone?).
When’s the last time you spoke to your unsaved friends and said, “Let’s have some fun tonight, how about we listen to some sound doctrinal teaching, sing admonishing hymns, and rejoice in the truth together! We can replace beer with the word of God (Eph 5:18), and if we really want to abound in love, we might get to preaching, reproving, and exhorting!”
If the church must compete for the attention of the world with ‘fun’, then we are going to fail miserably. There is nothing about what God told the church to do that would be considered fun by anyone who is not saved and wanting to serve.
The church has turned into a daycare filled with lots of toys to keep the kids from getting cranky. Rather, the church was intended to create workmen and soldiers that men might be saved and come to a knowledge of truth (1 Tim 2:4; 2 Tim 2:2). It contains weapons of warfare and sharp swords to speak the truth in love and deliver us from the damaging power of sin (2 Cor 10:4; Eph 6:17; Col 1:13).
The church was made to see the word of God work in others to produce faithfulness to the Lord through every trial.
That’s something I have learned to enjoy. That’s why the church meets together. Otherwise, pass the lawn darts and croquet mallet.
For your joy in the Lord,
Justin “fun-filled” Johnson