https://twitter.com/laurchas22/status/1687426921586622464
This clip recently made the rounds on X (Twitter). The irony of what he’s saying while standing in front of a mega church platform highlights a major problem in how the western church views people. It’s also enigmatic of the issues I see in how leadership in a lot of mega churches are gaslighting people in the church.
The video shows us a mega church pastor, standing in front of his congregation yelling at them, condemning them, and berating them. He’s a shepherd beating the sheep he is supposed to be leading with a strongly worded stick. Condemning them for behavior that he has been instrumental in creating, through the seeker sensitive movement that his church is using to get butts in the seats (I went through a backlog of their fully produced online services, it's everything you would expect from today’s mega church scene).
Brief side note. I’m not calling out the specific act of speaking strong words to a congregation from the pulpit. And by no way am I saying that a pastor shouldn’t call out the sins of his flock. I think that church discipline and hard words are needed in this day. Especially from the pulpit. But there is a significant level of hypocrisy that I can’t overlook here. And that’s what I want to address.
The modern mega church’s desire to entertain creates a Sunday service that’s nothing more important than a weekly attendance of a Taylor Swift concert, and maybe even less so because you didn’t pay $1000 to get a ticket to church. This pastor is standing on massive stage, with screens larger than some churches, yelling at his flock to treat his service as more than a show. After what was essentially a concert quality worship set, by the worship band. And here we’ve reached the root of the problem. How we worship.
Worship unemotional.
Worship since the the 90s, and as I’ve dug deeper even farther back than that, has lost its quality while gaining pure emotional driven content. The introduction of the individual as the primary level of measure of holiness has created a church that’s more worried about providing individual fulfillment of one’s emotions, than actually providing positive corporate worship. The key word in that sentence is corporate. In Acts we don’t see a church worshiping to fulfill the emotional needs of the newly found Christians, we see Christian’s worshiping and learning about God, and being selfless inside the growing church (Acts 2: 42-47). And that’s what the modern church is missing, corporate worship, a worship where we aren’t worried about how we feel, but a worship where we are attempting to do our best to please our Father. The church needs to move away from individual, emotional experiences into the realization that we are part of a body, and the body worships purely to give the right honor to our father. Worship is not about satiating our emotional needs or affirming our “connection” to our father.
Worship seen in heavenly places by both the prophet Isaiah and the Apostle John show us a thing that is purely about showing the unbound reverence that the Holy God deserves. And despite our newfound access to the Holy Father provided by Jesus’ death on the cross, it doesn’t change what worship should be. Jesus’ death while cleansing us as individuals, doesn’t remove us from the body.
Reattaching the individuals to the body
So why was I bringing up unemotional worship? Because it’s the root of the problem that this pastor is ranting about. He’s ranting about why people are just showing up, getting their emotional cup filled and walking back out the door. Yet it’s the kind of service that his very church puts on that is perpetuating the problem.
So, what’s my answer to the problem. Reattaching the individual to the body. Years of preaching and teaching from the western church has elevated the well-being and significances of the individual and their emotions over the church body and community. Reattaching the individual to the body is going to do the following:
1. Elevate the well-being of the church and the community above self.
2. Remove the pure emotional tie of worship and church to one’s self-happiness, religiousness, and salvation.
3. Help people realize that salvation is more than moving from weekly emotional high to weekly emotional high.
4. Connect the individual to others in the church body.
5. Create a church community that cares about others and understands that there is more to the church outside of ourselves.
Let’s dig into these.
Elevate the well-being of the church and the community above self.
Individuality over the church has become the primary teaching of the western church. We have made every bit of worship about ourselves. Communion, not a thing to be done as a group together or even as a family, but a brief time for individual introspection and asking of forgiveness, to worship songs not being a measure of our praise for God, but an emotional experience that satiates our individual need to “feel close to God”. Bringing these signs of worship to a corporate level, returning to traditional worship songs, Psalms and Hymns. And make communion a weekly corporate sign of our community’s desire to uphold God’s laws and systems. As we do this, people will begin to understand the strength of the Body of Christ and how it is greater than themselves.
Remove the pure emotional tie of worship and church to one’s self-happiness, religiousness, and salvation.
As I stated before, the church continues to teach that salvation is purely an individual experience that gives us emotional fulfillment and happiness throughout our life. Because of this we don’t need to worry about our Church, we don’t need to have community in our Church, and so we only need to attend Church if we need to fill up our emotional cup for the week. And once a given church fails to meet our emotional needs, it’s time to find a new church that better fills up our cup. If we can return to a less individual/emotional centered church, we will reattach to each other, and realize that church is as much about spending as much time as we can with each other, and fulfilling the entire worship service, as a service to our God with others. People will stop running out the doors, emotionally filled up, to get to out of the parking lot and off to the next thing that makes them happy.
Help people realize that salvation is more than moving from weekly emotional high to weekly emotional high.
The church is struggling to run even the most basic worship team these days. The constant search for people to even do the basics like greeting or widow’s ministry is all consuming of the church’s leadership. This can be directly attributed back to the individualistic, emotional cup filling service that the church has moved to provide. There isn’t any need to do anything other than selfishly show up at church, get served, punt your kids off to kid’s church to get a break from their annoying squirming in church, and then get your emotional needs met before running off to watch the Sunday sports ball game. Returning these people to the body, calling out their selfishness and highlighting their need to serve others as a part of salvation will probably cause a significant decrease in church attendance, but will cause a stronger church that can weather the trials of this life.
Connect the individual to others in the church body.
Returning to things like feasting, mens events, and other forms of community need to be emphasized by the church. Leading people to build real relationships, community and intimacy with others is integral to this Christian life. In a society that has driven people into seclusion, through moving away from family, social media, and Covid, the church driving for more interaction and community is truly different from the culture. If I have friends and family at my church, I’m less likely to run out the door to go back to the isolation of my house, and more likely to spend time in fellowship at church.
Create a church community that cares about others and understands that there is more to the church outside of ourselves.
The church needs to be teaching that participation in the rat race of life isn’t the guiding principle of the bible. The church has become just as materialistic as society. Please do not read that as a statement against wealth building or community building. This is a statement against Christian’s participation in so many extra-curricular activities, in detriment to their biblical responsibilities to their family and their church community. While sports, theater and other pursuits are worthwhile way to spend our time, the all-encompassing way our world has made these activities take over our lives. Sports ball practice 7 days a week for 2 hours, with games 3 days a week, including travel all over on the weekends. 2-hour dance lessons 4 days a week for 5-year-old kids. The members of the church are just as guilty of chasing these unlikely dreams of extreme professional success at the cost of their families and their church. We need to realize that being a regular guy, making regular money, building a family isn’t a disgrace. On the contrary! This should be the goal of our lives! Be fruitful and multiply!
And once you have built your family, work to build the church. Take your family to church, volunteer to help, host meals with others in the church. These are all the things that we should be focusing on. Raising sons and daughters who understand how to be men and women who raise Godly families. Not hoping our sons or heaven forbid, our daughters become sports ball players who make millions to lift our families up in worldly success. And to be clear I’m not preaching the poverty gospel. I think that a man should work hard and provide all that is best for his family, but richness shouldn’t be measured purely in the dollars in one’s bank account or the number of toys one has.
Let do this.
So instead of berating our fellow believers for our failures as leaders, let’s lead them to a better relationship with God that fulfills their needs as well as helps them engage and participate in the body of Christ. Engage with them, help them understand where they are wrong, but give them alternatives. Let’s remove the emotionality of our services in favor of right worship of the living God. Let’s go build the church into a bulwark that can withstand the trials of this culture for generations to come, not something that will be dashed on the rocks when the first gale blows.