I’ve been around a long time. Way back in the 80’s, the era of leggings and misused hairspray, I took part in conversations with church people about how to make Christianity appealing to rich, self-centered Americans. We came up with a thing called, “Youth Ministry”.
Youth Ministry involved converting the teachings of Christianity into games, skits, and roller skating parties so that learning the gospel would be fun. We knew that the Bible is pretty dull and church needed revamping in order to compete with movies, television, and Pong™ So, we started showing movies and playing video games in church.
Oh, and we replaced chairs with couches. Couches were more comfortable than chairs and made kids more receptive to Bible study should they still be awake when the movie ended.
We created something that I call, “The Youth Ministry Gospel” (YMG). The goal of YMG is for everybody to have a good time. Proponents of YMG believe the gospel is best presented as a party. They say things like, “Church doesn’t need to be boring. Christians can have fun too!”
I uttered those phrases myself.
Our intentions were good. We sincerely believed we were making disciples. We thought it was a victory for the kingdom when someone told us, “Youth group is a blast!” It’s taken me 30 years to realize that just because “church is fun” doesn’t mean church is effectively proclaiming the gospel.
A lot of people from my YMG days don’t go to church anymore. Many of them don’t claim to be Christians anymore. It seems that a lasting faith requires more than puppet shows and roller skating with the youth pastor. I had no idea…
I’ve heard the testimonies of numerous people who have “walked away” from their faith. While they claim to have a unique “journey” their “reasons” for abandoning Christianity are essentially the same – “feelings”.
“Because so many churches are teaching little girls that the best thing for them in life is to grow up, get married, and submit to their husband. Because churches have been hijacked by American nationalist christians, who bow to country over Kingdom. Because I watch so many christians checking their morals at the door in order to support a conservative of any kind, even if they’re racist, misogynistic, and locking kids in cages.”
Ex-Christian / Worship Pastor
“I am not in any more. I want genuine truth. Not the “I just believe it” kind of truth. Science keeps piercing the truth of every religion. Lots of things help people change their lives, not just one version of God.”
Ex-Christian / International Recording Artist
These (and dozens of others) are not the testimonies of thoughtful believers. These are the angry words of spoiled children. This is the result of feeding people donuts instead of the bread of life. Our method of “doing whatever it takes to get people to come to church” has yielded generations of church people who haven’t heard the gospel.
I’ve seen bumper stickers and T-shirts proclaiming, “I Love My Church!”
This statement needs clarification. Why do you love your church? I think it might be because the people are “awesome” and the music is “fantastic” and the preacher is “relevant” and you “feel like you belong”. In other words, it’s got nothing to do with Jesus. Loving God is not the same as loving a brand.
Your faith must be rooted in Christ. When your faith is dictated by your feelings, you’ll eventually leave that faith because feelings are not permanent. Emotions come and go.
The result of ignoring doctrine for the sake of “fun” is Christians ditching Christianity the moment they experience crisis. Jesus didn’t say, “Follow me and we’ll party.” He said following Him costs everything. That’s not a popular thing to tell rich, self-centered Americans. But it is the truth.
Do not put your trust in princes,
Psalm 146:3
in mortal men, who cannot save.
When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;
on that very day their plans come to nothing.
16 Responses
30 years ago, the church we attended at the time was definitely into the ‘Being a Christian is fun’. I was talking to a older lady from that same church who had serious concerns about that direction. Her concern was, being a Christian is not always fun, and if that is what you are expecting, you are going to be very disillusioned when it isn’t fun. This lady emigrated from Russia as a small child after all FIVE of her brothers were killed in Russia. En route, her little sister died from meningitis within 24 hours of getting sick. She truly understood that faith is not based on fun.
Wow. 🙁
That’s awful.
And, yet, I bet that woman had soooo much wisdom to share. No doubt, her suffering lead to endurance, which lead to character, which lead to hope.
I pray the rest of the congregation was willing to hear her heart about the shallow Religion we so often fall into.
Can I just comment on the irony of The Comedian being accused of hating happiness and embracing misery?
LOL!
I’m going to have some fun thinking about that the rest of today.
😀
Do you think making the Gospel fun is wrong if it keeps the true message?
I think the true message is all that matters. The method of communicating the message varies with the messenger.
My issue is with Ministries that don’t get around to speaking the message because they never stop the “fun”.
I think we can agree on that.
I’d give a slightly different answer (though, in the same vein). I’d say we humans can’t really MAKE the message fun, through our own power. We don’t get to decide. We simply discover what God has already made “fun.”
For me, debate is fun. Thinking is fun. I have much, much, much less fun making small talk with people who are basically strangers while we throw water balloons at the youth minister. (Though, if there’s something about that scenario which IS fun, then we can be sure we’ve discoverd some sort of Truth about ourselves and the rest of creation, which God established first. We didn’t build the Fun-ness all by ourselves.) There’s a saying that “all Truth is God’s Truth,” so I’m just trying to add to that: “all Fun is God’s Fun.” Furthermore, if a hip, fake-smiling, ear-tickling Leader is trying to CREATE fun in order to keep members addicted to the adrenaline high that they associate with “church,” then what he’s actually offering isn’t Truth OR Fun. It’s idol-worship.
I don’t think people should come to youth group to only have fun. However, if you can have fun and then have a serious conversation about God then by all means have fun.
Well, no surprise here John Branyan, but I think you’ve got it backwards. We took the experiential relationship with Jesus, the feeling and intuitive aspects of our faith, out of our faith, and replaced it with materialistic youth ministries, and shallow, appearance driven churches. Those aren’t “spoiled children,” those are casualties of our self absorbed, churchian parenting.
Look at you objecting to,”I heart my church.” Like Ra! You aren’t supposed to be having fun, you’re supposed to be a miserable Christian. Happiness is sin, donja know. Feelings are bad! The more miserable you are, the better your doctrine.
I used to ask why so many people were fleeing the church. I don’t ask that anymore. I get it, totally.
I’m genuinely sorry that you don’t have good feelings about this post.
I’m still praying that God will interact with you–however necessary–to show you how your beliefs about feelings and intellect are contradictory and causing you harm.
I wonder if you can even hear how dismissive and disrespectful your words are? Like, I’m not attacking your dad, I just think he’s really got it backwards. We’ve made church too fun?! Feelings are bad?! Uh, no! A lot of us have rejected parts of the church because it has your same attitude, that, “it’s my way or the highway. I’ll pray for you, you broken loser with your harmful ideas about feelings and intellect.”
Uhm, no, I’m not accepting that disrespect for you.
Oh, I don’t expect you to accept it from me. That’s why I’m praying. I realize you’re not attacking anyone, and I realize you’d rather fight with a human than grapple with the Spirit. So I will let you do that now.
Amanda, I grapple with the Spirt all the time. Your accusation is false. Your hostility is duly noted however.
👍
I love your question, “Why do you go to your church?”. I am.going to be pondering on that today.
“Science keeps piercing the truth of every religion.”
Yeah, lines like this not only expose the spoiled kid syndrome but also complete ignorance of theology or even what a cogent argument for or against faith would entail. For example, science cannot pierce anything regarding the existence of God for methodological reasons.