Worship for Sale

One preacher had enough of all the entertainment in churches and spoke out.

He said they turn worship into “a place of hilarious amusement.” These gimmicks, he said, “despiritualize the people; merge the high sense of obligation into pleasure seeking; blot out that line of demarcation between the church and the world, which cannot be destroyed without debasing the one and affording rare comfort to the other and its sins…They are full of weaklings with itching ears and sensual stomachs, who measure a church by its amusement–producing capacity. In the end, no congregation gains by having them. These methods abate and corrupt the spirit of gospel benevolence in the church and bring it under bondage to the world. Instead of acts of ‘worship’ and exercises of benevolence, they are scenes of carnal revelry and selfish pleasure. They foster the worldly spirit of self indulgence instead of the Christian spirit of self-denial, as designed by the institution of almsgiving. They are tricks of traffic with the Lord, and devices by which to give him ‘what costs us nothing’…The church was purchased by the blood of Christ for no such secular, trifling, or corrupt purpose. The church is not designed to be a bureau of amusements for the world, strew the broad way with flowers, and cheer on the world’s frolic to perdition. The devil can make his own fun for his subjects, and our young people, trained in good principles, are capable of entertaining themselves. The effort to remove ‘the offense of the cross’… and convert the world by conforming to it is diametrically opposed to the divine plan, and it is rapidly converting the churches to the world. Christ and the apostles never dreamed of making almsgiving or preaching an entertainment.”

These are the words of a Presbyterian preacher in Lockport, New York. They were cited in an article entitled “What Harm is There in It?” by Byron Laing in 1886. We strongly disagree with what Presbyterians taught then and still teach about salvation, the church and other matters, but on this point he was exactly right. We can only imagine what he and many others would say if they were alive today.

“God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints, and to be held in reverence by all those around Him” (Psalm 89:7).

Kerry

West End church of Christ • November 23, 2025