"What you win them with....

...is what you will win them to." A well-known favorite Christian apologist of mine is famous for coining this phrase in reference to all of the gimmickery and showmanship that is so prevalent in church worship services today.

Consider the case of pastor Jeff Harlow of Crossroads Community Church in Kokomo, IN. Last Sunday, during an illustration of the concept of unity, he attempted to ride a dirt bike out on stage at the beginning of the circus. However, like many inexperienced bikers he probably overrevved the throttle and the bike took off -- down a 5-foot drop into the vacant front row of his church. Harlow sustained an injury to his wrist, for which he underwent surgery Monday. Of course, there is no humor in someone getting injured like this and we certain pray for pastor Harlow's recovery.

However, this does bring to mind once again the growing trends towards the use of gimmicks, gadgets, stunts and other forms of entertainment in an attempt to illustrate Biblical concepts to a postmodern, entertainment-saturated culture. While we are certainly under great Biblical mandate to take the message of the gospel into the "highways and byways" and to be "all things to all people, that by all means [we] might save some," the great risk with gimmick-based preaching is that we trivialize the depth and significance and mystery of the Gospel. Long ago our American culture lost it's sense of awe about things with the onset of mass communication (telegraph, telephone, radio, TV, internet, IM, text messaging....the list seems endless).

When we attempt to use devices and icons from this "aweless" culture we live in, we introduce this same awelessness into church life. We reduce the truths that God intended to be complex down to a level where it is devoid of it's intended meaning.

Many proponents of such practices cite Christ's use of parables during his ministry on Earth. However, this argument completely ignores Christ's own explanation of why he used parables as documented in Matthew 13:10-17. Specifically, in verse 13 Christ explains, "This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do no see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand." Why is this so? "For this people's hearts have grown dull" (v. 15). Parables were never intended to simplify Biblical truth. They were more like riddles, intended to expose the spiritual blindness of their intended audience, while illustrating complex truths to those who had been given the ability to percieve by God's grace.

I certainly am in no position to make any assessing statements about the spiritual condition of the congregation at Crossroards Community Church. But if current trends in church growth are any indiciation, the typical evangelical worship service today is part corporate worship and teaching, and part revival meeting. Most churches today have a sizable number of unregenerate people sitting in their pews each morning. This places pastors in the often untenable position of having to preach a message that both edifies and equips the saints and will also result in a good response during the altar call at the end of the service. Theologically speaking, this is very awkward. To overcome this awkwardness, many pastors feel forced to resort to showmanship in order to achieve some level of success in both areas.

"What you win them with is what you will win them to."

The Apostle Paul, the greatest theologian who ever walked this earth short of our Lord Jesus Christ, never worried much about putting on a show for people:

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (1 Corinthians 2:1-5)