We don’t need louder music. We need men with fire in their bones and Scripture on their lips. We don’t need gimmicks. We need pulpits that shake hell when they thunder the truth.

I’ve been in a lot of church services over the years. Some left me trembling at the holiness of God. Others felt like I’d stumbled into a Broadway warm-up act—complete with moving lights, motivational monologues, and a countdown clock flashing on a 60-foot LED wall.

Somewhere along the line, we stopped calling it worship and started calling it an “experience.” The sanctuary became a stage. The preacher became a performer. And reverence quietly left the building. What replaced it wasn’t ministry. It was marketing.

The Shift Nobody Noticed

It didn’t happen all at once. Like most compromises, it was gradual. A little more flash here. A little less Bible there. Until eventually, the Church wasn’t forming disciples anymore—it was managing customers.

The goal used to be honoring God. Then it became about growing attendance. Then about retaining it. That’s when entertainment crept in. Somewhere between “seeker-sensitive” and “purpose-driven,” churches were handed a lie: that the way to reach people is to look as little like the Church as possible. And we bought it.

We traded the weight of glory for the haze of fog machines. Reverence was sacrificed on the altar of relevance. We didn’t contextualize the gospel—we compromised it.

How We Got Here

Innovation isn’t the enemy. The gospel has always advanced through new tools. But tools should never set the tone. That belongs to Scripture alone.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Church Growth Movement reframed the mission. Success was measured not by faithfulness, but by size. Strategy replaced shepherding. Vision boards replaced expositional preaching. And the pulpit began to sound more like a motivational seminar than a call to repentance.

Critique this shift, and you were labeled rigid, outdated, or stuck in tradition. Many churches stopped asking, “Is this biblical?” and started asking, “Does this draw a crowd?” And draw a crowd it did.

But a circus can draw a crowd too.

Paul warned us in 2 Timothy 4:3–4 that a time would come when people would not endure sound teaching, but accumulate teachers to suit their passions. That time is now. Churches didn’t need to reject doctrine outright. They just had to stop serving meat and start serving dessert.

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