Welcome to the Clown Show

Entertainment equals Detainment

  In rodeos, circus, and other forms of entertainment like the stage, clowns serve the purpose of distraction. One of their primary job responsibilities is to keep people's eyes on what happening so that you do not see something else taking place. A second job role is to fill the dead airspace so the audience does not get bored between shows. They are generally effective, the children laugh and the parents are thankful for the entertainment.

  In my early days as a new Christian, I got roped into many different projects. One of those was running the sound board for Sunday mornings and eventually special projects. Eventually, the holiday season would come around, and year after year I watched as everyone struggled for new ways to reinvent the Christmas show, holiday programs, and youth events. Ah… after all these years I still get tired just thinking about it.

  In those years a pattern was playing out that I never noticed until many years later. It was a pattern of social programming that caused people to evaluate services and programs according to their entertainment value. In many ways what we did helped to craft an attitude, we felt we needed this to make it flashy, colorful, and spin & dance. 

  Within many sections of the Christian world, Psalty the Talking Blue Book came in to teach children to sing and dance with biblical morals in youth groups. I remember in our congregation, no self-respecting farmer was going to volunteer to dress up blue face, blue nylons, with a cardboard box strapped to their back. So one of the women stepped forward. 

  In other, more radical youth groups some attempted to bring Barney the purple dinosaur in. The thinking on this would be to use the world's stuff to bring non-Christians into the church. This thinking of course is flawed at the very core (John 12:32) 

  Many of the wiser ministers finally figured out this was a bad idea as they realized Barney was more than just a distraction. He was the mouthpiece for indoctrination of the New Age. Some of the most early forms of tolerance, acceptance, and moral ambiguity were pushed by Barney to millions of kids. 

  Eventually,  Barney was canceled as the hidden secret of the man who played Barney and influenced the dialogue (the gospel of Barney as some preachers called it) was actually a Buddhist Tantric sex specialist who charged $350 a session on the side.

A Generation - Distracted

  By this time unfortunately the Body of Christ’s mindset had become geared to the flash and sparkle of programs. A whole generation was now learning to evaluate religious services according to the degree of entertainment it provided. 

  This of course created a huge problem as that generation grew older. This affected the bottom line of many congregation’s struggle to keep doors open unless a degree of entertainment was added. Quite simply you now NEEDED the flash and sparkle added to all your services. Otherwise, people would not come and you could not pay your bills. These qualities eventually filtered into regular church services, conferences, and special gatherings. And it was not long before regular Christian music got infiltrated with the same mindset. Worship turned into rock shows as people learned to associate emotional hype, in place of the presence of the Holy Spirit.

  Now am I saying that there is no place for an electric guitar or a band? No, I am not. And that is not the discussion I am having in this article. What I am saying is… what we allowed in one generation is now the bully in the room all ministries must contend with. 

  In effect by making our services centered around entertainment instead of the purposes of the Kingdom in the 80s and 90s. We have trained an entire generation to not listen, feel, and embrace the presence of God. In effect, we were distracted by the clowns for so long, that the Holy Spirit is now an alien concept to much of the Body.

  Perhaps Jesus's statement in Rev 3:20 could be more prophetic than we know. Could it be such a rare thing at the end of the age for people to hear his voice? Not because he is not talking, but because so many have learned to listen to the spirit of the anti-Christ, and not the Holy Spirit?