The Circus Driven Church — E.A. Johnston

The Great Commission and the Holy Purpose of the Church

Whenever the church fails to carry out the mandate of the Great Commission and proactively storm the gates of hell, then a vacuum is created. A healthy church advances the gospel to the ends of the earth and makes disciples.

Its members exude vital Christianity through lives of surrender and holiness. A God-honoring church is a house of prayer, and a God-honoring pastor will preach the full counsel of God and warn sinners of a coming judgment and an eternal place of misery called hell.

But when the church becomes like the world and has an agenda different than New Testament Christianity, it brings a damning influence to all who enter its doors. When a church becomes an organization that is obsessed with church growth and people become nothing more than numbers, then something is drastically wrong.

The Circus-Driven Church as a Substitute for Biblical Christianity

I want to address today a dangerous trend in the American church, and it's a deadly blow to vital Christianity, to which I refer as the circus-driven church where a pastor runs his church along the same lines as a circus to gather in crowds.

I recently visited a circus-driven church. I drove up to a vast campus and entered what should have been the sanctuary of the church, but I am reluctant to use the term sanctuary. It was a huge room with a blue lit-up stage.

There were about 4 ,000 to 5 ,000 people crawling over each other's backs trying to find a seat. It took me a long time just to find a place to sit on the very back row. There was a manufactured atmosphere of excitement, plenty of loud music, and a technology-driven light show which resembled more of a nightclub than a church sanctuary.

Up on the stage there was no pulpit, and when the pastor came out he was in casual clothes. His shirt was not even tucked in, and he addressed the crowd by talking about all the activities the church had to offer them, and up on the big screen he showed them all those activities of the church, but there were so many activities you couldn't keep up with that visual media show of them as one after another flashed on the big screen.

Then the pastor made a plea for money saying it was important to continue to grow this church, and they needed to be responsible stewards by giving to grow God's kingdom, and he had the ushers take up a collection before he even began his message.

When he began his message I saw why there was no need for a pulpit. He didn't preach a sermon, he just talked. He made conversation that was intended to keep your attention and make you feel good about yourself.

The main attraction wasn't his message, it was the experience of being in church. It had a circus-like atmosphere of excitement. It was loud and colorful and entertaining, and everybody had a good time.

And when it was over, they wanted you out of the sanctuary as fast as you could move so the next crowd could come in, so the circus-driven church could be repeated again. There was no spiritual activity going on in that building, for God was a million miles away from the circus called church.

It reminds me of the words of the saintly Samuel Chadwick who said, when a church is run on the same lines as a circus, there may be crowds, but there is no shekinah. Old Samuel Chadwick was right, there may be crowds, but there is no shekinah.

The circus-driven church is interested in numbers, and their number one goal is to attract a big crowd. But when God's not there, it's all a sham. Chadwick's referring to the shekinah glory of God. There is no God consciousness in the church.

Entertainment Replacing the Church’s Spiritual Mission

God's been replaced with loud music, a stimulating light show, and worldly entertainment. When you go to the circus, you go to have fun. A circus is built around fun. The circus-driven church is built around fun.

The pastor making a fun time for all. And after all, a church should be fun, right? Isn't that what the apostle Peter wrote in his epistles? That the church should be fun? That church should be entertaining?

Isn't that what the apostle Paul wrote in his epistles? That church should be fun and entertaining? Isn't that what he said? That's what many today think they said. The church should never be a place of entertainment, but the circus-driven church will make sure you have a good time.

There'll be funny stories and skits, and they'll even show you clips of movies to help you be entertained. But there won't be any mention of the blood, or the cross, or sin, or hell, or future judgment for all mankind.

There won't be any mention of repentance and the lordship of Jesus Christ. These topics are taboo in the circus-driven church. But when Jesus preached, he pointed out the sin in his hearers, and they took up stones to stone him.

They tried to throw him down a cliff after one preaching message, and after another hard message preached by Jesus, the crowd left him, and he said to his disciples, Will you leave me too? But today's circus-driven church will make it a point not to offend you.

It will be politically correct on all points, and it will try to create an atmosphere that appeals to your senses, and the more sensational the better. I was at one of the circus-driven churches down in Mississippi, and the pastor was getting ready to lead the congregation in prayer, and before he began his prayer, he told an off-color joke about him being in the toilet.

The crowd laughed because they were so embarrassed when they were through laughing. Then he prayed. At another circus-driven church I visited, the man in the pulpit began his message by saying he exposed himself accidentally to the youth group while he was changing clothes at his church.

When everybody was after their shock and stopped giggling, he then began his message. The attempt at sensationalism is what many of these preachers are aiming at. They have nothing spiritually important to say, so they say something that will shock you.

Sensationalism and the Defilement of God’s Sanctuary

Sensationalism is everything, but listen to the words, friends, of a wise pastor from years ago, Dr. W. Graham Scroggie, who wrote, Make a show. The people love a show, and you will gain the end of your ambition at once.

The crowd is always ready for a sensation. And, alas, there are always those who are disposed to stimulate religion to fill the churches by the method of sensationalism. But the living God of the Bible takes the defilement of his sanctuary very seriously.

Jesus ran the money changers out of the temple courts with a whip, and he overthrew their tables. And in the book of Ezekiel, we hear the solemn judgment from an offended creator in regard to his sanctuary.

Wherefore, as I live, saith the Lord God, surely because thou hast defiled my sanctuary with all thy detestable things and with all thine abominations, therefore will I also diminish thee. The circus-driven church is driven by money and manpower rather than God and Holy Ghost power.

The Feel-Good Gospel and the Consumer Church

The people flock to the circus-driven church because of its felt-need message that will soothe your conscience and make you glad you're on your way to heaven. And this feel-good church will give you some encouraging words to make your journey to heaven a little less bumpy along the way.

People just love the message of the circus-driven church because you can be a member of it and still love the world and still hug your sins and still go to heaven. The pastor of the circus-driven church is like a ringleader of a circus.

He's the master of ceremonies, and his number one aim is to make sure you have a good time at his church. He wants to give you your money's worth, so he'll dig up every joke he can find to make you laugh and have fun.

The music will be emotionally stimulating and contagious like a rock concert, and the very atmosphere of a circus-driven church is one charged with a party atmosphere. I visited one such church and heard the pastor make the following remark as he shouted it over some loud music.

He said, Listen people, you know what I would do if I had a million dollars? If I had a million dollars, I would throw a big party for God and invite every one of you. I guess that was that man's idea of having church, but it's not biblical, and the main problem with the circus-driven church is that it's not biblical.

Rather, it's just big business run along the same lines as a business with the goal of being profitable and getting more consumers in the door as customers. But I must ask myself, why do people love the circus-driven church so much?

Why do they flock to it in mass crowds? I believe the answer is that people love a little religion and a lot of entertainment, and if you give them both with no restrictions placed upon them, they will eat it up.

When I say no restrictions placed upon them, I mean no presentation of the true gospel with its duty of repentance and the necessity for regeneration, the gospel of the cross, and the need for every follower of Christ to take up their cross on a daily basis and deny themselves and follow a crucified Lord.

There is no mention of sin from the pastor in a circus-driven church. There is no mention of the need for repentance or a changed life. The main problem with the circus-driven church is that it's successful from the world's vantage point.

Church Growth, the Great Commission, and Man-Centered Methods

It draws a big crowd, and it makes a big noise, just like a circus, and when other churches in the community see the success and expanding campus of the circus-driven church, they are apt to follow in their footsteps.

After all, if you are a pastor and your church is on the grow, that's all that matters, right? I'll never forget standing in my camp and gown at my seminary on graduation day, and next to me in line was a pastor, and I started to talk to him about his role in his community down in the south, and if he got with other pastors in his community to pray for revival on a regular basis, and if he was laying hold of God in prayer for revival to come to their community and really do a work of grace there.

He looked at me strangely and commented, No, we don't need revival. We are on the grow. What he was saying was, why mess up a good thing? Why mess up a good church growth model when it's successful? After all, growing a church is what it's all about, isn't it?

Did Jesus tell his disciples when he was giving them the Great Commission, he said, Now boys, go out and build a big church campus and grow it bigger and bigger. Your goal is to attract the biggest crowd you can and keep them at any cost.

Isn't that what he said? No, I believe he said, Go ye therefore into all the world and make disciples. His gospel was a go-and-tell brand of evangelism, not a come-and-hear brand that we have today.

Jesus wasn't into building big institutions. Rather, he was into building individuals. But the circus-driven church is operated by man-centered methods to attract the biggest crowds possible. And that is the major mentality in the church in America today.

The Loss of Spiritual Authority and the Need for Repentance

We have substituted God with schemes. We have substituted spiritual activity with a technology-driven atmosphere of entertainment. Meanwhile, society grows more wicked every day. Our nation is fast becoming a mirror of ancient Rome and ancient Greece, full of hedonists and pleasure-seekers hell-bent on having a good time no matter how wicked the activity.

As long as you're having fun, that's all that matters. And the church is completely powerless to do anything about it because she forfeited her authority years ago by watering down the gospel message to make it more palatable to sinful man and placing idols of entertainment in the house of worship and setting them up in what should have been a house of prayer.

I will end this sad message with the words of a wiser pastor from years ago. Alan Redpath was the pastor of Moody Church in Chicago about 60 years ago, and he made the following comment in a prophetic way.

He said, Today, the Christian church is helpless. Behind the scenes and away from the public arena, we are facing powers of darkness too strong for us because somewhere in our personal lives we have forfeited our right to the Spirit's anointing, His authority, and His power.

In His absence, all we can do is to substitute planning and organization schemes and techniques. Listen, friends. The circus-driven church is full of schemes and techniques, and they will give you a good time, but they do not care for your soul.

They will not warn you to flee from the wrath to come and turn you from your sins and be reconciled back to a holy God through exercise and repentance towards Him and faith in Jesus Christ, but they will give you the price of your admission and entertain you.

And the sad thing is that a vast majority of American churchgoers who think that the circus-driven church is what a normal church should be. But listen, friends. If there is a clown in the pulpit, you can be assured that his message will be as nourishing as popcorn and peanuts.

When the church in America changed from being a house of prayer to a place of entertainment, it lost its credibility with society. Today, society looks at the church in America and laughs right along with it.

Heaven help us all.