Is This...Church?

Justin Peters

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Welcome to the program, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Justin Peters. I hope that this finds you and your family doing well today.

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I want to thank you so much for joining me for this program. So if you saw my last video, you know why things look a little bit different behind me.

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That's because I am on the road preaching. In fact, I preached this morning. This is Sunday afternoon, hence the tie.

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But at any rate, I wanted to redeem the time and get a couple of videos up on my channel, even while I'm on the road.

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Last video, I talked about Stephen Furtick, and in this video, I want to talk about some of these popular evangelical, quote -unquote, whatever that term means anymore nowadays, these big evangelical megachurches that make their church services fun and entertaining and draw from popular culture and even the

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Super Bowl to draw in crowds. And the thinking is, well, if we can make church fun, if we can make it entertaining, that will draw the crowds and then they'll hopefully hear enough about Jesus somewhere along the way to make some kind of a decision and supposedly get saved.

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So I want to show you some clips from a couple of these churches. The first is Life Church, pastored by Craig Groeschel, and I think this clip is actually from one of their satellite branches.

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They have churches, different satellites, campuses, whatever you want to call them, in,

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I believe, 13 different states. So there's a lot of different Life Churches.

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The mothership, if you will, is in Oklahoma. But watch this.

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This is from just a couple of weeks ago as they are having a Super Bowl -themed service.

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Watch this. This weekend is 32nd

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Theology. We are having a huge football party at church, which means we're gonna have some Gatorade to drink.

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We're gonna have games for the whole family. Make sure that you wear your favorite football jersey.

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Don't forget about the hot dogs that we are gonna have. This is the best week of football for the whole year.

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Remember, whoever finds God, finds life. Whoever finds God, finds life. Well, I'm not sure how you're gonna find

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God underneath all that junk you're holding. I want to see you this

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Sunday for 32nd Theology. It's where our pastor, Craig Rochelle, uses popular commercials to illustrate biblical truth.

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So we need you to bring your family, bring your friends, because here at Switch, we've got students who are excited to invite you to 32nd.

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I really feel sorry for the kids in these churches because they don't know any better.

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They're being led astray. But did you notice how he said that we're gonna have 32nd

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Theology sound bites taken from commercials, popular commercials? So they're exegeting not

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Scripture. Oh, no, no. No, they're gonna exegete commercials and try to find some spiritual meaning behind the

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Super Bowl commercials. Unbelievable. 32nd Theology.

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Of course, I'm gonna have a hot dog first thing in the morning. It's 32nd Theology. Of course,

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Taylor's gonna win. It's 32nd Theology. Of course, I'm gonna laugh and cry at the commercials.

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Here at home. You gotta fight for your right to party, bud! You heard him.

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This weekend, we're having a party at Life Church Derby for 32nd Theology. We're gonna have food, football, and fun, and we cannot wait to see you there.

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Well, I hope he's not holding his breath waiting on me because it's going to be a long wait.

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I would never darken the doors of that kind of a false church. So I want us to turn our attention now to Crossroads Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, pastored by a guy named

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Brian Tome. And apparently every year around the Super Bowl, they have a Super Bowl -themed service.

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And this clip I'm about to show you is from 2020. Watch this.

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Patterson back with the kick. In each quarter, preachers will be given a random phrase that they must effectively work into their message.

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And my understanding is these are completely random. They have never seen them before.

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Seriously. Seriously? How fun. So the pastor is given random phrases, and these different preachers are supposed to work these phrases into their sermons somehow.

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So the sermon is not being driven by the text of God's Word. No, it's being driven by these random phrases, and it's a contest to see who's creative enough to get these random phrases.

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Worked into their sermon. That makes a mockery out of preaching.

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Any pastor who would do that has no concept of what preaching is, no understanding of the weight of the task, the responsibility, no understanding whom it is he is supposedly representing to the people or presenting before the people.

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God, the Alpha and Omega, absolutely no reverence for God. This is a joke.

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Literally, this is a joke. Well, hey folks, time to meet our players.

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Let's head down to the field for today's starting lineups. The myth, the legend,

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Brian Tome, the pastor.

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And the smoke machines and the lights and the music and all this go off and he makes this big grand entrance with his arm raised and all that kind of nonsense.

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Dear friends, Christ is to be the center of our attention, the center of our affections, the object of our worship in a church.

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That's not what we just saw. This is celebrity pastor worship. This is making much ado about a man rather than Christ.

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Who's the attention on? Jesus? Not in a million years, not in your wildest dreams.

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The attention here is pastor, quote -unquote, Brian Tome and his other whoever he had else there doing this kind of nonsense.

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These are not churches. These are not churches. I'm going to say more about that in just a moment.

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Team Mingo! No, we'll just call it when it lands.

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Call it in the air. Tails! What I'll be kicking. It... Yeah, let's just go with tails.

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Would you like to kick or receive the Bible? I will receive. Yeah, you heard that right. He literally just said, would you like to kick or receive the

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Bible? Tome wins the toss, chooses to receive the Bible. Patterson back with the kick.

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Oh my goodness! Is that a touchback? Can you even get a touchback? First time in 18 years, there's a touchback for the kickoff.

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Yep, she literally just kicked the Bible. As appalling and shocking as that is, in a roundabout way,

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I'm sort of in a sense glad that she did that in that it shows exactly who these people are.

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It shows you exactly what a low view of Scripture that they have.

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How lowly they view the Bible and how lowly they view the author of the

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Bible. They have no respect for God, no reverence for his majesty, for his holiness, at all on any level.

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Church and God himself, Jesus Christ to them is a joke.

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He's nothing more than a byword in these false churches.

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Believe it or not though, it gets worse. Watch these clips from Crossroads Church from just a couple weeks ago.

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I toasted you, said, honey, we may be through, but you'll never hear me.

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Come on, sing! Cause I got friends in low places where the whiskey drowns and the beer chases my blues away.

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You sound great! Sing! But I'm not big on souls and graces, think

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I'll slip all down to thee. So, I've got friends in low places.

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Singing, I've got friends in low places where the whiskey drowns and the beer chases my blues away.

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Boy, now there's a fitting worship song to worship

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God in church, isn't it? Where the whiskey drowns and the beer chases my blues away. Unbelievable.

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This is not a church. These aren't churches. These are not houses of worship.

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These are places of entertainment and blasphemous entertainment at that.

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And believe it or not, it gets worse. Cause I got friends in low places.

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Wrecking Ball. Now, I saw this video posted on Twitter by Protestia and got the video downloaded.

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But as I started making this, you know, getting my clips in order for this video, I couldn't remember the name of the church, actually.

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So, I went to Google and I searched on Google, Wrecking Ball Controversy.

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Cause I knew, I saw people had been talking about this. So, I Googled Wrecking Ball Controversy. And what popped up was,

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I think it was a Wikipedia or something article about Wrecking Ball Controversy. And I could just read the first little bit.

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And so, I knew enough that this was a song by Miley Cyrus, but I had no idea what it actually was.

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I'm proud to say I have never seen this Wrecking Ball video and never will.

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But apparently, the controversy, the first thing that popped up, was whenever this song was released, the controversy was that apparently

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Miley Cyrus was swinging around on a Wrecking Ball nude.

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I don't even know how that video, I don't know where that video was posted. I mean, nude is not, you can't see it on regular

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TV, I don't think, but whatever. I'm not a Miley Cyrus fan. My wife will tell you

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I'm famously illiterate when it comes to music. Unlike Johnny Cash and Ray Stevens, Mississippi Squirrel Bible.

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So, dear friends, apparently Miley Cyrus was swinging around on a

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Wrecking Ball nude, and that's what they're reenacting in a church.

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I don't even have any words for that. The righteous indignation that I feel, knowing that that is what happened, the source of this, and they're reenacting it in a church.

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That's no church. That's a goat farm. There could not, and this may sound judgmental, there is no way that there could even be a

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Christian in that church at all. I'm not even talking about an immature

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Christian, a baby Christian. Because if even a baby Christian understands the basics of the gospel, even a baby

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Christian understands sin, the penalty of sin, what

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Christ did on the cross, I mean, you have to have assent to these basics of the gospel to become a

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Christian in the first place. And if you are a Christian, that means you have felt the weight of your sin and your need for forgiveness.

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And this, I am just at a loss for words. That is not a church.

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That is a goat farm. There can't be a single Christian in there unless some baby

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Christian, not knowing what Crossroads Church even was, accidentally wandered in by some invitation not knowing what they were getting into.

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But I guarantee you as soon as that started, you wouldn't have to be saved more than about five seconds to leave that garbage.

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The pastor, Brian Tome, no way that guy's a believer.

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Not a chance. Not a chance. Dear friends, that is so grievous to me.

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Church, church is not for lost people. Church is for the redeemed.

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A church, literally the word church in the Greek, church, assembly, ekklesia, ecclesia, the ek is a prefix for out and klesia from the

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Greek word kaleo, which means to call. So literally the called out ones. Christians are those who have been called out of the world.

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Out of the world into the family of God. Out of darkness into light.

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Out of sin into newness of life in Christ. A church is where we worship

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God. And by definition, only the redeemed can worship. Only sheep can worship.

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Goats can't worship. Only sheep can worship. This whole seeker -sensitive, market -driven approach to doing church is so backwards.

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It is so contrary to the gospel. And the thinking is, the reasoning is, well, we're going to make our church fun.

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We're going to make it entertaining. And we're going to make our church look like the world so we can attract the world.

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And then hopefully somewhere along, you know, we're not going to talk about sin very much, because the world doesn't want to hear about sin, doesn't want to hear about repentance.

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So we're going to make church fun and entertaining. And we're going to present a Jesus that's not going to call you to repent.

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He's not going to call you to take up your cross. He's not going to call you to deny yourself. No, this

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Jesus that we're going to present to you, he's a life enhancement Jesus. He's a life coach

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Jesus. He's going to make your life better. He's going to give you what you want.

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That's not church, and that's not the gospel. And people say, well, if you talk about sin and repentance, it's going to keep people away.

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You know what? It will. It will keep people away. It's going to keep the goats away.

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But you know who it's going to draw? It's going to draw the sheep. It'll draw the sheep.

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And that's what church is supposed to be comprised of, local bodies of believers, of sheep.

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Now, please don't misunderstand me. I'm not against inviting people to church. I'm not against inviting lost people to church.

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I do that. But lost people can't worship. And a church is comprised of the redeemed.

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But when I invite lost people to church, I don't expect the pastor to water down the message.

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I don't expect him to dilute the gospel at all. I don't expect him to soften the gospel to make lost people comfortable.

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That's not how the gospel works. A number of years ago, when Kathy and I were living in Sandpoint, Idaho, we were members of Kootenai Community Church, pastored by Jim Osmond.

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Many of you have heard me talk about Jim and have interviewed him for my channel before. Great, great guy.

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Very able preacher. And Kootenai Community Church in Sandpoint, that's no happy, clappy church.

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That's no seeker -sensitive church. I mean, everything is very vertically oriented, good, deep, solid preaching.

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And where we were living at the time was in this neighborhood. And when we moved in,

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I would get on my scooter, electric scooter, and I would ride around the neighborhood on my scooter and get to know the neighbors and talk to people.

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And I befriended this couple named Jim and Sherry Skeen. And they were older.

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They were in their 70s at the time that we met them. And neither one of them were converted.

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But I befriended them and began sharing the gospel with them, and Kathy did as well.

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And we kind of developed a friendship, but they were lost. And Sherry in particular,

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I'm not sure I've ever talked to anyone or at least gotten to know anyone in this country who had less

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Bible knowledge than Sherry did. Sherry did not even know that there was an Old and New Testament.

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I mean, she knew nothing about the Bible. She was raised in some kind of very nominal

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Episcopal church. She didn't even know there was an Old and New Testament. But I shared the gospel with them a number of times.

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And then one day Sherry said that she wanted to come to church with us. And so she did.

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And I'll never forget that first Sunday. Jim was preaching out of John. I believe it was in John chapter 15.

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But this particular Sunday we were having communion, the Lord's Supper. And I was sitting there with Kathy, my wife, by my side, and then

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Sherry was next to her. And it came time for communion, and they started passing around the elements, the bread and the grape juice.

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And Sherry didn't know really what that was, what to do with it. And so she asked Kathy, she said,

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Now what do I do? Can I do this? And Kathy said, No, no,

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Sherry, you can't do this. I'll explain later. And so the service came to an end, and we walked outside.

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And Kathy explained to Sherry why she couldn't partake of communion, because she's not a believer, she's not a

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Christian. And Kathy shared the gospel with her again. And you know what?

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I kind of thought, Okay, this will probably be it for Sherry. This was her first Sunday with us, and probably not what she was expecting in church, and probably wasn't expecting to be told at the end of the service that she's not a

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Christian. And Kathy shared the gospel, and she told Sherry, If you were to die right now, you would go to hell, you would perish.

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But you know what? The next Sunday, Sherry wanted to come back to church with us.

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And so she came back with us the next Sunday, and the next Sunday, and the next

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Sunday. And then somewhere along the way, God softened her heart, and He saved her.

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She passed from death to life. She was born again. And we saw a dramatic change in Sherry.

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She began to have a hunger for the Word. She began to study. She asked a lot of questions.

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Kathy spent a lot of time with her, discipling her, and she never missed a Sunday. Never missed a

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Sunday until she got cancer. It was kind of an up -and -down battle for a while, but eventually cancer got worse, and she got really sick, and she died.

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Sherry is in heaven now. She's in heaven now. Kathy and I were both there when she was baptized, of course, before she got really sick.

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But Sherry is in heaven now. Now, conventional thinking, the thinking of these kind of false churches that we've been looking at, oh, you can't tell someone like Sherry about sin and repentance and denial of self and hell.

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You know, you can't tell her something like that. But you know what? She was a lost sheep who had not yet heard the voice of the shepherd, and she came back and she came back and she came back, and then at some point she heard the voice of the shepherd.

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She repented of her sins and placed her trust in Christ, and she was saved. That's how the gospel works.

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That's what church is supposed to look like, not catering to the goats, feeding the sheep.

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And, dear friends, these kinds of churches, what we've just witnessed, those aren't churches. Those are goat farms.

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Churches are supposed to look different from the world. You will not find the seeker -sensitive model in the pages of Scripture at all.

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In fact, if you want to try to find a seeker, there's only one seeker truly, and that's

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God who seeks those to worship Him in spirit and in truth.

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But if you want to try to find a seeker, I suppose you could look at Mark chapter 10, the rich young ruler.

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And the rich young ruler ran up to Jesus, said, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

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And Jesus said, Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. And then Jesus cited to him the

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Ten Commandments. And then he said, One thing you lack, go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and then you will have treasure in heaven and come follow me.

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That's not very seeker -friendly, Jesus. Jesus was, of course, not teaching a work salvation, but he was zeroing in on the one thing that was most important to this man, and that was his wealth.

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And Jesus was saying, Get rid of it. Get rid of it. Then come follow me.

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Remember in John chapter 21, Jesus speaking to Peter, and he said,

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Peter, when you were young, you used to gird yourself and go wherever you wished to go. But when you are old,

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Peter, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will gird you and take you where you do not wish to go.

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And the Bible says that Jesus said this, signifying by what kind of death he would glorify

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God. Put that verse in your seeker -sensitive pipe and smoke it.

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You mean to tell me that we've got to tell people to get ready to die for the gospel if called upon to do so, to suffer for the glory of Christ?

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So let me get this straight. So you're saying that we have to tell people that they have to die to themselves, deny themselves, take up the cross, be willing to die for the gospel if called upon to do so, all to glorify

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Christ, and I've got to turn from my sins, turn from everything that I've ever loved and turn to Christ and live a life of holiness and be willing to die, give up my life for the glory of God?

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That's right. Well, who would respond to a message like that? That's the point.

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Goats won't. Sheep will. Lost sheep who just have not yet heard the voice of the shepherd, they will respond to the true gospel, to the true gospel.

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Dear friends, seeker -sensitive churches are 180 degrees polar opposite of how the

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Bible describes churches and how churches should be run and what churches should do, what they should look like.

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Everything about seeker -sensitive churches is 180 degrees polar opposite of what the

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Bible teaches. The vast majority of people will not respond to the true gospel being preached, repentance and faith and denial of self, but God's people will.

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They will respond. It'll repel the goats, but it will draw the sheep, and wild horses wouldn't be able to keep them away from the true gospel.

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Thank you very much, dear ones. Until our next time together, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of his