Satan's Candy

We have a community forum here where every once and a while someone will ask about a good church in the area. A recent post on the forum gave the criteria their family was looking for in a church: a good children's program. Many people responded by letting them know that all of the seeker-sensitive churches in the area and many smaller churches with the same type of philosophy of ministry had great children programs and great music to boot.

We've actually had professed Reformed people come to our church and leave it because we have no conventional children's program. Our children's program philosophy is one of integration with the entire church, discipling through family worship and fathers and mothers who take what they've learned at church and talk about it with their kids in order to teach and bond with their children as they should. It's rooted in Titus 2 and the biblical understanding of federal headship and family (both immediate and eccleasiastical) as the means of discipleship. We don't segregate our children by providing surrogate parents for the day.

However, I am amazed by the amount of people on the forum who seemed to go to a particular church for the same reasons: programs and music style or quality. Yet, the Bible isn't unclear that the focal point should be whether the Word of God is faithfully preached and the worship is biblically-based (i.e., it edifies in the truth and is orderly rather than simply emotional, repetitiously superficial, and chaotic).

Now, I know what these churches mentioned teach. I know what kind of believers these churches grow, or should I say, stunt in growth. Their worship is geared toward pleasing the masses, not God. They are geared toward excitement and emotionalism. Their programs are meant to mimic discipleship when they are largely religiously-oriented community clubs that don't really equip the saints for the work of genuine ministry as they are sanctified by the Spirit in truth.

I don't view these churches as just stepping-stones that immature Christians use on their way to real church later on. I do think it is true that immature Christians sometimes find that as a part of their journey, but for the most part, these churches are just recreational centers one goes to in order to get pumped up by some life lesson spoken really eloquently by a lifecoach for the upcoming week. I don't think they are churches at all, and that means that those attending them aren't really going to church and have forsaken the real assembly of God for whatever period they have been attending these set walls that pretend to be churches.

These places function like bug lights that mimic the moonlight and draw in the foolish and untaught to their deaths.

And that means that programs and great music in these religious community centers are simply the candy that Satan offers children to get them into his van. Anyone enamored with such things is not likely to survive.

I encouraged the family to look for a church for the right reasons, i.e., to look for a church that actually is a church due to the faithful teaching of the Word of God and a biblical form of worship that makes God the audience and Christian brothers and sisters the beneficiaries of His Spirit by emphasizing the truth that exalts Christ,, and to ignore the candy. I hope they listen.