Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

While they were in high spirits, they shouted, “Bring out Samson to entertain us.” So they called Samson out of the prison, and he performed for them.

• Judges 16:25a

Then the king returned to his palace and spent the night without eating and without any entertainment being brought to him. And he could not sleep.

• Daniel 6:18

Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts?

• Matthew 9:4

Do not entertain an accusation against an elder unless it is brought by two or three witnesses.

• 1 Timothy 5:19

Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

• John 4:23-24

They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

• Romans 1:25

Note that I did not title this post with “Entertainment Industry.”  There are some God fearing people in Hollywood and elsewhere in that industry, but the industry seems to be Hell bent to be Hell bent.

No, I was talking to my sister the other day.  She said that a twenty-something grandson was visiting and all he did was X-Box.  In other words, he was not looking for a job.  I am thinking that he knows three letters of the alphabet.  He had gotten my eighty-something sister using X-box as a verb, but to her defense, she had no idea what she was telling me about.

I reminded her of my youth.  I became a tube head.  I was two years old when we got our first television.  We could get two channels, but I was too young to know how to change the channel.  My parents sat me down in front of the thing and they noticed how I could be entertained for hours.  They would check on me.  They would guide me away from the boob tube long enough for meals, but otherwise I would be entertained.  Actually, Captain Kangaroo and the game shows could be marginally educational.  As I got older, I turned up my nose to soap operas.  I went outside and ran around, or I went to my room and played Monopoly.  I played a four player game all by myself, and I tried to be fair unless the Top Hat was losing due to bad rolls of the dice.  Hey, I made up the rules as I went along.  When the game became Careers, I tried to be very fair, even keeping a logbook of all scores by color of the playing piece.  Yes, I found the logbook a couple of years ago, and all I could say was, “Wow!  Was I ever a nerd back then!”

And so it is with the present generation and video games.  We want to be entertained, and we demand it.

The church leaders look at the dwindling attendance at church.  They see that people want entertainment, so they try to make the worship service more entertaining.

But no one seems to read the Bible with regard to church worship.

First, all four verses containing “entertain” are quoted above.  The two verses from the New Testament could have used the word “consider” or “welcome” instead of entertain.  The context is that the person is thinking and welcoming evil thoughts.

The reference to entertain in Judges is when Samson has mocked God by letting Delilah know that he should not cut his hair.  So, the Philistines are mocking him for their entertainment.  When Samson prays to God and regains his strength, even though he was blind, he wrecks the temple of the Philistine’s false god and killed more of his enemies than he had up until that point.  So the entertainment did not work out well for the Philistines.

Then, in Daniel 6, Daniel is in the lion’s den.  Those who used the decree of Darius against Daniel were pleased, but Darius was not.  All the entertainment in the world could not calm the restless spirit of Darius, king of the Medes and Persians.  His only thought, his only hope, was that the God of Daniel would save Daniel from the hungry lions.  Indeed, God closed the mouths of the lions and Daniel survived and thrived.

So, entertainment is either ineffective or a downright hazardous idea.

So, what should worship be?  I have written about how parents should understand that parent can be a verb.  I have lamented how almost every boss I ever had did not know that manage could be a verb, and those that did were brutally cruel in their technique.

So, here goes another noun that is also a verb.  The people who attend church should never ever be entertained.  They are the performers of worship.  The preacher and the choir and the organist (or band) are people that guide the worshippers in the right direction.

People are not coming to the church because when they did come, they had no idea why they were there.

So, why keep going if you have no idea why you are there in the first place?

I go to church.  I sing.  I pray. And I take notes.  I want to be actively engaged in what the pastor is saying.  And when he says something in a prayer or during the announcements that gets my interest, I will write that down also.  But I go to be with the members of my Sunday school class.  At least half of them or more go to the early service, and it is good to be there with them.  Who knows, maybe they’ll ask a question about the pastor’s sermon during the class.  And I can go to my notes.

But worshipping in the spirit?  The spirit moves me at times, but we are an old traditional congregation.  I was the teacher at a promise keeper group once.  I asked them if they were afraid of the Holy Spirit, and one of the eight men wanted to say ‘no’ but the others talked him into agreeing that the Holy Spirit gave them the heebie-jeebies.  Sad, all but one of them is gone now.

What is wrong with church attendance?  We are so far away from worshipping in spirit and in truth, we would not know it when we saw it.

I take that back.  I went to a friend’s house once a month when I first came to the Pittsburgh area.  He and his wife were from Indonesia and they kind of adopted my wife.  We prayed.  We sang, mostly off key.  And then one of the men led in a Bible study.  I was probably the youngest there.  I finally was selected once to teach.  Then, the friend’s wife would have bami goreng, an Indonesian stir-fried noodles dish with a little chicken in it.  And then an American style dessert.  I know what worshipping in the spirit is.  We were all equals, sort of.  We were all family, but ancestry from probably four or five continents or nearby islands.  And we all loved each other.  I still get that at our church, but in the Sunday school class.  I just teach every week that I am there.

Please, search for worshipping in spirit and truth.  You will never regret it.  And remember if you cannot find it, look carefully in the mirror and remind yourself that worship is a verb.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.