Super Bowl Shenanigans: The Cool Church is Dying, and Jesus is the One Killing It

It’s been said that “today’s punchlines are tomorrow’s jokes.” The saying is trustworthy. Pastors and church leaders who attempt to capitalize on cultural trends in order to be relevant to ‘seekers’ fail to realize that relevancy is not found in novelties. As life’s twists and turns change from day to day, relevancy is found in meaningful, abiding things that resist the shifting winds of time and eroding effects of blown sand.

After all, our God could have described himself any way He wanted. But in God’s descriptions of Himself, He chose to lean heavily upon terms to portray his immovable immutability. He is the Rock of Ages (Isaiah 26:2). He is the Ancient of Days (Daniel 7:9). He is the God Who Does Not Change (Malachi 3:6). God is many things. He’s almost, but not quite, an infinite number of things. But one thing He is not is fashionable. In fact, God is the very opposite of fashionable; He is instead timeless.

But the Seeker Driven Church Model is built on the premise that fads and fashion bring in the sheaves. In fact, the model – founded initially by C. Peter Wagner and handed off to his two chief Apostles (Rick Warren and Bill Hybels), is predicated upon the notion that sheep are out there somewhere seeking the shepherd. And so pastors, who’ve built empires upon this notion, have made an evangelical cottage industry out of doing, saying, preaching, or singing whatever they believe the seeking sheep might be attracted to.

Of course, the Scripture tells us no one seeks God unless Christ has first called them.

There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God (Romans 3:11).

And supposing the Shepherd calls them, the sheep hear his voice, recognize it, and come to him. This leaves little room for the types of Seeker-Friendly, goat-roping entertainment phenomena we often see on Super Bowl Sunday.

CROSSROADS CHURCH

Last year, back when I was still ranting about things primarily to my chickens, Protestia put up a video of Crossroads megachurch in Cincinnati in which – as a part of their Super Bowl church service – a lady pastor literally punted a Bible into the crowd.

I say again. The lady pastor kicked a Bible like it was a football. Protestia made the claim because there was a video of it. They called it a Bible. It looked like a Bible. And she definitely kicked it into the crowd.

Protestia did this because it chronicles what amounts to a museum of stupid things evangelicals do, which should rightly be made fun of. In the following days and weeks, the video received many hundreds of thousands or millions (I’m not sure, but it was a lot) of views, and social media influencers, podcast hosts, and others ridiculed the church for such a blasphemous, sacrilegious, and asinine display of tomfoolery. But that’s just another day in the life of Protestia.

Well, yesterday, Crossroads pastor Kyle Ranson took to the pulpit in a Chief’s jersey to complain about Protestia and, for some reason, me. I was only farming and minding my own business back then, and the only thing I did in relation to this video was text it to my pastor, who had what I presume was a good chuckle over it (because laughing is more appropriate than cursing).

Ranson alleged that the huge media attention they received was responsible for “death threats” and the need to hire private security to protect their staff. So far as that goes, ‘pics or it didn’t happen.’ Whatever. But he went on to complain that even their children had other kids at school tell them their church hated the Bible. This tracks, of course, because kicking the Bible could lead someone to believe you hate it. As would never actually preaching from it, of course.

Ranson went on to claim that the post was ‘slanderous’ because there was, in fact, only foam inside the Bible case that they told us contained a Bible, and it was our fault for not knowing this. They only appeared to kick the Bible while claiming to do so. So, I mean…nothing to see here, Christian. Move along. He then lamented that no press outlets reporting the story asked them for comment. As our Staff Writer pointed out at Protestia this morning, the Christian Post indeed reached out to them at the time, and a year later, the church had not yet provided comment.

He also claimed that Protestia’s founder had been ‘convicted of embezzlement and defamation’ referring to yours truly, and told his congregation to ‘look it up.’ Despite what Julie Roys may tell you, I’ve not been convicted of embezzlement, and won’t be. I gave the full forensics accounting to Protestia, who published it, showing that I was accused mostly of spending church funds on background checks for children’s workers, fuel to visit the dying, and sending flowers to the funerals of dead missionaries. I did not plead guilty or admit guilt in any way (because I wasn’t guilty), and the prosecution knew they rushed headlong into charges without actually looking at the evidence, so we agreed to both walk away from the situation. Neither was I convicted of ‘defamation,’ although I did declare bankruptcy in a lawsuit brought by Planned Parenthood attorneys on behalf of a trans activist after burning through six figures in my legal defense.

That aside, I had nothing to do with Protestia’s article. Except that is, share it with my pastor while I commended him for not being stupid or unrighteous, and thank him for preaching about Jesus on Super Bowl Sunday.

Yet the clip was on my mind when I messaged one of my elders on Saturday, joking that they had better not wear a Chief’s jersey or preach a Super Bowl sermon in the pastor’s upcoming absence. He responded, “[Elder so-and-so] is coming into the pulpit on an acrobat wire. He’s gonna read one verse, then we’re going to watch old sports movies on the big screen.” To which I responded that I’d be praying an imprecatory prayer the entire time.

And that’s the thing. This type of chicanery in the pulpit has become a punchline. It’s not funny anymore, and in fact, it never was. No one is impressed by this, except for other aspiring goat herders who wish they had a budget big enough to pull off an endless sideshow attraction. Normal human beings think this type of thing is dumb, and that’s because it is.

YOUTH GROUP FOR ADULTS

I’m convinced that “Youth Group” was an idea that snuck by the normal discernment doorway only because it was before the Internet was invented. Although there are bright spots, it’s largely a bad idea unless it is tended to very, very carefully. Dividing the church into different segments, whether it’s Children’s Church or into an 8AM traditional and 10AM contemporary services, is often a recipe for disaster. Ditto for Bible studies exclusively for men, or exclusively for women, as though either are learning from a different Bible.

I’m crazy enough to believe that the Regulative Principle of Worship requires mirroring the system God set up in the Old Testament, in which men, women, children, and even babies worshiped together in God’s Word (Nehemiah 8:1-8, Deuteronomy 31:10-13). But the Regulative Principle aside, Youth Group too often divides the younger men and women (the concept of “adolescence” is a Freudian pscyho-babble construct) from the rest of the congregation.

The environment within Youth Group very much sends the message (I know because I was a youth pastor and, at one time, a youth) that “old people church” is boring and mostly stupid, and perhaps even less spiritually enthused. When it’s time for kids to grow up and join with the adults in “old people church,” they just stop going.

But perhaps worse than dropping out of church, some of the Youth Group kids – who are the evangelical version of Theater Kids – took over the church altogether. Being taught that church must engage the senses, create ‘teachable moments’ with games and creative story-telling, use multimedia attention-grabbers, and value fun, they have inundated the larger church with the Youth Group ethos. And these churches are known today by the name Seeker Sensitive. It’s Youth Group for adults.

Of course, the reason why Youth Group engages in these sensual tactics is because, by the very nature of things, a good percentage of the kids are dragged there by their parents. In other words, a fair percentage are only there because they have to be. And so taking their lack of religious sincerity into consideration, all sorts of tactics are required to get and keep their attention.

And this is how you end up with a pastor in Cincinnati punting a Bible into the crowd of cheering lost people.

JESUS IS KILLING THE SEEKER STUNT CHURCH

One thing I’ve written about a lot at Insight to Incite – in fact, it’s the overall point of this Substack – is explaining the existence of what I call the Populist Social Revival. The Holy Ghost is doing something in our culture that, although it’s not new, none of us are old enough to remember Him doing it before. I’ll not go so far as to call His work a revival, per se, but it’s more like a culling.

There was a time in our country, lasting from about 1845 to 2020 (beginning at the Second Great Awakening and ending at the Covid lockdowns), when it was largely expected that self-respecting Americans be in church on Sunday—or, at least, some Sundays. At the very least, they were expected to be there on Easter and Christmas, for the same reason they’re expected to put out the flag on Memorial Day. It’s just something respectable people do.

There were, of course, lots of problems with this, as well as blessings. The blessings were that Americans largely had a Biblical frame of reference. They had a working grasp of the major Biblical narratives. Most could sing popular hymns at a funeral without the necessity of a hymnal. They could understand references to Scripture in pop culture. They gave—albeit meagerly—to Christian charity through local churches that allowed good deeds to be done. They didn’t bemoan prayers before civic functions. And if called upon to pray at a civic function, they could more or less pull it off.

There were obvious downsides as well. Basic familiarity with the church led many people to believe they were born again by proximity to the church. Their membership, maintained only by the skin of their teeth, often gave false comfort and an assurance of salvation they never really had. When the evangelist did come knocking, they had, in some cases, become inoculated to the true gospel, having heard it enough times that they became hardened to its conviction. Christian culture was always a two-edged sword in this regard.

But those within this lukewarm Christian culture couldn’t just stop going to church, no matter how much they didn’t see the point. Grandma expected them to go. And so the perfect solution for nominal Christians – which is another way of saying ‘no Christian at all’ – was to find a church that catered to people who hate church as much as they do. The solution was to find a church that specialized in providing all the things that lost people are looking for to help pass the time on a Sunday morning, avoiding anything remotely resembling authentic Christian worship. Churches like Crossroads in Cincinnati bloomed in this era of false Christianity.

But now, we are very much in the post-Christian age. Few, if any, still feel compelled to attend church because it’s the American thing to do, or to keep grandma happy. As you can tell by the number of people with tattoo sleeves, it’s no longer common for someone to conform to the taboos or expectations of what older generations once thought. Grandmas are dying, and their expectations are dying along with them. Today, if someone doesn’t want to go to church, they just don’t go. And that includes going to Youth Group for Adults.

Sure, some people will always keep a few pews warm at these places, in the same way the videos coming out of far-left gay-bedazzled United Methodist and American Baptist churches show about two dozen blue-haired old ladies (not to be confused with their blue-haired granddaughters, that hair colors designate something different altogether), still clapping along to the songs directed to Mother God and her Eternal Womb of Equality or whatever. But for the most part, the masses have stopped showing up to take part in a worship service to a God they don’t believe in.

Because of this, ambitious churches like Crossroads which require millions of dollars to flow in order to pay their staff salaries, have to become increasingly Youth Group-like in order to keep the doors open. While a few years ago, they could have gotten by on a Super Bowl Sunday just playing a few clips from Facing the Giants or something, it now requires punting Bibles. We can only presume that if their decline continues, we’ll find Pastor Kyle Ranson in a cheerleader outfit complete with lipstick, while his wife is dressed as Bill Belichick, with him wrapped around her arm and the two throwing Nathans hotdogs into the crowd. Increasing levels of absurdity will be required to keep the attention of godless pagans who are only at church to see how far their pastor will go in barking like a trained seal for their enjoyment.

BUT GOD THE HOLY GHOST IS DOING SOMETHING

It’s hard to help but notice the amount of people who, previously disinterested in godly things, begin looking at the church’s direction in their pursuit of truth. It’s clear that the Ghost is drawing them. But in case you haven’t noticed, when someone like Russell Brand is brought to faith (I use him as an example, only as a point of reference most are familiar with, and not because he’s a celebrity), they aren’t drawn to Youth Group for Adults. They’re drawn to a very serious form of worship.

The danger for evangelicals is not that those who the Holy Ghost is bringing to God the Son will have them wind up at places like Crossroads Church. It’s the opposite; it’s a very real fear we should all have that these people find their way into the catacombs of smells and bells in High Church liturgy. It’s far more likely, these days, that someone brought to faith without the help of human aid (for example, someone who begins reading the Bible alone in their apartment) will be drawn to Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism than that they would be drawn to Super Bowl Punt-a-Bible church. Even baby Christians are repulsed by that behavior.

Those who come to faith because God the Holy Spirit has torn open their chest and ripped out their heart of stone like Indian Jones did Mola Ram in the Temple of Doom and replaced it with one of flesh aren’t putting ‘fun’ on the top of their priority list for churches to visit. Those who were once dead in their trespasses and sins aren’t looking for a pastor who will conceal the Son of God in endless jokes and sermon props, like its smoke from the train of God’s garment around the throne. Those legitimately being touched by the Holy Ghost aren’t searching out a five-minute teachable moment from Pastor Fun Guy and his ‘smoking hot wife’ Pastor Trisha who are wearing matching jerseys on Super Bowl Sunday. In fact, those legitimately being brought to faith find all of that insulting.

About a decade ago, a guy was staying in our church basement back when we had a boarding house for transient workers. He was vile-mouthed and swore a lot. We didn’t have many rules, considering they paid rent, but along with ‘no alcohol’ and ‘no women’ was no blasphemy. I had to remind him again and again that we couldn’t tolerate him taking God’s name in vain. But one night, my South Korean preaching assistant bribed some of the men into a free dinner in exchange for watching Paul Washer’s Shocking Youth Message. After the sermon, my assistant called me down to share the gospel, and, long story short, this guy was born again.

About a week or so later, I went next door to the gas station where he was employed, and seeing him at the till crying and visibly angry, I asked him what was wrong. His manager was repeatedly taking God’s name in vain, and it angered him deeply. This was a man who, only a week before, would throw out a GD or a JC like it was nothing. But having been born again, blasphemy made him riotously angry.

I’ve seen this time and again in new believers. The sin that first sets them off, upon coming to faith, that previously never bothered them, was disrespect for God Almighty. Genuine believers, who grasp exactly what Jesus went through to redeem them, cannot tolerate the frivolous use of Jesus’ name. And that’s exactly why real Christians don’t go to places like Crossroads Church.

Little by little, Jesus Christ has been tending to his church on earth through the Holy Ghost as his vicar. And little by little, Jesus has been delegitimizing and strangling these churches to death by the power of his Spirit. They are shriveling up as the Holy Ghost blows upon the Earth wherever he will, “convicting people of sin, righteousness, and judgment.”

So as far as Pastor Ranson and Crossroads Church in Cincinnati is concerned, they can hate Protestia all they want and manufacture any crazy tall tales about ‘death threats’ all they want. They can even slander and attack me if it makes them feel better. But nothing they could ever say will convince genuine believers that what happens at their church glorifies God. Believers of all ages, of all maturities, and of every stripe will continue to regard them with the contempt that false churches will inevitably solicit from those who walk with God.

This article was first published at Insight to Incite, which you can find here.

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