Protestia-endorsed Book ‘Worshiptainment: The Modern Church’s Golden Calf’ Is Released
While we at Protestia often point out rogue pastors from awful churches engaging in even worse behavior, it’s not all doom and theological gloom. Many churches seek a Christ-centered and God-honoring approach to their teaching and service, which is where Matthew Everhard’s Worshiptainment comes in.
Everhard, the senior pastor of Gospel Fellowship Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Valencia, Pa, wrote the book as a polemic against the mixture of worship + entertainment, arguing for a return to the regulative principle of worship. It includes chapters on worship, preaching, music, liturgy, sacraments, and ordained leaders, and at times uses examples from videos and stories that we’ve posted about. According to the book description:
Worshiptainment: The Modern Church’s Golden Calf is a hard-hitting look at the ungodly practice of mixing Christian worship services with the popular entertainment practices of the secular world.
In this book, Presbyterian pastor Matthew Everhard offers a sincere, heart-felt critique of the availing techniques that are all too common in our day, such as using worship as a platform to build celebrity pastors, gain large followings, and entertain the people. Meanwhile, such churches given to these theatrics are jettisoning traditional worship, Biblical doctrine, and reverent attention to the True and Living God.
In this work, Everhard looks at common “worshiptainment” practices as it regards preaching, liturgy, music, the sacraments, and Christian leadership. All the while, Everhard argues that the church should return to the Regulative Principle of Worship, the Reformation-era ideal of only doing in worship what God specifically requires us to do in Holy Scripture.
Notably, Pastor Everhard asked to review the book ahead of time, which we were glad to do, and we gave it our ringing endorsement, which can be found in the first few pages.
This book is an insightful and devastating primer for those who look around their church service and think, “What are we even doing here?” It rightly identifies ‘worshiptainment’ as a scourge on the church while offering a remedy to restore order and reverence. It gives a robust and thoughtful theological framework to the quick clips we frequently post on X (Twitter), explaining the errors and hubris of modern evangelical sensibilities while laying out a better and biblical way. Highly Recommended. -Protestia-
The book can be purchased here for anyone interested.
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