CHURCH ENTERTAINMENTS by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 10, 1881

CHURCH ENTERTAINMENTS.

By Editor

IN these days when there is such a marked increase in the number and popularity of church festivals, fairs, etc., but few have the moral courage to speak their true convictions in regard to them. The Church Union, however, ventures the following frank, and, as all candid readers can but admit, truthful statement of the facts in the case:—

The word of late years which seems expressive of the aim of the church and of church activity—the word which will not die, though it bids fair to kill its author, is "entertainment." The great end of the church, particularly in our cities, seems to be merry-making. All winter long we are treated to entertainments. The ticket seller meets us everywhere. His hand-bills are scattered in the streets, fastened to horse-cars, and thrust in our pews on Sunday. His transparencies disfigure the lamp-posts, and his posters our fences.

Recently we heard a solemn sermon that left a deep solemnity on the audience. As soon as the benediction was pronounced, the voice of the senior deacon shouted, "Entertainment committee please remain!" At once little groups gathered, chatting over and planning for their "sacred" church fun and jollity. In the evening I attended another church, and hoped there to have the hour to God. Alas, another disappointment! After a sermon of unusual and tearful interest, closing with an affecting appeal to prepare for the Judgment, notice of an "entertainment" was thrust into the preacher's hand, and as soon as the benediction was spoken, ticket-sellers were pressing their merchandise on the people. The spiritual influence of that hour seemed at once quenched, and the toilful work of the preacher thwarted.

"Entertainments!" Is this the great work of the church? Shall strength, and thought, and money, be swallowed up in the work of providing sports, and feasts, and hilarity, while the prayer-meetings are dying out, and the lawful obligations incurred in church work remain uncancelled? Is not Christ again crucified among thieves? Pleasure-seeking on the one hand, and a money-grasping spirit on the other, stifle the life of such churches. We are not unfriendly to healthful out-door recreations and other legitimate diversions, but claim that Christ's church is not an amusement bureau, and the all-absorbing aim of the professed Christian is not merry-making and frivolity. Has the world grown so grave and heedful of eternal realities that the church must tickle it with fun and frolic? Is it the chief end of man to be "entertained," and is life a butterfly dream? Oh, for a new outpouring of Pentecostal fire, with illuminating and consuming power to convert the unconverted in the church, and bring back to her appropriate work those who are "the lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God."