How can you not like a word such as hoopla? Yes, it is a real word. Its origins are French and with the borrowing of it to use in English, it was to refer to bustling commotion or sensationalist hype.
The title “Error in the Hoopla” came to me many months ago as I am contemplating my experience regarding a church visit. This visit was at a church in my area and I attended at the request of another who wanted me to check it out.
The church had a varied age demographic. So far so good. When worship started, they turned off the lights which gave the place a concert atmosphere. Not so good to me but I can live with a darkened room. Then they sang maybe two or three songs that seemed to have only two or three verses in each, repeatedly. OK, not so good for me again but I was starting to think this was the first and last visit here so no big deal regarding the sense of unease. I felt uncomfortable about the increased emotional aspect of the worship as they sang the same verse repeatedly led by a cheerleading style from the stage. I have experienced some beautiful emotional experiences in worship in my past so I tried to be easy-going, but this was something else.
Then the sermon started.
The young preacher was extremely eager to endorse the theme of the last song sung which was a “you can do” type theme regarding faith and God’s ability to do miraculous things in our lives. I concur. He can do absolutely anything He chooses to do. It was not my taste of a service but there is a big world out there and lots of variation and I am not the church police authority so I was just cruising through UNTIL I heard him say that God can do a work that we would not believe way beyond what we could imagine, and he used Habakkuk 1:5 –“Look among the nations, and see; wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your day's that you would not believe if told.” And he completely lost me there.
Habakkuk is MY book. You know how you have experiences with scripture that become part of your spiritual journey? Well that is true about Habakkuk and myself, and I knew immediately this preacher was grossly misusing this scripture. The scripture that he was using to prove to people that God can do more FOR them above what they can conceive is a scripture that is addressing Habakkuk regarding the fact that God is raising up the Babylonians to punish his people. And that is an important distinction, an alarming one. It is a misuse of scripture and that is never good. In the darkened room with loud, repetitive cheerleading that is perhaps intended to work attendees’ faith up, I must question that technique. Is faith being built up, or emotions? If it is emotions being worked up in the constructed “hoopla”, how easy is it to slip in even worse misuses of scripture? Does a preacher/speaker have a vulnerable audience? I think yes.
So this is the complaint I have. Ramped up, emotionally driven services, can that perhaps be dangerous? I believe it can be if what is being said in that type of experience is not being measured against scripture.
What to do? It’s certainly not to go on a quest to point out issues we don’t think are healthy in specific churches. God does not demand perfection to reach His people and He can reach us within flawed places. He can, He has, and He will continue to reach people on a flawed planet. But that does not mean we should let our guard down in comfortable places, places we feel at home in because it suits us.
Since the preacher from the service I referred to used a scripture I knew so well, I caught the error immediately, but what he had said sounded so good. It sounded great to hear that God was preparing something so great we can’t conceive of it just yet. Who wouldn’t like to hear that? Does God prepare things for us that are good we don’t know of? Yes. But misapplying a scripture to support that statement bothers me greatly. Therefore I am using this example as a caution.
How can we know if what we are hearing is scripturally sound? How can you know if you should be listening to this speaker? Being talented and popular is not the same as being called by God to speak to His people.
2 Timothy 4:3-4 – “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers who will suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.”
In conclusion this is written not to be critical of churches or services that are different from where I go to church or the format of the service I am used to. Not at all. But it is a warning that in all the modern-day processes that appeal so much to the masses and might be currently the fad in church services, be careful. Listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit who leads and guides us. Know the scriptures yourself - Acts 17:11 – “Now the Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica, they received the word in all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.” And earnestly seek being a true follower of Jesus Christ. John 10:27 – “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”
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