This quality show of pastoral maturity made the grade on two blogs that I follow on my Google Reader:

• Meet the Pastors: Welcome to Stonebridge Church
• Pastors in Tights

Here's Ingrid Schlueter what had to say about this mess:

Infantilism is the name of the game in churches now. Not surprisingly, this is a Willow Creek Association church. Thank you, Bill Hybels, for mass producing these clown carnivals that mock and blaspheme the true church of Jesus Christ. Here is a promotional video for Stonebridge Church. It explains, even without the audio, the catastrophic meltdown of evangelicalism. It isn’t just Scripture and the preaching of the Gospel that have been abandoned. Adulthood has also been left by the wayside. The pastors are in diapers now.

This is a very fitting article for the first post in our brand new category, "Circus Church": Motocross in Church...During the Sermon.

Chris Rosebrough, host of Pirate Christian Radio, provides a little bit of sarcastic insight into the world of relevancy in churches today. He personifies relevance and says this: "Relevance is a demanding lover. If you choose to chase after her she will insist that the spectacle be bigger and better with each attempt to woo her or she'll kick you to the curb."

His commentary is sad, but true: "Don't y'all miss the days when God's Word and the message of the cross were the thing that people showed up to church for? Back then God's word and the Lord's Supper were enough and pastors were valued for their proper handling of God's word and the boldness with which they proclaimed repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus' name. Now-a-days, many people only show up at some churches to see what's going to happen during the show and they could care less about Jesus, God's word and the cross because they're not at church for any of those things. They're at church to be entertained."

Well folks... it's been a long time coming, but I just have to add a new category to my blog: "Circus Church."

Like many of you, I am very encouraged when I heard of a pastor committed to evangelism, discipleship, expository preaching, theological training , and missions. But, it seems like our American "church culture" has gone insane with its worship of celebrities and... circus church. So, I thought I'd share the blessing every now and then on my blog under a brand new, shiny category dedicated to the silliness in churches today.

My desire in posting these articles is to communicate a message to the brethren:

Stop it.

Enough is enough, stop it. The power of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is manifest through the preaching of the Word of God (to the lost and to the saved).

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The issue of keeping the Sabbath (the seveth day of the week; Saturday) is something continually comes up in conversations with professing believers both on the streets and in churches. I found David Cloud's explanation to be one of the best and easiest to understand and apply in a conversation, and so I have reproduced it in its entirety below (originally sent out via the FBNS, Thu, Jul 15, 2010; I would also highly recommend his book The Way of Life Encyclopedia of the Bible and Christianity which has over 6,000 topic studies of this type).

THE SABBATH YESTERDAY AND TODAY

Seventh-day Adventists teach that men kept the sabbath from the days of Adam onward, but this is contrary to the Bible’s own record.

While it is true that the sabbath originated at end of the six days of creation (Gen. 2:1-3), that was God’s rest, not man’s. There is no record in Genesis that God gave the sabbath to man, and there is no record of men keeping the sabbath before Israel in the wilderness. The saints in Genesis built altars, prayed, offered sacrifices, and tithed; but the Scripture is silent in regard to sabbath keeping.

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