Here We Are Now ... (Entertain Us)
The quiet dissatisfaction we've learned to call discernment.
“Here we are now, entertain us,” comes from Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit. It’s Kurt Cobain mocking the apathy and yet the demand for constant stimulation in youth culture. Apparently, it’s what he would say to sarcastically break the ice when he would arrive at a party.
This blog post isn’t really a plug for Nirvana, although they were the anthem of my youth. But it does capture an instinct that some of us can have when we approach sermons. At our worst, and more often than we would like to admit, we can be people who seek after novelty, stylistic excellence, and ear-tickling preaching. We passively consume sermons and worship services with little effort.
Here we are now, entertain us, indeed.
The Itch.
And yet this is a perfectly understandable problem. It’s actually what we would expect, given the sort of world we live in. We live in a culture of constant entertainment. If you want to be entertained, all you need to do is turn on TikTok or Instagram, where shallow, bite-sized algorithms provide amusement that’s always available at the press of a button. The culture that we live in, the technological access that we have, inevitably form our expectations, which cannot help but shape how we approach the experience of corporate worship and church life. It just is what it is. And the problem with that is that, if we’re unreflective, the sermon and worship can quietly become just another experience evaluated and screened for dopamine. And when that itch isn’t scratched, we just move on to the next video, or the next church.
If this is the water we swim in, what happens when we bring that into worship?
Church Can’t Compete With Peaky Blinders.
The reality is that Sunday sermons and worship can’t compete with Christopher Nolan, Mr. Beast, or Peaky Blinders. If you come to church for entertainment, you will always find better elsewhere. Christopher Ash says,
“We mustn’t expect sermons to entertain us. We live in a culture of entertainment; we can generally find amusement at the press of a button. One reason people have stopped coming to listen to sermons is that, if they come for entertainment, they can find better entertainment elsewhere. It is rate for a sermon to be able to rival the special effects of a Batman or a Bond, or the brilliant script-writing of The West Wing. Most preachers are bound to fail, and mistaken to try.1”
There is no point to try and rival entertainment. And to be clear, the problem isn’t that sermons lack excellence. They should be excellent. The problem is that we are asking sermons to do what they were never meant to do.
In Scripture, we see that the people of Israel once loved to come to hear Ezekiel preach. Ezekiel 33:32 says that his words were heard as if they were a popular love song. “Indeed, to them you are nothing more than one who sings love songs with a beautiful voice and plays an instrument well, for they hear your words but do not put them into practice.” I wonder what the Lord would say about our taste in podcast preachers. God help us if we’re not focused on obedience. Ezekiel 33 is a sobering read for those who focus on hearing the Word to the exclusion of obeying the Lord.2
We see this today in the Christian subculture of celebrity preachers. Our algorithms direct our attention to a few preachers who are incredibly gifted in style and rhetoric. And yet, our tastes differ. When I was in my 20s, some of my peers preferred John MacArthur. Others preferred Mark Driscoll. Some raved about Alistair Begg. At worst, this can collapse into the “we are of X” or “we are of Y” phenomenon that Paul wrote about in 1 Corinthians 3:3-4. And when we start to think in those categories, the focus is not on obeying the preached word.3
Again, Christopher Ash says, “We might shop around churches until we find a style... because our aim is to be entertained rather than to be taught, rebuked, corrected, and trained in righteousness.”4
Appreciating sermons does not necessarily mean obeying the Word. Enjoying a preaching style does not necessarily lead to the transformation of life and heart.
For some of us, I fear our sermon preferences can masquerade as discernment, and it is anything but.
Baptized Dissatisfaction.
We live in interesting times. Technology and travel have made the world a smaller place. Ancients would dream of what we are able to do. You are a flight away from visiting incredible churches and incredible Christian historical sites. Incredible conferences with incredible speakers are available to us almost weekly. All it takes is a smartphone to listen to some of the greatest preaching that exists in the world. Christian books are cheap and easily accessible online, especially with the advent of artificial intelligence. There are preachers and lecturers to suit everyone’s tastes.
To be clear, I’m not anti-conference. I’m not anti-podcast. I’m not anti-learning. These can all be genuine gifts of grace. I’ve certainly benefitted from them. But there is a downside here. The constant exposure to this sort of manicured, exotic taste can train us in a sort of comparison that can quietly produce dissatisfaction.
And we can then baptize that dissatisfaction as discernment. But it isn’t.
Let’s make this concrete. You sit under regular preaching and worship each week. But you attend conferences and listen to podcasts. As you should, I might add. There’s nothing wrong with doing that. But for some, a subtle dissatisfaction can grow. Comparison, unconscious at first, becomes conscious and habitual, and local preaching and worship in the local church begin to feel ordinary instead of being recognized with thankfulness as the means of grace that God uses to feed his people.
Are you someone who is marked by contentment?
I think there’s a way to test where we’re at with all of this. When it comes to the Christian content we consume, does it lead me to pour myself more deeply into real, flesh-and-blood relationships, or does it foster a quiet dissatisfaction? Do the conferences I attend and the courses that I take strengthen embodied commitment, or do they subtly weaken it?
Why does this matter?
Because someone I know once said, “Godliness with contentment is great gain.”5
Christopher Ash, Listen Up! (The Good Book Company, 2009), loc. 298.
Ash, loc. 305.
Ibid.
Ibid.
1 Timothy 6:6.
Well written and thought provoking. When I listen to a sermon from any source. I am looking for two things: what does the Scriptural text mean; what is the text's message to the people of God today.