In a world of mass churches set at almost every corner many of times bring with them the gospel of prosperity, health and encouragement. Over the years myself, as well as many throughout the nation and world, have witnessed these churches grow to ever greater heights while smaller, “authentic” churches dwindle down to feast off the crumbs. What is it that attracts so many to these mega gatherings? The answer is found within people and their surroundings.

We live in a society and culture that promotes leisure, wealth and health on the daily with the intent of causing the mass to focus solely on these things as purpose and meaning in life. If someone believes in the God of the Bible, many times it is a small fraction, if any, of their daily routine. Most don’t even know what they believe with few to fractions that have a glimpse of understanding the Bible and what it means to be a Christian. How did we come to this point? Technology has some to do with it.

Over the years, throughout the last century till now we have seen a dramatic increase in technological advancements that provide comfort, leisure and freedom from many labors that people once had to do themselves. We have increasingly become more reliant on technologies to help us, even to the point of worship. With the introduction of Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Echo comes a new era of reliance that has never been witnessed before in the history of humankind with little to no understanding of what consequence comes with it.

The only real understanding we have witnessed so far with the technological advancement over the years has been people’s tendency to become apathetic towards life and their obsession with leisure and pleasure. This, of course, has been a scheme done up by the devil himself from the beginning with the forbidden fruit and the desire to appease the flesh. Does this mean that technology is bad? No, and yes. It all depends on how you utilize it and how addictive, or not, you become to it.

With apathy and the desire for pleasure has brought with it, at least for believers, the desire to attend churches that promote the same ideal. This is one, not the only by no means, factor for which we see mega churches that proclaim encouragement, prosperity and the like grow so rapidly. This has contributed to the decline in attendance for churches that teach in-depth and stick to the roots of what the apostolic churches were like at the beginning.

Does this mean we should teach more about hell and negative things? No, but we should be teaching what the Bible says about sin and how to overcome it. We should be teaching what the end times will be like, how we should not appease the flesh and how to properly admonish one another. We should be teaching about the power of the Holy Spirit and what the blood of Christ really means in our life.

Church shouldn’t just be a hangout with a feel good message to send you off for the week ahead, but rather should be a place for people to grow spiritually and in the knowledge and understanding of the word. It’s time to wake up our spiritual senses as well as our appetite to truly experience God and His word in our life. It’s time to get rid of our apathy and desire to appease the flesh, and rather be filled with the Holy Spirit and desire to go out and make more disciples. It’s time to get in depth, even if it means to get uncomfortable.