A surfaced video features Reverend Eastwood Anaba expressing concern about churches prioritizing entertainment over the core purpose of listening to the word of God.
“When you go to these our churches, sometimes I just imagine. If there is no drum, there is no organist, there is no guitarist and you take away all the music and the entertainment, many of our churches will die.
I mean, you remove that, it will be like the oxygen support has been removed and that is because the entertainment in our churches, sometimes, I think is too much,” he said.
He added that when a pastor is invited to a convention to speak, it often turns into “one song after the other, one dance after the other, choreography and somersaulting and all that.”
Using examples such as kiosks, mosques, lorry stations, and chop bars, he emphasized that each of these places serves a specific purpose, and he wouldn’t exchange that for anything else.
“I’ve never entered a ‘chop bar’ and they said ‘praise and worship’ before the food is brought. They know exactly why they exist so as soon as you sit down, they come to you with a menu. They want to know what you want to eat because the purpose there is eating,” he Reverend Anaba noted.
He, therefore, stressed that the purpose of the church is not entertainment yet “you see a lot of the singing but the singing is not for worship. The singing is actually for entertainment and there is nothing wrong with that. But when the harp, and the viol, and the tabret and the pipe and the wine are in their feast but they regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operations of his hands.”
He went on to explain that it meant churches had followed entertainment until they were no longer in a position of authority.
“How many pastors walk into church on Sunday and their aim is that today is there is a leper in my church he should be cleansed, if a dead person is there he should be raised, if there is a cripple the person should walk?,” he asked.
Reverend Anaba emphasized that many pastors are primarily occupied with providing entertainment, delivering appealing sermons, and collecting offerings. He concluded that there needs to be a shift in the church’s approach, emphasizing a greater focus on healing and salvation rather than mere entertainment.
The recording date of this sermon by Reverend Eastwood Anaba is unclear, but some anticipate that the video will spark a debate potentially leading to a change in the church’s modus operandi. Others have suggested that music and entertainment possess unique psychological and spiritual healing effects that should not be overlooked or underestimated.