One of the most shocking scenes in the New Testament is when Jesus walks into the temple and starts flipping over tables.
He finds merchants selling animals and exchanging money, turning the place of worship into a marketplace to make men rich. What should be holy ground now buzzes with greed. His response is swift and fierce.
He doesn’t just scold. He drives them out. He flips their tables.
Yes, this is still Jesus. But not the side of him we often picture, who welcomes children, heals the sick, and eats with sinners. The Prince of Peace. That leaves us asking: Is this the same Jesus we’ve seen throughout the Gospels? Why did he react this way? What made him so indignant?
Jesus used the opportunity to teach those listening: “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers’” (Mark 11:17).
Context helps us understand. In the first century, Jerusalem’s temple was divided into three sections: one for Jewish men, another for Jewish women, and a third where Gentiles (non-Jews) were invited to pray and seek God. The money changers and animal sellers were most likely located in the court of the Gentiles—a section designated for foreigners—since that is where currency exchanges were carried out for those who arrived with foreign money.
These travelers had likely journeyed for weeks, maybe months, to offer a prayer in the temple. But when they arrived, they found chaos. They were distracted and diverted by exploitative merchants pushing products, shouting prices, and exchanging money. Instead of encountering a sacred space to pray, they were taken advantage of. The very place meant to help draw them nearer to God had become a barrier to experiencing his power and presence.
The sacred had been swallowed by the superficial.
That is what provoked Jesus’ righteous anger. A holy space had been hijacked. An obstacle was placed in the path of those seeking the Lord. As R. C. Sproul put it, the merchants “had no business conducting their business in that place and violating God’s design for the Gentiles to pray there.”
That is why Jesus declared, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.” He was reminding them that God loves all nations. That he is pleased when they come with genuine and repentant hearts. In doing so, he made the temple’s purpose unmistakably clear: to serve as a spiritual bridge for people to connect with God—not a place to lose sight of him.
Today, we no longer gather at a physical temple. Instead, the church—the body of believers around the world—is the living temple of God (1 Cor. 3:16–17; 2 Cor. 6:16). And though the structure has changed, the church still has the same purpose. We are still called to be a bridge. We are still called to help people find their way to Christ. The question is: Are we?
It’s a hard question, but we must ask it.
Is there anything in us—or in our church buildings—that is impeding people seeking the Lord?
Have we become more of a barrier than a bridge?
If Jesus walked into our churches today, would he overturn our tables?
Are we helping people connect with God, or are we just distracting them with noise?
Has our focus on trivialities built up obstacles?
Pastor, your job isn’t to mediate access to the sacred. You’re not an Old Testament priest guarding the holy of holies. You are a shepherd. Your responsibility is to guide those who seek the Lord to their own encounter with God.
As Paul writes in Ephesians 4:11–13:
Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God…
Our calling is to build up the people of God and to point them to Christ. But what if instead of pointing them to Christ, we point them to ourselves?
The temptation is common among pastors—to draw people in with our charisma or communication skills, to become the focus rather than the guide. And we have seen the rotten fruit that bears.
We don’t need more case studies of how this pastor-centered culture can wreak havoc on the church. The headlines keep coming in: scandals abound, pastors fall from grace, trust is broken.
The Western spotlight on celebrity pastors has distorted our vision of pastoral calling. We now risk raising up young leaders who pursue pastoral ministry not because of what the Bible calls them to do, but to be recognized—for the platform, the followers, the promise of a successful career.
This is not what Jesus had in mind.
When this distorted image of pastoral ministry enters the church, it begins to reshape everything else the church does. Without realizing it, we begin to worry more about marketing than about intercession. We trust more in the reach of social media than in the power of fasting. We rejoice when the churches are full, regardless of whether people are actually being discipled. It starts to feel normal, and we don’t notice how far we’ve drifted.
With good intentions, many of us have adopted styles, strategies, or services we think define what a “modern” church should look like. We’ve shortened services for convenience. We’ve streamlined the flow and tightened every transition. We craft messages too blunted to penetrate the heart.
To make room for the next service, we rush people out of the sanctuary, cutting off any possibility of fellowship and community. What should feel like family starts to feel like a forced event. And somewhere in that process, the pastor has stopped smelling like sheep. He’s no longer among the flock but is, instead, surrounded by cameras and lights.
We’ve traded depth for speed. Surrender for shine.
Pastor, the people in your church don’t need another celebrity to follow, but a pastor to turn to. They need a shepherd. Your calling is not to impress them but to disciple them, ensuring their heart is increasingly shaped in Christ’s image.
A. W. Tozer once diagnosed this very problem:
If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95 percent of what they did would stop, and everybody would know the difference.
That’s a convicting thought.
What we need is not another upgrade in style or strategy but a genuine reformation and a return to our true calling: to connect people to Christ and to see Christ formed in them. Our Sunday services matter. Good production has value. But these things can never replace the power of the gospel.
Of course we want our churches to grow. And many pastors dream of one day leading a large, thriving church. But we must be honest with ourselves: What’s driving that desire?
It’s easy to fall into the comparison game. We look at larger churches and wonder, Am I doing something wrong? Why do I have so few followers? Why am I not more relevant? But what if we’re measuring ourselves against the wrong standard? Growth in itself is good, but when driven by insecurity or vanity, it can also be a snare.
Could someone who has never heard of Christ walk into one of our churches, hear a polished three-song concert, experience a seamless production, receive a motivational message, and leave without ever being able to pray and connect with God? Just like foreign visitors in Jesus’ day, is it possible they came seeking God but found only noise and distraction?
God’s heart is for his house to be a place where people can truly encounter him. A place where they can pray, talk to him, confess, worship, ask, and surrender. If our services are so fast, curated, and entertaining that no one has time to do any of that, we have missed the mark entirely.
When Christ returns, he won’t ask you about your follower count. He won’t ask how many people tuned in to your podcast. He won’t care about how many square feet your building had or how many albums your worship team released. He won’t be impressed by the attendance numbers of your Christmas or Easter productions. Whether they were 10, 100, or 10,000, the question will not be about scale—it will be about stewardship.
He will simply ask: What did you do with the people I entrusted to you?
The parable of the talents reminds us: God is not moved by our numbers. He’s moved by how faithfully we steward what he’s placed in our hands.
That is our job. It is our calling—as the body of Christ and as pastors—to represent him so clearly, so humbly, that people see Jesus through us without any interruption or distraction.
We are not the main act. Our ministry dreams are not the point.
We must remove ourselves from the spotlight and direct all attention to him.
Originally from Paraguay, Sebastián Franz is a pastor at Iglesia de Dios United in Oklahoma City and along with his wife, leads the young adult-oriented ministry and podcast Volviendo a la Esencia (Returning to the Essence).
