Target Avenue and Cracker Barrel Boulevard

Both the Target corporation and Cracker Barrel have been in the news lately. Target, for more than a decade, has made one woke decision and then another. They are currently trying to backpedal and clean things up because their business is in a troubling nosedive. From a variety of news reports, we have learned that Cracker Barrel has apparently been sponsoring left-wing causes for several years, too. Their rebranding effort recently backfired on them, and they lost $1M in stock value. Now, they are trying to pick up the pieces and put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

The fumbling of the ball by any number of corporations like these two has reminded me that the same type of nonsense is also happening in the church world.

One man in the deep South who abandoned his fundamental Baptist roots went a different direction and started a full-scale “rock and roll” contemporary church. It appeared that things were booming as crowds flocked to it. Then the bubble burst, bankruptcy was declared, and the buildings are rotting to the ground.

On a recent trip, I asked my host pastor about another certain church. In years past, it had been a great church with a great pastor who served there for over four decades. I was already aware that, about twenty years ago, they called a pastor who rebranded their ministry and took it “contemporary.”

When I asked, “How are they doing?”, my host pastor shrugged and said, “The church no longer exists; the buildings have been demolished. A secular business now occupies the property.”

I immediately thought of several other similar situations in various parts of the country. Whether the culprit is contemporary, Calvinist, charismatic or some moral corruption, the results of moving a scripturally fundamental church from its ministry are often catastrophic.

Check with Target or with Cracker Barrel and see how going woke or otherwise rebranding themselves turned out. If they are honest, they could tell you that a lot of people are not laughing at the woke joke.

Our churches would do well to take note. It is true that the “rock and roll” churches can draw a crowd (once a week), but leave off the “rock and roll” and see how fast the crowd disappears.

The religious culture that feeds itself on bad music will also demand the Bibles that have been diluted and rebranded. They will expect the pulpit to tone down the rhetoric and not rock their boat. Preaching will lose out to teaching with no punch, no power and no persuasion.

Social drinking, if not advocated, will be tolerated without so much as a whisper of warning against alcohol.

The “shift and drift” emissaries have successfully sold a false narrative to a lot of pastors and churches. They say, “preaching is old hat,” “soul winning doesn’t work anymore,” or “you’ve got to change with the culture.” I think I can testify to the absolute falsehood of their propaganda.

As president and editor of the Sword of the Lord, I have preached in literally hundreds of churches across North America and around the world. I made fifty-one trips in 2024 and have made thirty-three trips in the first nine months of 2025. These churches are not all large, but they all have several things in common. They are fundamental, Bible-focused churches. They are King James Bible churches. They have preaching and teaching. They have soul winning on their weekly agenda. Most of them have bus routes. They are reaching out with a variety of ministries (youth, couples, addictions, VBS, etc.). They sing hymns and choruses while holding the line on the music. They have a warm, welcoming fellowship. They are shepherding the flock and ministering to the needs of people.

The pastors in these churches are leading. They are protecting their pulpits. They are not keeping company with a theologically diverse crowd. They are not looking across the ecclesiastical meadows hoping to find a greener pasture. They are living out I Corinthians 15:58—solid and excited about it.

Let’s be wary of the push and shove to abandon the tried and proven things that we know to be tried and true. Let’s not let some smooth-talking salesperson take us down Target Avenue and Cracker Barrel Boulevard.

Since we know what to do and how to do it, the question that demands an answer is this: will we get ourselves organized, prioritize the Lord’s mandates and devote our time and energy to the task? If the answer is yes, yes and yes, then I have no doubt as to the successful outcome.

If, however, you and your church are not quite there, here is my recommendation. At the next light, take a right turn onto Amen Avenue and keep going straight until it becomes Hallelujah Boulevard.