"Wannabe cool" Christianity - are these gimmicks really going to bring young people back to church?

Thanks for posting this link, Jim. Good to hear the perspective of a 20-something on his generation’s church exodus & the church’s distorted thinking in response.

Sad that so many have no sense of the reverence that comes with the realization that our Savior is the Son of God who reigns in His kingdom. The Bible doesn’t do hip but it does do “shock and awe” in a way that surpasses the emergent and modern way of doing Christianity.

Easy to see that there’s not much reason to go to church or even believe when such churches look just like the world. Why be a Christian when it’s no different either way?

I have no problem with the message. But why choose the Wall Street Journal as a medium?

Having just moved, I am looking for a new church and am visiting around a bit. Sadly, I ended up in such a church today. I knew I was in trouble when the opening song was — I kid you not — “Sweet Home Alabama”. I almost left, but with this article fresh in my mind, I decided to stick around just for the sake of “research” if nothing else. The conclusion that I reached was that this type of church has become exactly what they claim to hate in the church of their “fathers”. It is extremely cliche, focused on a single generation, lost in a world of their own creation and mistakenly thinking that they are somehow relevant. I couldn’t find a lot with which to disagree in the “sermon” other than it was just simply shallow. But no more or less shallow than many of the sermons I’ve heard in so-called traditional Independent Baptist churches. In fact, he even used the term “launching pad” to describe what he was going to do with the opening text and then proceeded to treat it just like I’ve heard many “fundamentalist” pastors do since my childhood.

Each time I’ve been in a service where “hip” was the name of the game, I’ve been struck by the effort that the staff made to point out (as if it wasn’t obvious) how they were trying to be hip. One time, it was the guy who kept trying to read his Scripture off his IPhone which he was having difficulty doing because the text was too small, yet he kept crowing about how “kewl” it was to be using his IPhone to preach from. This morning, it was the fact that the 40-something year old pastor was wearing “flip flops”. I own a pair of flip flops myself, but I don’t feel compelled to draw everyone’s attention to them every time that I wear them - and know, I don’t wear them to church. In addition, I don’t want to go to the doctor and see him wearing a graphic T-shirt and flip flops…..for many of the same reasons I don’t want my pastor to be doing so as well. But if you are going to wear them — for pete’s sake, just wear them and get over them! I guess I wasn’t surprised when there was some self-congratulatory commentary on the fact that they played “Sweet Home, Alabama” as their opener as well. I saw this at another church only it involved tattoos. And the speaker only made the whole fixation on his new tattoo more pathetic by referring to it as his “Tat”. LOL. He just came off ridiculous. I’ve always been of the opinion that if you have to announce that you are “relevant”, you immediately identify yourself as “irrelevant.”

What I guess I’m saying is that seeking to appear “wise” in the way of reaching their generation, they have become “fools”. Even my teenage children were snickering at some of the antics.

As I left, I found myself wondering where most of these people would end up attending church when they “grow up” – either spiritually or in maturity. I also wondered if their children would grow up thinking all of this is ridiculous and shallow. At the age of 49, I found myself one of the oldest people in the building and frankly, I’ve never felt older or less-hip in my life. So I wondered to myself if it is somehow more noble to ignore those in their middle years than to “abandon” those who are younger?

The last church I attended (I’m in one of those rare occasions when I’m not actually working at where I worship) for the last few months had a wonderful grasp on multi-cultural and multi-generational ministry with blended worship, a wide range of dress styles (including the staff), creative outreaches, etc…. but the ONE THING on which there was zero compromise was the clear, expositional preaching of the Scripture. In fact, no one every mentioned or even thought anything about the wide variety of attire, races, etc… that you would find there and you learned that if you didn’t care for a particular style of a song, you could wait and within a little bit — something that you’d enjoy would be presented. Sadly, churches such as that are difficult to find and often drowned out by those on the far fight and far left who keep telling us that the other is out of touch or simply wrong.

Sorry for the long rant — I think I’m just needed to “vent”.

[JobK] I have no problem with the message. But why choose the Wall Street Journal as a medium?

People read it, and it’s a great newspaper.

This sort of stuff nauseates me while pressing all the intimidation of a slick advertising machine. There are days that I get discouraged when I look at our rather low-tech, traditional, and down-home approach to church and ministry. But then I am reminded that my job is pastoring and preaching. Where in the Bible does it say I have to have a $50,000 annual media budget and a graphic arts specialist on staff in order to win people to Christ and make disciples? So many churches have a lot of cool features that I’d enjoy using but probably never will. Is it my job to cast a vision for a cutting-edge ministry, or to preach the Gospel? I am concerned for many fundamental churches that, while staying conservative in many areas, seem to have capitulated to the culture’s pressure of requiring gobs of money to be spent on rapidly-fading technology in order to “reach people.” Sometimes I feel like a Luddite, but I wonder if our strength is in the arm of the flesh…or what would happen during a power outage.