Posted on 05/17/2004 7:06:39 AM PDT by qam1
VIEW MEGACHURCHES AS SLICK, IMPERSONAL
For evidence of generational upheaval these days, you might skip over the usual suspects -- sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll -- and consider instead Christianity.
Two decades after baby boomers invented the suburban megachurch, which removed crosses or stained-glass images of Jesus in favor of neutral environments, their children are now wearing "Jesus Is My Homeboy" T-shirts.
As mainline churches scramble to retain young people, these worshippers have gained attention by-creating alternative churches in coffee bars and warehouses and publishing new magazines and Bibles that come on as anything but church.
But does a T-shirt really serve the faith? And if religion is our link to the timeless, what does it mean that young Christians replace their parents' practices?
The movement "has a noble side," said Michael Novak, the conservative theologian at the American Enterprise Institute. He remembers how much he enjoyed the Christian comic books of his youth. He compared the alt-evangelicals to missionaries, who "feel they've learned something valuable from their faith and want to share it" using the native language.
For many in this generation, the worship style of their parents feels impersonal: not bigger than their daily, media-intensified lives, but smaller. Their search is for unfiltered religious ex-perience.
"My generation is discontented with dead religion," said Cameron Strang, 28, founder of Relevant Media, which produces Christian books, a Web site and Relevant magazine, a stylish 70,000-circulation bimonthly that addresses topics like body piercing, celibacy, extreme prayer, punk rock and God.
Strang, a graduate of Oral Roberts University, is in some ways a model alt-evangelical, with two earrings, a shaved head and beard. He left a megachurch, he said, because he felt no community at the slick services. Now he attends an alternative church in a school gym, with intimate groups and basketball after services.
This stylistic shift is critical, said Lee Rabe, pastor at Threads, an alternative, or "emerging," church in Kalamazoo, Mich. Where megachurches reached out to baby boomers turned off by church, the younger generation often has no experience with religion. They need to be beguiled, not assuaged, Rabe said.
"The deity-free 'church lite' of the megachurches, that's the last thing these people want," he said. "They want to talk about God. It's hard-core, not in a fire and brimstone way, but it has to be raw, real."
The changes are often more stylistic than doctrinal. Many alt-evangelicals espouse conservative theology, but reject the censure of some churches. Strang sees this as a blueprint for an evangelical left.
"We're all sinners," he said. "Your sin isn't any worse than my sin. We don't say, 'Stop the horrible gays.' You want to reach them, you don't want to protest them. If we looked like goody-two-shoes, clean cut, we couldn't have a conversation with our lesbian friend at the coffee shop, because she couldn't relate."
Increasingly, this conversation borrows from pop culture, in the same way that hip secular culture borrows the cabala and the cross.
Critics say this engagement comes at a price. Timothy Williams, 48, a pastor at Sound Doctrine Ministries, a non-denominational church in Enumclaw, Wash., sees flirtation with pop culture as a capitulation to sin. "More and more, the church is seeking to be like the world around it," said Williams, who has written a pamphlet denouncing Christian rock. "But the Bible says that anyone who becomes a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. If we're going to be relevant or on the world's level to draw people, we might as well give free beer in the parking lot."
But evangelicals have long used pop culture and new technology to spread their gospel, said Stephen Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University.
Christian tracts handed out in the 19th century were one of the first mass media. In the 1930s, the evangelist Charles Fuller used the new medium of radio to broadcast his sermons. Four decades later, the Jesus movement of the 1970s adopted the vibe of the 1960s counterculture.
The actor Stephen Baldwin, a born-again Christian, has just directed a DVD called Livin' It, pairing extreme sports with faith testimony, from which he hopes to spin skate Bibles, clothing, CDs and Bible-study guides, all tied to a non-profit youth ministry.
"This could be the first get-down rock 'n' roll, cool Christian brand," he said.
The underlying romance is familiar from any Nirvana video: the Christian as rebel or outsider, misunderstood, struggling against a world of conformity, commercialism and manufactured pleasures.
"It's a countercultural thing," said Tim Lucas, 33, pastor of an emerging ministry called Liquid in Basking Ridge, N.J. On a recent Sunday, Lucas wore a Hawaiian shirt and used images from The Lord of the Rings movies and a clip from Amadeus in a sermon about the book of First Samuel.
"They identify with being an underground movement, which is what Christianity was in the beginning," Lucas said of his congregation. "Living out a life with Christ at the center draws a lot of flak. Not a lot of people will celebrate that."
The movement away from middle-of-the-road theology and worship mirrors a trend on college campuses, where growing numbers of students claim either no religion or strong religious affiliation, with the middle ground shrinking, said Alexander Astin, director of the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, which last year completed a national study of students' beliefs.
In the survey, more than 70 percent of students said they prayed, discussed religion or spirituality with friends, found religion personally helpful and gained spiritual strength by trusting in a higher power.
Thus you explain why it's a funny bumper sticker. Thank you.
You need to hide your agenda a little better. I lost count, how many times have you posted that? 4? or was it 5?
Oh... so you mean missing the opportunity to tell them the good news. Okay... sorry if I missunderstood you.
Pardon me if that seems a tad far fetched. Particularly since I have posted it several times.
So, maybe I misunderstood you. Maybe you can clarify, why do we bother to spread the good news since it doesn't matter? I must have missed your explanation.
Much of what I see in NYC is church-as-religion-themed-social-club.
No. Remember that the members of the upper class in this country (and this means those who live on inherited wealth, not those who have become rich through work) are primariliy educated in the elite preparatory schools and the ivy league and certain select liberal arts colleges (Amherst, Williams, Bowdoin, Swarthmore, Carlton, Davidson, Washington & Lee, etc), almost all of which (with the exception of W&L) are very, very liberal, fully-indoctrinating houses of political correctness. Hence, the rising generation of the upper class is overwhelmingly very liberal. Even the currently adult generation is generally liberal, given the liberalism, and liberal Episcopal Christianity with which they were raised. Most young professionals of the upper classes (for they typically work until they come into their inheritences in their 20's-40's) are not churched at all. They turn to the churches they grew up in when it comes time to marry (Oh, Muffy, of course we'll be married in Christ Church, but do you want the reception at the Field Club, Greenwich Country Club, or at Indian Harbor Yacht Club...) and become active as they have children and have a vague pull towards giving them an appropriate culturally Christian environment with other appropriately culturally Christian children in Sunday School and the St. Cecelia's Choir.....
You know.. it doesn't matter salvation wise if you or I do anything or not. If you and I don't tell those that God wants to save, then He'll raise up someone else who will. And I think he already knows if you and I are gonna do it or not. But what does matter is how our obedience or disobedience it effects our relationship with God. We are "called" to spread the good news. We are commanded to do it. If we aren't then we are not doing what God wants us to do.
The question becomes are we really called to make the church look like the rest of the world while we do it? I don't think we are. And really, I can't find any scripture that teaches us that we are. I can find scripture about being separated from the world, and about the world hating us.... etc. But I can't find any that says, dress like, act like, look like, be cool like the world... and then they'll be willing to listen to your message about being set apart from the world.
See my #104.
I saw the tv reports about the "Jesus is my homeboy" t-shirts, but must confess that I have no idea what that's aupposed to mean. (Is it a gang reference?) Guess I'm just too far removed from the cutting edge or something...it does not sound complimentary to the Lord, I will say that.
LOL! You just described one of my college friends precisely!
"Homeboy", as I've always know it, was a gang-term for someone who lived in your neighborhood and was a good friend. It's a bit of a retro term now, and hasn't been a "cool" term since the early 90's.
Hey I am glad someone else asked what it means also. So what does Jesus is my homeboy mean?
The question becomes, is that what we are doing when we evangelize in this way? I think not.
He'll raise up someone else who will.
Why? He doesn't need anyone to do it. Those in hell belong there and those saved are saved by your reckoning. Funny how he asked you to do something so useless.
But I can't find any that says, dress like, act like, look like, be cool like the world..
Another strawman, unless you can find someone here who has said that.
Ya know, in your church I'll bet most people dress pretty much the same. I think you should dress like a hippy for church so you can be different from them. It's basically what you are asking others to do.
Go ahead, set yourself apart. Maybe if you wear a clown hat and a hula skirt you will have a beter impact because you will be different that EVERYONE. That'll get 'em.
On the other hand, don't bother at all, it doesn't matter.
That reminds me of the joke circulating in the 1950s:
A priest is holding two scruffy beatniks by the scruff of the neck as he's tossing them out of the church.
"I don't mind you calling the priests 'Daddy-0'"
"And, I don't mind you calling the sisters 'Sis'"
"But, when it comes to calling Jesus Christ and the Twelve Apostles 'JC and the Boys......."
I'm not saying that we should intentionally make it difficult to hear the message. But I am saying that we are to be our changed selves. We're to go about our lives telling others about Christ. And that I don't think it's really our calling to try and mold ourselves to fit the "acceptance level" of others around us... for the sake of their hearing.
"Homeboy" means someone from your nieghborhood, someone you trust, someone you know.
As in, "I know Christ".
But it's really bad to say that because it's not exactly the words someone else thinks you should use.
So, again, are you offended if a Peruvian church looks like the culture of Peru?
Or if an Alaskan church looks like the culture of Alaska?
So why wouldn't an American church have in it things that look like American culture?
But the bible teaches that what I have told you is accurate. If you and I don't do what God has commanded, he will raise up someone who will. The old testament is filled with examples of this. You can start with Moses and Joshua.
Believe me, I know the breed from long familiarity. They're not much different in San Francisco, New York, Philadephia, or Boston. Only the name of the churches and the clubs change. You know these people, they're in the Book, and over the summer you need your Diliatory Domiciles supplement to find them. If they're married, and he his parents werent in the Book, she'll be listed under another heading, but that would be telling....
I can remember, not so very many years ago, when law firms determined who they would interview at law schools by checking the Book, and there was a time, back before the Books were unified nationally, that simply being hired at certain law firms would get you into the book.
American culture says taking the lord's name in vain is okay. You can just watch television one night and count the number of times. American culture says sex outside of marriage is fine, and is practiced by millions. Should our churches model this too?
I don't think it's fair or accurate to say that churches should reflect the culture of the country they are in.
This has become disingenious IMO. I have made my point. You have made yours. I reject yours. You seeming reject mine.
Good luck with the getting the message out. But after all, it doesn't matter. You are on a useless mission. It has all been decided and you are just doing busy work. They don't need to know because they are already doomed or saved.
Carry on.
Thanks for the explanation.
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