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.
There is very little to disagree with in your post.
My problem is with the "King James only" crowd and the "Baptists are the Way, the Truth and the Life" people who show up on these threads claiming that Christians who worship differently than them are lost.
You reply " So how does Madonna wearing one of the shirts fit in exactly?
A flame war in the name of religion? LOL, no thanks.
Jesus said in John 7 that God was seeking worshipers who would worship in spirit and in truth. Our churches design services targeted at "the world". They fill the pews with lost sinners who because of their severed relationshipo with God cannot worship, who are still in a state of rebellion, who do know God..... and then say "worship with us". The praise and worship songs start, and everyone wants to experience it. Worship never happens.
I know because until a couple of months ago I played music in one of those churches for several years.
Yes... lots of churches have crossed the line. They've traded true worship for packing the pews with people searching for something. But the message that they need to hear is seldom preached.
That's my opinion.
Scripture makes it clear that church membership is essential to experience the spiritual growth that comes by solid teaching and fellowship with other believers.
At the same time, I don't really have a big problem with a lot of the way my fellow young people look at Christianity (well.....have a serious problem with that Jesus is my homeboy shirt...blasphemous there).
I am super traditional (attend a church that even shuns old-fashioned hymns.....we only sing OT Psalms). But at the same time, I listen to contemporary Christian stuff elsewhere (the stuff that is not trite crap), and wear Christian t-shirts.
And movements within some churches to battle off the non christians and save our denominations. The "Confessing Church Movement" within the PCUSA is one example.
I agree with the need to reach the lost, and I agree that many traditional churches in some ways do a poor job of that. But there's also a huge problem with going too far. As I heard someone else say recently, there was nothing cool about being beat to a pulp and hanging on a cross in the baking sun until He died. Communicate it. But don't sterilize it. Get the Word to the world without joining the evil of the world.
MM
You are correct.
If you ask anyone what the elements of worship are as commanded by Scripture and revealed in Scriptural example, they would have no clue.
They think God is happy with anything they do....which is not the testimony of the Word.
God wants us to worship him as he wants us to.
True; I attend the only CCM college, btw.
No. So says the Word of God.
"All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful, but not all things edify. Let no one seek his own good, but that of his neighbor." 1 Cor 10:23-24
"Give no offense either to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God; just as I also please all men in all things, not seeking my own profit but the profit of the many, so that they may be saved." 1 Cor 10:32
"God doesn't need you or me to tell him the contents of a person's heart."
I'm not judging the content of their heart. I'm judging the content of their T-Shirts.
"Church membership" means being in communion with other believers. Two or more. That has been the interpretation I have been taught and believe.
(well.....have a serious problem with that Jesus is my homeboy shirt...blasphemous there).
That depends on what the wearer intends IMO. If it is meant to glorify God it is different than if it is meant to mock him. It won't be sorted out by us.
They think God is happy with anything they do....which is not the testimony of the Word.
Yep. That's exactly right.
Your interpretation of scripture is interesting, nothing more.
I'm not judging the content of their heart. I'm judging the content of their T-Shirts.
Judge whatever you wish, in the full knowledge that it is irrelevant. You don't get a say, just an opinion.
Which one?
I agree. I've seen jackets some of the Hollywood folk are wearing and they have a comic-style picture of Jesus on them and I forget the logo but they're trendy right now. I consider this as also taking the Lord's name in vain. If we use the name in a trite, trivial, or silly manner, it is in vain.
Not much to interpret. That's like saying there are different interpretations for, "Thou shall not steal."
But that's just my opinion.
So says you.
That's like saying there are different interpretations for, "Thou shall not steal."
No it isn't
But that's just my opinion.
Yep.
Wish you were our youth minister. What do you think about a ministry sponsored tattoo parlor to help fund said ministry?
Agreed. Which leaves the intentions of the wearer to be determined by the only one who counts.
Sterling: www.sterling.edu
But, aren't these issues that the younger generation are faced with and need/want answers to?
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