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.
Funny me too.
There are unsaved men that hold Calvinist doctrine just as there are tares in your church .
Only if you do not understand Calvinism
Don't you think that just maybe it was Gods plan to have Joshua lead the Jews into the promised land ?
Joshua or Jehoshua = "Jehovah is salvation"
It sounds like you believe that in order to achieve His will God has to be a juggler keeping thousands of balls in the air all the while keeping His fingers crossed that what he has foretold will actually happen
You are correct there , but then the doctrine of most churches is man centered, so it should be no surprised that the music and the sermon are too . It is all about what did God do for me today . This however is the plan of God. The tares are allowed to grow with the wheat until the Harvest .
I don't think they are saying that at all. I think they are saying that Jesus will meet them where they are.
Too often we insist that the only way to worship is the way we worship. And too often we, the critics, are simply stifling the holy Spirit.
If these guys are called to worship in s gym, then who are we to say they are wrong? They are going out to where the lost are and compelling them to come in. Its a lot more than I can say about myself. I only wish I had their zeal for bringing Christ to a lost world. Would that I had the vision to turn a gym into a cathedral for the cause of Christ.
Certainly one can pick and choose those Scriptures that appeal to his tastes, but that's not a sound hermeneutical exegesis. You have to square Jn. 3:16 with Jn 6:44, Eph. 1, and others. kjam22 has apparently struggled with this very thing and arrived at the conclusion he mentioned, of the coexistent presence of free-will and Divine sovereignty.
It is the spirit of antichrist at work. We don't have any fear of God. We're living in a fast-paced culture, consumed with the here and the now. We've erected an idol, a cosmic and jovial Santa Clause, and bowed down and called it "Yahweh".
There is no Jonathan Edwards. The 17th century Calvinistic seriousness and zeal for the true conversion of sinners, carried so faithfully and so valliantly by men like George Whitefield, is gone. It doesn't fit. It's out-dated. It's not hip. People don't like it. It give God too much and us too little. And that's why it's so vociferously maligned by the world and the "modern" church.
We are witnessing the historical penning of our own societal obituary. It will literally take a miracle to draw us from this pit of spiritual lethargy and its consequent moral decadance.
Exactly. Me. Church isn't about "me". The Church wasn't created for "me". It would seem to me that a Witness would see the "apostate" church as an excellent chance to be a Witness for Christ. It's a target rich environment.
It's a fine line between Paul's being all things to all people and inadvertently becoming "of the world."
I understand and agree with you. I have not seen the magazine that you mentioned and was curious as to your objections or criticisms of it ( that is how *I* perceived your post ). Thus my questioning the relevance of the issues addressed within its covers.
On the other hand, even John Calvin had a sense of humor.
Maybe.
You know it may have been, and it may not have been. The bible doesn't say either way. I realize that you are going to believe that it was God's original plan for Moses to strike the rock instead of speaking to it... and for the spies to come back saying we can't take the land.... and then after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness for Joshua to lead the people into the promised land. I know that you believe it was God's original plan, because you read the entire bible with a predisposed opinion regarding predestination.
And you maybe right. But you might not be right either, because the bottom line is that the bible doesn't tell us if God originally wanted Moses to lead the people into the promise land or not. It does tell us that Moses convinced the Lord to change his mind about the destruction of the people of Israel. But I guess he could have predetermined before the dawn of time that he would change his mind at that moment too. Ya think?
I don't think they are saying that at all. I think they are saying that Jesus will meet them where they are.
I do. I know my church has become that way. I can even make you a long list of doctrinal terms that are no longer acceptable to be spoken in the church service. For a while we even called our evening service "Road Rules" after the MTV show so that we might attract more young people. They call it "meeting people where they are"...... but it's about being cool. And the real problem with it is this... when people think they have to resort to slick presentations like this, it is because they doubt that the word is sufficient to change lives.
That's my opinion.
I have. I spent a lot of time studying the text. And the bottom line is that both are taught in the scripture. And to believe one without the other is to believe half of the gospel. But then one day a former pastor on a Wed night stated it simply during a bible study about this topic. They both exist. Two seemingly opposing philosophies that coexist hand in hand, side by side, fully functional. Our minds don't understand it, but God does. And this truth really emphasises the depth and complexity of the God we serve.
Proverbs 1:7 "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; Fools despise wisdom and instruction."
Yeah.. old translation is the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom. You'll never hear that verse quoted in a contemporary church. I mean NOT EVER.
You know when our chuch slipped over the line? When we hired our new pastor. His doctorate is in get this "creative worship". For years we had pastors who were grounded conservative and a music department that pushed the envelope. But that balance worked pretty well. But now we've lost the balance.
My list? Which list was that?
Thus while you see "slick presentations" as some kind of compromise, I don't. Paul gave a pretty "slick presentation" on Mars Hill and Jesus gave a pretty "slick presentation" when he fed 5000 and when he performed miracles. Jesus met people on their level in order to bring them the word. From that point they were free to accept it or reject it.
Our Sunday evening service is geared toward young people and the young at heart. Sure there is an element of "slick presentation" but it is followed by a full hour of gospel preaching followed by a call to repentance.
BTW if you don't like your Church, why do you go there? There are plenty of boring churches out there. There are plenty of Churches that don't give any slick presentations of anything, including the gospel. Why don't you just move on and let God do whatever work he has been doing. Sounds to me that if your Church is preaching the gospel and has 5000 members that it is doing something right. But then maybe church growth is just another way of showing how God isn't working.
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