You don't think the Pope's attire is a little flashy?
Or how about the Orthodox Christians
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.
No offense, but unless you're twelve years old, you're old enough to know that the media never, never ever gets it right about religion, especially Christianity.
The reporter is playing up the cool angle rather than dealing with the substance of belief. Note how he goes out and gets a poor misled soul from the anti-Christian rock crowd to get a balancing quote. This poor reporter twit thinks these guys are all going to be a major force of leftists because they don't look like conservatives, so that's how he wrote his story. It's wishful thinking on his part. Just because somebody is a little less interested in fighting the gay agenda doesn't mean they're going to go become a leftist. How many people who really care about Christianity would read Indymedia or even Ellen Goodman or Maureen Dowd and says to themselves, "Now that's what Jesus would write!"
Whether these alt-churches are good churches depends totally on what is being taught in the services, not on what these people are wearing. The stuff my church does would have been looked down on in the same way if we'd been doing it fifty years ago, and we are a hard-core Bible-believing church.
But it is up to us to spread the word.
No one would hear it if we all just sat on our butts and did nothing.
I'm not a big fan of the movie "Passion of the Christ", but many people are, and I am very pleased that it has touched so many lives. It seems like God has used that movie. Like I said, different tastes for different people.
I am moved by things like Handel's Messiah, and some people are moved by a Michael Smith song. Both are Christian songs, just different. I'm pleased that God can use both.
My regular parish does not offer a Latin Mass, but I try to enjoy the beautiful Latin language at least once a month at another church.
Yes, the Bible studies and other informal meetings are great, but I crave the formality and reverence of the Mass.
As the article points out, the fact that I can connect with ancient Christians via religious rites is important to me.
Excellent point.
I agree with that completely.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you are a pretty staunch Calvinist.
Packaging Christ in a way that leads people to love him is never wrongheaded.
but it all comes down to the idea that "they might not be saved if we don't find a way to reach them". And that simply isn't true, according to scripture.
And that's the gospel, according to KJAM.
So,, don't go tell anyone the good news because it doesn't matter.
That's scriptural. < /sarcasm>
Everything else is not 'mainline': Assembly of God, Disciples of Christ, Covenant Church, Pentacostals, etc., etc.
The attitude that as long as we're growing in numbers we're doing something right......right?
Let us act like David and serve our own generation. In Heaven we will hear those words, " Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!"
Personally, I credit the music of Christian heavy metal band Stryper for helping planting a seed in me that was used to open me up to listening to what my Christian friends were saying to me in their attempts to witness to me. When somebody knows nothing about Jesus perhaps it is sometimes best to speak to them in a language they understand, this may be through the types of music they listen to. To say that Christian rock is bad is wrong, Christian rock may be a tool used to speak to a non-believing person and God may use this to bring them to the point of searching for the truth.
Anyone who thinks Christian rock is so bad may want to check out Neal Morse's Testimony album. Very powerful lyrics of one mans journey from rock star to Christian. One of the most inspiring testimonies I've heard.
Did Jesus not teach to go out into the world and be a light to the world, isn't there scripture that tells christians to go out into the world and preach to non believers in their language?
You don't think the Pope's attire is a little flashy?
Or how about the Orthodox Christians
Yes, adapting yourself VERBALLY and the VERBAL content is right but to lower your standards in dress and how you care for your body is NOT what Paul did. He did NOT lower his standards but sought to RAISE people UP!
Just an example:
i.e. you don't have to dress and hehave like a slut to reach a slut. A slut already knows what that's like. What the slut needs is to know Christ and the better way of dressing etc..
Ya Think? LOL
A poor interpretation IMO, but surely the background.
You don't really believe there are people in hell because the christians around them weren't creative enough to reach them in a way that they could relate to... do you?
I agree, but beware of crossing lines you never meant to cross. That's my point. God is holy and He is not pleased with sinful worship. What I see in churches these days is exactly that. They are not influencing the world creatively. The world is influencing them. It is desensitizing them, so much so that they are not even bothered by language and nudity. No. You will hear them criticize fellow Christians for being too "pure" before you will hear them criticize sin. At a church near me -- I call it First Church of the Holy Cinema -- they went to see Along Came Polly for a wednesday night church service (the youth group). They had month after month of lessons based on The Matrix, Signs, and some other movies. These people are obsessed with movies. But they issued warnings about The Passion and its violence, Ryan Dobson's book was criticized as being "too anti-culture," etc...
Jesus said to "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If a man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in Him....for all that is in the world, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh... these are not from the Father but from the World....and the World is fading away...but whoever keeps doing the will of God will live forever." We are also told to let our minds dwell on "whatever is true, whatever is right....." God is holy. He wants us to pursue holiness, not entertain ourselves to death.
You have to resign your faith and go back and start over because you weren't given the good news in a way that pleases some folks.
Well, I wouldn't go that far. I was speaking strictly about the liberal churches who make up the "mainline," WCC landscape.
I attend a marvelous Assembly of God church and previously attended a marvelous Southern Baptist church.
Nothing "mainline" about the powerful messages preached in either of those churches. They both preach the Word of God without compromise or giving one rip about what the world thinks about it.
That really is a misleading term.
Actually I accept that the bible teaches "calvin doctrine" and equally teaches "freewill". That both doctrines coexist. Is that a problem? I mean you can read the text for yourself.
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