I disagree
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.
I have no problem with that at all. I think we can (we must) reach out to homosexuals to evangelize them, and we must oppose the radical agenda in our schools, community and government.
LOL
I was born in 1963. Does that mean I'm a boomer? I note that Doug Coupland, the author of "Generation X," was born in 1961, and that the book was published in 1991, when I was 27/28. Please tell me I'm not a boomer.
Agree totally. And I have never said anything even remotely opposed to that.
Wearing a WWJD shirt or bracelet or making a joyful noise to the Lord with a guitar or wearing a shirt that says you love Jesus in a way that people your age can relate to are not sinful worship. But all of those are condemned by those who have ALL the answers.
It was designed to be.
You really have to look no further than John 3:16 to know if we serve a choosy God:
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Judging by Steven's choice of words here I'd say chances of that are pretty slim.
What is never discussed in terms of Protestant theology, is the extent to which denominational choice is governed by social class. Florence King's outstanding, but out-of-print, Wasp, Where is Thy Sting? from the 1970s is very instructive on this point.
For the most part, the American upper class (and the upper middle class to the extent Christian) belong to a very few denominations: primarily they are Episcopalian, although in New England they are as likely to be Congregational, and in the mid-West and parts of the South, they might be Presbyterian. The ELCA Lutherans are mainline, but the majority of Lutherans in the US are of Scandinavian or German origin, hence the Lutherans are seen as a bit 'ethnic' by High Wasps.
The Methodist and Presbyterian Churches (where the Episcopal Church is strong) tend to be more middle class, as are the Baptists.
You don't really think that you should refrain from spreading the gospel because everyone in hell was created to go there..... do you?
This idea that if we don't become more like the world we can't reach people, and then they'll die and go to hell is just not supported in scripture. But that's the way it's always argued. "That we have to do this for people to be saved."
I disagree
Yes, I more or less share your perspective. I suspect that when we find two opposite doctrines in seeming coexistence, it means that the real principle at work is more complicated than we realize...and no, I have no clue how it works, except according to the Lord's will.
"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!" - Luke 13:34
I agree.
I agree totally with that. Even people my age enjoy that. In my life, though, I am seeing so much of the unholy worship I spoke of earlier that it shocks me. What has happened to our churches?
Great points! Jesus "partied" with the sinners and publicans, as they weren't beneath him.
Personal aside-- we went to OK to check on mom's grave to see if they have marked it or not. (Not, grrrr, gonna talk to some folks quickly!!!) Anyway, took a different route through Oklahoma (and Texas) cattle country. John Wayne territory.
The bamboo is going nuts out in the prairie! You can't go a mile without seeing clumps on either side of the roads and it appears in the pastures! Hope the cattle like it? =-)
In my college philosophy course, my head exploded when we got to predestination vs free will.
You can ride that train in circles forever and never get anywhere.
Which raises the question...if they really completely believe Calvinist doctrine, who are they gonna convince?
However, I don't think either of those doctrines tells us taht we have to make the church look like the world or people wont' get saved. And certainly not that there are people in hell because we weren't creative enough in how we presented the gospel.
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