Cool Christianity

My friend sent me this article where Brett McCracken asks is rebranding Christianity as hip, countercultural and relevant “really going to bring young people back to church?”

He notes the use of shock, indie rock and sex to attract young people to church in response to alarming trends:

“Recent statistics have shown an increasing exodus of young people from churches, especially after they leave home and live on their own. In a 2007 study, Lifeway Research determined that 70% of young Protestant adults between 18-22 stop attending church regularly.

He concludes that cool isn’t sustainable, and this is exactly right. I would only add that cool does work in the short-run; it is immediately gratifying which is why so many use it, and why mega-churches are mega. This year, this decade, even this generation, these churches are seen. Forty years sounds like a long time to us because we don’t believe God’s promises are given for generations or note in our Bibles that movements lasting only one generation are dismal tragedies: witness the book of Judges. The land rests for 40 years until the next appalling drift invites capture and desolation. Pastors need to look to the future of their churches–their children and disciples–on the same long time line. Will the next generation be more faithful than this one, or will it be distanced and distracted by our shallowness and hypocrisy? Shock and awe isn’t necessarily hipocrisy, but it is cultivating the wrong thing. It’s hard enough to pull all the weeds when you are growing the right sort of thing, which means that churches in love with worldly cool will have an impossible time sustaining those who are interested in Jesus for the long unflashy haul.

C.S. Lewis said “All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.” It’s easy to be Gnostic and assume the only application of something so obviously wise pertains to points of doctrine that never touch down in our culture. I heard one pastor, with whom I have much respect for, say that he will hate the band at his church when he is older. Style will trump, and since generational musical beauty and maturity are not objects of “missional” value, 20-year-olds will always be leading the music. Exit honorable grey- heads with decades of wisdom and faithfulness.

How fantastic would it be worship with your grand children (and their friends!) who actually want to sing the same songs that you do because everyone thinks they are worthy in form and content to be lifted up to the King? Now that would be cool.

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