Here is a mini-excerpt:
Last week I shared a post that was inspired by the LifeChurch.tv all-staff time with Bill Hybels. Bill shared quite the discerning quote: “Cool isn’t cool anymore!” This quote has provided for some healthy dialogue for my team, whom for about a year now has been feeling the tension of the coolness and God.There are some great comments there. One of the things I wrote was, "So in the presence of our coolness do we have the presence of an AWESOME GOD!"
What are your thoughts? How does Church, God and Cool mix?
2 comments:
The blogger you referenced wrote, "...this new movement of the 'Relevant Church' can fixate itself so much on trying to be cool and relevant that they miss the main thing."
This is something that many of us picked up years ago and were turned off by it. Of course the answer is not to purposely be uncool, but just to be like Christ in a cultural world. This "normally" means that the church is counter-cultural. This has been the case down the centuries. Ever wondered why God in the OT gave the Israelites "specific instructions" on what to not wear and what to not pierce and how to not wear their hair? The point was that God did not want his people looking like, sounding like, or even smelling like the world. God's people are the only fleshly God so to speak that the world sees.
How those OT principles of being seperate flesh themseleves out is something I am trying to figure out, but I do get the whole thing that the church spending too much time being releveant that they become irrelevant. You know, the Wal-mart version of cool. The truth is that the church cannot compete with the world in being cool. So maybe we should just top it. We are embarrasing ourselves.
For me personally...it doesn't turn me off unless you are more interested in "being cool" rather than having God's presence in the midst of what you are doing no matter which way it is.
I personally would rather be somewhere that has God's presence and looks cool.
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