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FYI: the hipsters are already hating on your church of the future.
I spent far too much time laughing at http://www.stuffchristianculturelikes.com/ and http://stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com/ this week.
But only after the sting wore off. Jumbotrons? Leading worship barefoot? Coffeehouses? Bono? That stuff signaled a quality church in 1999, when I was in college.
And Twitter? Apparently, only old people twitter — which is a low blow to someone who started Twittering this year.
All that to say, it strikes me that my generation has reached the point of put up or shut-up about relevance. Are we better at putting the gospel in current context? Or just part of demographic destiny? Because it sure seems a lot of energy goes into criticizing old people, and claiming some kind of victory when they die or retire.
Is today’s church better at being relevant? Mostly in the sense that teens who drank deeply of Nirvana’s angst, recoiled from the failings of Jim Bakker and Jerry Falwell, and saw John Piper on a jumbotron at a Passion Conference are now five years past Seminary. They merely replaced a decade of Kennedy-era seminarians.
So please — please! — don’t spend too much time debating whether tomorrow’s churches should be Purpose Driven or Acts 29. It’s a generational fight, one that Boomers will lose by about fifteen years. Churches for disco fans are nearly incomprehensible to fans of U2, and the younger ones will have the pleasure of the last laugh.
But I have some bad news for all my aging friends in flannel: you’re doomed to lead churches full of Backstreet Boys and Hannah Montana fans. You will be judged on your ability to interact with that culture, while the winner of the battle between the church of the 90s and the church of the 70s will still be a decade (or more) behind. The only worthwhile fight is one that helps churches live out the gospel, together, in their own communities, at the edge of the present.
I hope history shows that we did it better, not that we just came later.
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