3 Common Traits of Youth Who Don't Leave the Church

“What do we do about our kids?” The group of parents sat together in my office, wiping their eyes. I’m a high school pastor, but for once, they weren’t talking about 16-year-olds drinking and partying. Each had a story to tell about a “good Christian” child, raised in their home and in our church, who had walked away from the faith during the college years. These children had come through our church’s youth program, gone on short-term mission trips, and served in several different ministries during their teenage years. Now they didn’t want anything to do with it anymore. And, somehow, these mothers’ ideas for our church to send college students “care packages” during their freshman year to help them feel connected to the church didn’t strike me as a solution with quite enough depth.

The daunting statistics about churchgoing youth keep rolling in. Panic ensues. What are we doing wrong in our churches? In our youth ministries?   Continue at Jon Nielson

6 Things We Need to Learn from Youth About Preaching

Rarely seen, never heard is how many churches prefer to treat teenagers, confined to separate ministries. But I also know of a traditional church where teenagers sat front and center each week. It's no coincidence the senior pastor had been a youth minister and often addressed those teens specifically.

If we're serious about passing the gospel to the next generation, what do we need to learn from youth about how we preach? Here are six suggestions youth would offer to their pastors.

1. We don't know what sanctification means, but we know about the process of growing in grace.

I'm a word person. I majored in Latin and English and enjoyed SAT prep vocabulary flashcards. (Yes, I was a really cool kid.) I like big words, especially in the realm of theology. A mentor listened to a talk I gave to students and had a list of about seven theological terms the kids probably did not know. Kids mentally check out when they hear abundant, arcane jargon and the presumption that everyone knows what it means. Students need to learn how to define terms like justification, sanctification, imputation, and substitutionary atonement. Preachers should not shy away from using Christian terminology, but they should make sure to explain the terms in a way that is not condescending toward those who do not know it.

2. If you are personally vulnerable, we will listen to what you have to say.

In homiletics, many debate the level of vulnerability pastors should exercise. If you share too much, you risk sounding self-absorbed. If you never share any personal stories, you may appear aloof. Regardless, I can say with confidence that teenagers of this generation embrace people with a willingness to share their story, particularly those parts that reveal the preacher is an imperfect person with whom students can identify.    Continue at Cameron Cole

Amusing Our Youth to Spiritual Death?

I've spent considerable time thinking about the church's responsibility to teenagers in the last couple of years. As I look over the youth ministry landscape, the view is disheartening: a myriad of events meant to entertain rather than educate. Ravi Zacharias, speaking of youth in Tabletalk, said it well, "Building their faith is not a prime strength in our churches today. We seem to think that we need to entertain them into the church. But what you win them with is often what you win them to."   

Today's active youth group seems more focused on fellowship and service than discipleship. Instead of breeding future theologians (even of the ordinary type), we are producing young adults who are prone to leave the church when it's no longer a source of entertainment. Today's youth ministry culture could be a chapter straight out of Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death. I've already pontificated about how detrimental busyness can be to a family, which is why I'm saddened to see that youth ministry in many churches follows the trend of quantity rather than quality. It's a mentality that seeks to keep us so busy that we don't notice what we - and, more importantly, our children - are missing.

 
At the beginning of this year, my family began looking for a new church home. As we visited other churches, youth education was one of the criteria we considered in our search. My husband and I understand that parents cannot rely on the youth group as the sole source of our teen's spiritual nourishment; we must be actively involved in - no, in charge of - our daughter's theological education. Within that purview, we wanted to make certain that she will be discipled in church, as well as at home.    Continue at Melissa

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Columns from Tabletalk Magazine, March 2013

The March edition of Tabletalk is out. This issue features articles examining the church’s witness to a youth-driven culture. Past generations tended to value maturity, hard work, and sacrifice, but many in our current culture display selfishness, emphasize the idea that the new is always better than the old, and desire to achieve much with minimal effort. These cultural currents impact the church, and the church must recognize how they have done so. God’s Word calls Christians to mature in their faith and to honor the elderly among us. God’s people must grow in wisdom and integrity, and the elder men and women of the church must lead the way on this path to maturity.

 

Contributors include R.C. Sproul along with Stephen J. Nichols, Nathan Finn, Guy Prentiss Waters, Robert W. Carver, Tom Ascol, R.C. Sproul Jr., Steven J. Lawson, Jonathan K. Dodson, David Robertson and Rosemary Jense.

We do not post all of the feature articles or the daily devotionals from the issue, so you’ll have to subscribe to get those. But for now, here are links to several free columns and articles from this month:

• Jesus Christ, Anointed One by R.C. Sproul
• Relevant, Old Paths by Burk Parsons
• Kids These Days by R.C. Sproul Jr.
• Praying for Politicians by David Robertson
• Why Follow Jesus? by Jonathan Dodson
• A Friend to Africa’s Orphans: An Interview with Rosemary Jensen
• One Family Under God by Tom Ascol
• His Heart Trusts in Her by Steven Lawson

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If you have not yet subscribed to Tabletalk, now is the perfect time. Your print subscription also gives you free access to the digital edition of Tabletalk. For those living in the U.S. and Canada it’s only $23 for a year, and $20 to renew. You save even more if you get a 2- or 3-year subscription (as little as $1.36 per issue). We offer special discounts for churches or businesses who want multiple copies of each issue.

Get your subscription to Tabletalk today by calling one of Ligonier Ministries’ resource consultants at 800-435-4343 or by subscribing online.

The Millennial Generation's Acceptable Sin

Every human institution and society has its own list of sins and virtues that contradict the law of God. With the rise of the Millennial generation in evangelical churches, a vice is creeping up into the realms of acceptance, indifference, or at least resignation: fornication (i.e. extramarital sex or unchaste living).

A few decades ago, this was one of the main issues that evangelicals hammered in their social witness. The skeptical news cycle and entertainment industry mocked this often; they saw pleas for chastity as a laughable result of pietistic sexual repression and no small bit of hypocrisy. Theological leaders and other influential voices chided their fellow believers for obsessing over a select set of sexual taboos.

Now, however, the exhortations have eased off. Commentary from Tim Keller at the latest Q Conference in New York is quite telling. "We're not doing well on the sex side," he confessed. Talking about his church, Keller said, "We're just like the rest of the city. If I preach like that [on sexual ethics], everybody gets real quiet."

Similarly, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy discovered 80 percent of unmarried evangelicals between the ages of 18 and 29 had engaged in sex. Using a more stringent definition of "evangelical," the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) recently reported that 44 percent of millennial evangelicals had sex outside marriage. Of course, just because Christians oppose sexual immorality does not mean they never struggle with it. Nevertheless, in this sort of moral environment, harping on moral sex lives is analogous to starting an abolitionist church in the antebellum South. Thanks to the public liturgy of Hollywood and our own human inclinations, fornication has been normalized and poses a massive obstacle to effective pastoral ministry.   Continue at Barton Gingerich

FactChecker: Are Your Kids Likely to Lose Their Faith?

A handful of Christian authors have created a bit of a cottage industry peddling the scary news that the odds are not good that our young people stay strong in their faith into adulthood. Untrue.

There are important, effective, and relatively simple things parents and Christian workers can do to substantially increase the likelihood our young people will retain a thriving faith into and through their adult years. This is revealed in very strong, sophisticated research from some of the leading sociologists of youth and religion in the world.

Influencers of Faith

 

In the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR), noted Notre Dame professor Christian Smith and his team found:

• There are relatively simple factors that "powerfully shape" faith that remains strong through life.
• The biggest influencing factor is the faith of parents themselves and the practices they employ with their teenagers.
• These practices are simpler than many parents might imagine.

Increasing the likelihood of enduring faith in our young people is not limited to super-spiritual parents. In fact, the more "regular" and human you are the better. The factors, listed by the power of their influence, are:   Continue at Glenn T. Stanton

Stake Their Lives On It - Passion 2013

So last week, I did some house-cleaning and said that I could only post once a week in 2013, and now this week I have found myself with almost 10 pages on the subject at hand and have given Dan the week off. Go Figure.

To avoid any unpleasantry today (that comes tomorrow), I'm only going to speak hypothetically -- I'm not going to speak about anyone in particular, but about someone you probably know. I'm imagining a young person either in college or college-aged, and this person spent last week in the Georgia Dome with about 60,000 other young people his or her age. Now, when you mentally conjure this person up, I suspect you think of someone who looks like Rupert Grint, or Matt Chandler, or Angus Jones, or Elle Fanning, or Jennifer Lawrence, or Emma Stone. Not a lot of you imagining single mothers, or young adults with learning disabilities, or lower-middle-class kids who had to take a week off from work to come. Which, let's face it: that's how we want to imagine the church to be. We want the church to be full of people who are the aspirational versions of ourselves, and in some sense that is actually a good thing. It means we haven't stopped believing that the church, somehow, is supposed to be better than real life.   Continue at Frank Turk

How Far is Too Far? (Part 3)

Earlier this week, Gerald Hiestand expressed the need for pastors and ministry leaders to develop a more thought-out premarital sexual ethic. Research shows that only 20% of Christians remain abstinent prior to marriage. As evangelicals, we are often ready to take a necessary stand on homosexual ethics, yet the issue of heterosexual purity is compromised for nearly 80% of us. And so we want to begin a conversation that may feel offensive, overly conservative, or at a minimum, uncomfortable. Nonetheless, we think it’s an important one to have. We encourage you to begin by reading Gerald’s post and How Far is Too Far Part 1 and part 2 for an introduction to this series of posts.

How far is too far? Perhaps this is the wrong question, but it’s one that is asked nonetheless. Gerald Hiestand and Jay Thomas give a thought provoking answer in Sex, Dating, and Relationships. What does it mean to adhere to the New Testament’s vision of sexual purity? Here’s a short excerpt:

Don’t eat the cake.

Imagine that a man comes home from work one evening to find that his wife has baked a cake. As he walks into the kitchen, she sees him eying the cake and explicitly states, “Don’t eat that cake; it’s for our party this evening.” He nods in understanding, and she leaves the kitchen. As soon as she leaves, he cuts himself a large slice and places it on his plate. And then, bite by bite, he chews the cake and spits it back onto his plate. Having thus chewed the entire piece (but not swallowed, mind you), he scrapes the chewed piece back into the empty space on the cake tray. At this moment his wife walks back into the kitchen and looks at him in horror. “What are you doing?!” she exclaims. “I told you not to eat the cake!” He looks at her calmly and says with an assuring voice, “And indeed I have not. You see, dear, I define eating as ‘swallowing.’ And since I didn’t swallow the cake, I didn’t eat the cake. In sum, I did not have eating relations with that cake.”   Continue at Crossway

When Are We Going to Grow Up? The Juvenilization of American Christianity

The house lights go down. Spinning, multicolored lights sweep the auditorium. A rock band launches into a rousing opening song. "Ignore everyone else, this time is just about you and Jesus," proclaims the lead singer. The music changes to a slow dance tune, and the people sing about falling in love with Jesus. A guitarist sporting skinny jeans and a soul patch closes the worship set with a prayer, beginning, "Hey God …" The spotlight then falls on the speaker, who tells entertaining stories, cracks a few jokes, and assures everyone that "God is not mad at you. He loves you unconditionally."

After worship, some members of the church sign up for the next mission trip, while others decide to join a small group where they can receive support on their faith journey. If you ask the people here why they go to church or what they value about their faith, they'll say something like, "Having faith helps me deal with my problems."

Fifty or sixty years ago, these now-commonplace elements of American church life were regularly found in youth groups but rarely in worship services and adult activities. What happened? Beginning in the 1930s and '40s, Christian teenagers and youth leaders staged a quiet revolution in American church life that led to what can properly be called the juvenilization of American Christianity. Juvenilization is the process by which the religious beliefs, practices, and developmental characteristics of adolescents become accepted as appropriate for adults. It began with the praiseworthy goal of adapting the faith to appeal to the young, which in fact revitalized American Christianity. 

But it has sometimes ended with both youth and adults embracing immature versions of the faith. In any case, white evangelicals led the way.

Saving the World

Juvenilization happened when no one was looking. In the first stage, Christian youth leaders created youth-friendly versions of the faith in a desperate attempt to save the world. Some hoped to reform their churches by influencing the next generation. Others expected any questionable innovations to stay comfortably quarantined in youth rallies and church basements. Both groups were less concerned about long-term consequences than about immediate appeals to youth.   Continue at Christianity Today

See also: Two-Dimensional Youth Ministry

Reforming Youth Ministry

For too long we have blamed the rebellion of our young people on such things as our school system, broken homes and the influence of the media. As a pastor and youth worker I refuse to point the finger at society anymore. I am not saying the declining morality of our society and the break down of our family structure has not affected our kids. It definitely has had a large impact, but part of the blame is a little closer to home than we like to admit. It is time we stop pointing the finger at our world and point it right back at the church. 

J. I. Packer wrote, "Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul." Without a proper understanding of God, our youth will "stumble and blunder" their way to hell. What truths do we want to instill in our kids when they attend our church youth groups? Sex, drugs, peer pressure, dating and other such topics are OK, but are we really meeting our kids' needs or are we just applying a Band-Aid to a gaping wound? If our church youth group is not attempting to teach our kids the attributes and actions of God our Father, then it is we who are at fault for the rebellious acts of our young people.

Paul reminds us, "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one (Rom 3: 10b-12)." If no one is seeking after God, why are we afraid to offend the non-believer with our message? If no one is seeking after God, then the students in your youth group are there because God has drawn them (Jn 6:44). Unless God changes their heart, there will never be a true outward change.

We must be faithful to preach it!

 

The Holy Spirit will help your students with even the most difficult passages (Jn 14:26). We must be faithful to study and present the complex truths of God's Word and allow the Holy Spirit to use it and apply it to their life. We must be faithful to preach all of God's Word on their level!

It is time we teach our students the heart of God's Word. I am not talking about Christianity 101, but the no-holds-barred approach to the truth. It is time our youth groups tackle issues such as: the holiness of God, the total depravity of man, divine sovereignty, justification and sanctification. Some people feel these issues are too lofty for our young people, but I think it is the cure for which we have begun searching. Until we begin to tackle a proper study of God and the deep, rich truths of His Word, we are guilty of sentencing our kids to a life with no direction and no understanding.   Continue at David Fields

Youth Ministry's Tendency Toward Legalism

Editors' Note: Everyone has an opinion about youth ministry. Parents, pastors, and the youth themselves have expectations and demands that don't always overlap. But the rash of dire statistics about the ineffectiveness of youth ministry has prompted rethinking in these ranks. So we devote one day per week this month to exploring several issues in youth ministry, including its history, problems, and biblical mandate. The Gospel Coalition thanks Cameron Cole and the leadership team of Rooted: A Theology Conference for Student Ministry for their help in compiling this series. Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama, will host their 2012 conference from August 9 to 11. Speakers Ray Ortlund, Timothy George, and Mary Willson will expound on the conference theme, "Adopted: The Beauty of Grace."

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I have walked for ten years with Allen, who was my closest Christian friend in high school. During our senior year we were "on fire" for God and set out to walk with Christ throughout college. After our freshman year, I watched my poor friend weep often about why he did not experience Christ in a real way. His youth ministry had sold him a message that faithful obedience before God would yield an experiential intimacy and spiritual euphoria, which he failed to encounter. In spite of tireless religious striving, Allen felt as if his pursuits resulted in a tumbling spiral into a deep, dark void.

Not surprisingly, Allen became disenchanted with Christianity and the church. Only after ten years of courageous waiting and honest reflection has he been able to re-engage church without resentment and wounding. He synopsizes his youth ministry's message with a story, which his youth pastor used to tell kids. The story basically involved a sad man, sitting in a corner, disappointed and hurt by his children, who he wished would come pay attention to him.  Continue at Cameron Cole

 

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MTD: Not Just a Problem with Youth Ministry

Editors' Note: Everyone has an opinion about youth ministry. Parents, pastors, and the youth themselves have expectations and demands that don't always overlap. But the rash of dire statistics about the ineffectiveness of youth ministry has prompted rethinking in these ranks. So we devote one day per week this month to exploring several issues in youth ministry, including its history, problems, and biblical mandate. The Gospel Coalition thanks Cameron Cole and the leadership team of Rooted: A Theology Conference for Student Ministry for their help in compiling this series. Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama, will host their 2012 conference from August 9 to 11. Speakers Ray Ortlund, Timothy George, and Mary Willson will expound on the conference theme, "Adopted: The Beauty of Grace."

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That a youth ministry "teaches the Bible" does not necessarily mean it teaches the gospel. Many mistake the gospel with moralism---being a good person, reading your Bible, or opening the door for the elderly in order to earn God's favor. But the gospel is altogether different.

This is a problem across the youth ministry landscape. It's not because teenagers and youth leaders have misunderstood the church's teaching of historical-confessional, gospel-infused Christianity. It's a problem in youth ministry wherever the American church has not preached Christ crucified and has catered to a pragmatic, entertainment-driven, and numbers-oriented model of church growth.  Continue at Brian H. Cosby

The Satanic Ideology of Photoshop

A cover photo for Intelligent Life magazine caused a small stir recently because it dared the unthinkable: show a celebrity's actual face. Cate Blanchett, 42, appears on the cover in little makeup, her smile lines and wrinkles un-retouched. She looks less like an Hollywood star and more like a dignified human being, like someone you might see drinking tea at a neighborhood Starbucks.

Compared to this photo, other images of Blanchett look plastic. The April cover of Harper's Bazaar also features her, but it shows her with perfectly smooth porcelain skin and smoky eyes. Her neck looks carved out of stone, her appearance as timeless as Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings, an unnatural immortality brought about through the magic of Photoshop.

She isn't the first to go enhancement-free in a photo. I remember Jamie Lee Curtis doing something similar a few years back with a bit more fanfare, featuring a photo spread that showed every step of enhancement along the way in a normal shoot. The makers of Dove beauty products have been pushing the "Campaign for Real Beauty," a series of promotions celebrating beauty that doesn't fit the stereotypical mold for cover models. But these efforts, like the Intelligent Life cover, are significant only for their rarity. Photoshop is the norm, whether you're shooting family photos, senior portraits, or billboards.

It's become so normal that we hardly even notice it anymore, and that's what makes it all the more insidious. Behind the wrinkle-removing, curve-enhancing, waist slimming work is a satanic ideology of youth and beauty.  Continue at Mike Cosper

Why Youth Stay in Church When They Grow Up

“What do we do about our kids?” The group of parents sat together in my office, wiping their eyes. I’m a high school pastor, but for once, they weren’t talking about 16-year-olds drinking and partying. Each had a story to tell about a “good Christian” child, raised in their home and in our church, who had walked away from the faith during the college years. These children had come through our church’s youth program, gone on short-term mission trips, and served in several different ministries during their teenage years. Now they didn’t want anything to do with it anymore. And, somehow, these mothers’ ideas for our church to send college students “care packages” during their freshman year to help them feel connected to the church didn’t strike me as a solution with quite enough depth.

The daunting statistics about churchgoing youth keep rolling in. Panic ensues. What are we doing wrong in our churches? In our youth ministries?

It’s hard to sort through the various reports and find the real story. And there is no one easy solution for bringing all of those “lost” kids back into the church, other than continuing to pray for them and speaking the gospel into their lives. However, we can all look at the 20-somethings in our churches who are engaged and involved in ministry. What is it that sets apart the kids who stay in the church? Here are just a few observations I have made about such kids, with a few applications for those of us serving in youth ministry.   Keep Reading...

Divided, the Movie: a Review, Part Two

This is a continuation of a review of the movie Divided. See the first part here.

The main issue in regards to youth leaving the church is an abandonment of the Gospel and true Christianity in our homes. Fathers are not teaching their children in the ways of God because they do not know God themselves. The producers of this movie are overtly concerned about what happens at our church gatherings, and they should be much more concerned about the homes of our youth. Age segregation for Sunday school will be like a drop in the bucket compared to the outpouring of teaching and love from a true, biblical father. I do not see the dismantling of age segregated teaching during church meetings as the cure-all for getting kids to "stick with" the church. Fathers will not automatically start teaching their kids in the manner that they should. The producers of the film do say that youth ministers may not necessarily go away if you follow their plan. Their role would simply shift from teachers to equippers, giving fathers the support, training, and encouragement needed to be the teachers they are called to be. I believe this a good thing. But, once again, they are setting the argument up as an either/or proposition. 

Next, if the segregated teaching of the youth in a church leads them away from the influence of their fathers and brings them into worldliness, then you have a fundamental problem in the church itself. The problem is not necessarily youth groups; the problem is youth groups in the hands of heretical men who parade themselves as ministers of God. It's not that they do youth ministry, it's that they do it in the name of God whom they do not know. Looking at the American landscape, one would have to say that the majority of our churches are really not churches anyway. They are populated and led by those who are unconverted. They have a form of Godliness . . . well, actually, most do not. They just use His name. So the problem is not the youth group itself. There is a root of evil that must be addressed.  The producers show and talk about the worst of the worst in youth ministry, but they don't address Sunday school teachers and youth leaders who are teaching solid, Biblical principles. What if a father teaches their children all week long, and for two hours a week another teacher gives them solid teaching as well? Isn't that a reinforcement, not a tearing away?   Keep Reading...

Divided, the Movie: a Review, Part One

I noticed the movie Divided popping up all over the place this past week. It is free online, and many people I know were passing it around and recommending it. So last night, I took some time to see what it is all about.

First, the movie is a platform to advocate family integrated churches. It was produced by the National Center for Family Integrated Churches. So you know going in that there is no neutrality on the topic. They are arguing for family integration, and this movie presents their case. That is neither good nor bad, but it something worth noting when you sit down to watch the movie.

If you are not familiar with family integrated churches, let me give you a short primer. Over the last decade or more, there has been a mass exodus of youth from local church bodies. The statistics are overwhelming. Most youth, by the time they've reached middle school or high school, have mentally checked out. When they reach college age, they check out all together and do not return. In looking at the problem, some pastors and church leaders began targeting the modern idea of youth groups as the culprit. According to the family integrated movement, youth groups are non-biblical and a main cause of children leaving. They assert that parents have abdicated their responsibilities to teach their children biblical principles and handed it over to youth pastors and leaders. In an effort to restore parental authority, the movement advocates that churches cease age segregating classes (i.e. Sunday school) and move back to doing church as family units.    Keep Reading...

I Am Unalarmed

In September of 2006 George Barna released what must be among his most influential studies. Following interviews with more than 22,000 adults and 2,000 teenagers from across America, he revealed that the majority of twentysomethings who are raised as Christians subsequently abandon the faith. The study found that “most twentysomethings disengage from active participation in the Christian faith during their young adult years—and often beyond that. In total, six out of ten twentysomethings were involved in a church during their teen years, but have failed to translate that into active spirituality during their early adulthood.”

Another survey, this one commissioned by LifeWay, found that “Seven in 10 Protestants ages 18 to 30 — both evangelical and mainline — who went to church regularly in high school said they quit attending by age 23.” Still another study from Church Communication Networks said that up to 94 percent of Christian teens leave the church within a few years of leaving high school. Keep Reading...

The Juvenalization of Western Culture (the Cult of Youth)

In their excellent book The Narcissism Epidemic, Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell (among many other things) discuss the symptoms of narcissism in America today.  One of them is vanity, which they discuss in chapter 9.  As one of part of this chapter suggests, “in pursuit of hotness” many people today do many things that were unheard of even 20 years ago.  A few examples they give are teeth-whitening, botox, cosmetic surgeries, hair extensions, tanning spray, eyebrow shaping, mud wraps, day spas, lip waxing, male moisturizers, and fitness coaches (just to name a few).  Why are people so obsessed with appearance? One reason is to boost self-esteem.  When asked why she tans, a high school girl said, “It makes me feel better about myself.  Right now, the idea of skin cancer doesn’t concern me.”  It goes as deep as parenting: some parents want their kids to look good so they help pay for tanning, cosmetic surgery, or other things listed above.  After all, a parent will have his/her self-esteem boosted if his/her child looks hot. Continue Reading>>>

The State of the Youth of the Church

When we decry the current condition of the youth in our churches (and the church as a whole) we are usually met with angry resistance. Now the condition of the youth (and the church) has gotten so bad that even secular news outlets are sitting up and taking notice. The Wall Street Journal has recently reported on the sad state of the youth in American churches in an article aptly titled The Perils of ‘Wannabe Cool’ Christianity.

Increasingly, the “plan” has taken the form of a total image overhaul, where efforts are made to rebrand Christianity as hip, countercultural, relevant. As a result, in the early 2000s, we got something called “the emerging church”—a sort of postmodern stab at an evangelical reform movement. Perhaps because it was too “let’s rethink everything” radical, it fizzled quickly. But the impulse behind it—to rehabilitate Christianity’s image and make it “cool”—remains.

And what does “cool” look like?

There are various ways that churches attempt to be cool. For some, it means trying to seem more culturally savvy. The pastor quotes Stephen Colbert or references Lady Gaga during his sermon, or a church sponsors a screening of the R-rated “No Country For Old Men.” For others, the emphasis is on looking cool, perhaps by giving the pastor a metrosexual makeover, with skinny jeans and an $80 haircut, or by insisting on trendy eco-friendly paper and helvetica-only fonts on all printed materials. Then there is the option of holding a worship service in a bar or nightclub (as is the case for L.A.’s Mosaic church, whose downtown location meets at a nightspot called Club Mayan). Read it all HERE

Your Students Can Handle Expository Preaching