One of our families has a sticker on the back of her minivan that has become more relevant for me with each passing year. Its truth abound in my life, as time passes, and life changes from one phase to the next. It is a reality that sticks with me, that I need to be reminded of each time I see this family, because it is a sobering reminder of the inevitabilities of life. It simply reads:
“I used to be cool.”
There is something that happens in life that causes you, if things go like they should, to resonate with this truth. In my life, this has taken the place over the years that I have become a dad, a pastor, and a leader. Somewhere in that time frame, I traded in late nights for early mornings, keeping up with the latest shows and trends for putting the kids to bed on time and then crashing in silence on the couch, and totally lost track of the latest jargon, stubbornly refusing to let go of good, old words that reflect the jargon that I grew up with. This is good, and natural, and normal, and healthy. But it doesn’t always feel that way, does it? Sometimes, we find ourselves longing for the days of cultural relevancy, when people looked at us and said “that is a happening guy right there.”
But then, another reality hits us in the face, at about the point where we start considering how we might look in skinny jeans or those shirts with the the foldy-button things on the shoulders: even when we try to look cool, we don’t. We just look old. Our attempts to keep up with the culture in those ways simply prove the point that we are desperately trying to disprove:
We USED to be cool.
There are a litany of things that go into any church revitalization and replanting work. Considering the trajectory the church has taken over the years, looking at the community around the church and seeing if the people reflect their community, considering the priority that prayer is being given in the work of church replanting, and making disciples who have a vision for making more disciples all are at the top of the list. In my experience so far, you want to know what I have found to be at the very bottom of the list?
Being cool.
There is an impression that many dying churches have, because I think it is an impression that many people have about themselves as well, that in order for the church to live again, it needs to look “cool.” And so, dear people of God, who love Jesus and the church, simply give up on the hope that their church can ever live again, because they have come to the reality that they are no longer what the culture calls “cool.” And so, they resign themselves to the fact that nothing can be done, nothing can change, and no one can help them. I can understand this struggle. We as a church culture have promoted the concept of relevancy to almost idolatrous proportions. But I think we miss the fact that, in reality, relevancy doesn’t mean that we look like, or even in many ways act like, the culture around us. I don’t think that when Paul said we are to be all things to all people, he had a picture in his mind of a 40-something pastor running around wearing skinny jeans, desperately trying to convince both the congregation and himself that he was totally hip for the times (I almost didn’t use the word hip here, but I think it helps prove my point, dude). Now, if that’s your thing, it’s your thing. But here is the reality: it doesn’t HAVE to be. And I think it’s fair to question whether that approach is a biblical perspective.
Fact is, in my community, being “cool” is just the opposite of skinny jeans and immovable hair. I live and work in a rural context. My people listen to country music or Southern Gospel (as a whole; there are
many exceptions), work with their hands, and have lived for generation after generation in our area. Me? Well, I don’t like Southern Gospel or country (but Bluegrass is awesome), I don’t work with my hands (but I don’t mind getting my hands dirty), and I am an outsider compared to them. And yet, these are my people. This is my home, and God has Called me here. And what’s more, when our church started growing, it has continued to grow with a bunch of people who are completely different from one another. I think it’s fair to say that our church is a place where almost everyone looks totally different from one another, from the retired folks who still wear their Sunday best, to the young couples with tattoos and piercings. The truth is this: “cool “ isn’t enough to keep a church together.
But the Gospel is.
The thing the community needs the most from the church is the Good News of Jesus Christ. It needs to know where to find hope and healing and forgiveness. It needs to know that there is something more important, more lasting, more rewarding, and more stabilizing than cultural relevancy. It needs Jesus. And we don’t have to make Jesus “cool.” He is more than cool; He is holy. And His holiness should resonate out from our churches and into the community. When that happens, and when we can communicate that message with love in a language that people around us can understand, the church changes. It comes to life, but not because it tried to be cool; it comes to life because it strives to reflect the Jesus that gave it life.
Pastor, we are in a constant war to fight the urge and temptation to look and sound like the celebrity pastors that our people listen to via podcast on their commute to work. We are at war to fight the urge to adopt a style that simply reflects what people think we should be. We are at war to fight the urge to be just like the pastors that our people have always had. We are at war with ourselves, as we realize that as we get older, we look less and less like the culture that is moving in to leadership. Listen, brothers: that’s ok. Robert Murray McCheyne once said something that has stuck with me, that you may already know: the thing that the people need most from their pastor is his holiness. In short, they don’t need you to be hip; they need you to be holy.
But this isn’t just pastors, right? We want to be the “cool” parents, or the “cool” employees. We can be driven by cultural expectations to the point that we fail to realize that our understanding of the gospel should impact the way we interact with the culture, not vice-versa. Our desire to have the things people our age have (cars, houses, retirement accounts, various and sundry toys) can move us into unbiblical debt and render us crippled for the mission of God. Our desire to be around the right people can blind us to the fact that most of the deep relationships Jesus had were with the people that we would define as, at the very least, “not very cool.” Our desire to be accepted by the culture and our fear of man can lead us to compromise ideals that are clearly taught in the Bible, simply because they are unpopular in the culture. The same advice is true here: be holy. Trust Christ. Follow His Word, and seek His kingdom. When we do these things, we find freedom from the bondage of seeking the approval of the culture.
And that, my friends, is actually pretty cool.
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