Watercooler Wednesday - Pop Goes The Church
(This post is part of the Watercooler Wednesday series hosted at Ethos)
I just finished reading (and am now re-reading) “Pop Goes The Church” by Tim Stevens (here’s links to the book on Amazon and the book’s website for you).
There’s enough material in this book for a few month’s worth of posts. But I’d like to highlight one thing for you today.
Every church makes a choice.
As Stevens so clearly puts it, the question is not “Does pop culture have an influence?” The question is, “What am I going to do with it? How will I respond? What choice will I make?”
Intentionally…or unintentionally…what choices are your church making? Do they…
Condemn the culture. Are we known more by our boycotts and petitions than our impact in the community?
Separate from the culture. Don’t listen to this. Stay away from that. Only watch things rated this. Do we tell people what to do and not do so they don’t even have to interact with what’s ‘out there’?
Embrace the culture. Are we running after what’s hip, cool, and trendy…without realizing that we’ve eliminated all proper boundaries? As Stevens puts it in the book…are we giving the culture a full-frontal hug?
Ignore the culture. Multi-million-dollar-grossing movies…preaching celebrities…events with huge impact…and we don’t even talk about them behind the door of the church?
Or, do we leverage the culture. How can we maximize the opportunities around us? People are having conversations about spiritual topics all the time because of a book they’ve read, a song they’ve heard, or a show they’ve seen. How can we enter those conversations with Truth?
Which of these choices have you seen made?
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Comments
I feel like our church does a great job of not instructing us in a list of things we can’t watch, listen to, etc. It’s in the small groups that I find a lot of admonishing and shunning of people if you don’t follow what they deem to be the “rules.”
At Chapel Hill Bible Church in the late 90s, the pastoral leadership addressed these very same issues in a statement that they called “The Five E’s,” two of which were “Embrace” and “Engage.” I don’t remember the other three, but their presentation was a really well-thought out strategy. Chip Stam, now at SBTS heading up their worship think tank (when not battling bone cancer), was in on the drafting of this document. He’s a wonderful resource and a gifted, inspired worship leader who can truly embrace both sides of the worship tent: he can conduct a choir that can deliver a sublime performance of Durufle, and a knockdown rendition of a BTC gospel chorus in the same worship service. There are only a handful of church musicians who can do that.
I just moved from a leverage church to an ignore church. They condemn (lightly) churches who dress their stage up like Narnia and preach a sermon series on it’s meaning. Maybe they think it’s not worth the trouble and people should just come to hear the Bible taught for it’s own sake. I don’t know.
They ask questions about what you feel more excited about: Indiana Jones or Jesus. It kind of makes me feel guilty for a few days…Then I remember that I gave my LIFE to Christ and although I’m happy to see a new Indy flick, I can honestly say that it will NOT change my life.
I’m not sure about this one….tough topic.
Paul, I heard Tim Stevens at the Whiteboard Conference yesterday and was impressed by his message and content. He made a great case for the need to take advantage of the ability we have to leverage the power of culture and the media and the biblical grounds for doing so.
One of the saddest moments, though, was when he took a few minutes to show a clip of a pastor who preached - from the pulpit - against churches who choose to reach people in this way. It just made me want to cry for all the wasted energy…it’s a shame that folks have to condemn others in order to claim righteousness.
Just started the book…
I really liked the phrase “leverage the culture.” Living intentionally in the world with a heart for the world, using every opportunity to share the truth - that’s where our church is headed. Our pastor is all over this. I’m really glad I get to be a part of helping to create this culture at our church. I know it’s a unique opportunity.