here is my post from a week ago about how the church changes forms over time.
but what about the argument made by Brett McCracken here about the perils of Hipster Christianity?
If the evangelical Christian leadership thinks that “cool Christianity” is a sustainable path forward, they are severely mistaken. As a twentysomething, I can say with confidence that when it comes to church, we don’t want cool as much as we want real.
If we are interested in Christianity in any sort of serious way, it is not because it’s easy or trendy or popular. It’s because Jesus himself is appealing, and what he says rings true. It’s because the world we inhabit is utterly phony, ephemeral, narcissistic, image-obsessed and sex-drenched—and we want an alternative. It’s not because we want more of the same.
I don’t know if I agree with Brett’s argument or not. I am not entirely sure what the problem is that he feels he is addressing.
What do you think?
How do the arguments and evidence from Scot McKnight in this article affect your view, if at all?
here is a bit:
Second, big tent evangelicalism tended toward the reductionistic when it came to theology because it sought to cooperate for the good of evangelism and evangelicalism. The more reductionistic it became, the less robust it could be. Eventually, in my limited viewing of the last forty years, the minimalism became too minimal.
I point now to one dramatic element of big tent evangelicalism: the megachurch phenomenon. And here I speak not simply of all big churches but of those big churches that did not develop a robust theological infrastructure. What I mean is this: megachurch evangelicalism tended, at times, toward a theology that was not much bigger than: God loves you, Jesus died for you, accept him, and get busy. Anything that smacked of theological robustness or finesse, anything that demanded theological sophistication, and anything that required serious study was seen as “extra” or “non-essential” or “for the elite.”
I’m not participating here in the all-too-popular megachurch bashing that I see among some. Instead, I’m contending that megachurches rode the wave of the coalition and part of that wave was a developing lack of interest in theological vision. This thin theological foundation, which began in the neo-evangelical spirit of coalition but which developed into even thinner ways among some evangelical pastors and leaders, could not handle the challenges of evangelicalism as it shifted from a genuinely Christian culture into a postmodern non-Christian pluralism.