Over time, I have become more and more dissatisfied with what I see in the modern evangelical church scene. One of the issues I struggle with is its desire to be relevant. It has embraced a sort of evangelical pop culture. This has led to some tragic developments.
We all know there’s something incongruous about an older woman trying to dress like she’s still a ‘hot young thing’. We find it troubling when an older man has not developed gravitas but acts like a clown. I wonder if the same applies to the Church of God.
As a child, I grew up going to church with my parents. Things were formal. People wore their Sunday best. The minister wore a suit. There were periods of silence and reflection. We sang hymns – songs that were sometimes hundreds of years old. The old organ had a few bad notes, and the organists were often no virtuosos, but my heart soared as all around me sung with gusto lyrics millions around the world for centuries had sung. Communion felt like a very solemn and reverent occasion. The period of quiet while it took place seemed to last forever. I felt a sense of awe. This time and place was special, and I was a part of something that stretched millennia. There were jarring moments in the service. A responsive reading for instance, where I, even as a small boy participated with children through to octagenarians. I sat with my parents and felt part of the great body of Christ.
Now, when I attend my church the atmosphere is completely different. The preachers are attired in semi-casual. The vibe is friendly. The language is simple, and the service leaders remind me of over-enthusiastic energiser bunnies trying to drum up enthusiasm in the congregation. Everything is apparently ‘super exciting’. There is no time for reflection, for any moments when there is no speaking from the front are filled in with music. The Lord’s Supper is conducted at break-neck speed. We sing a constantly changing repertoire of modern evangelopop, mostly with banal lyrics set to mind-numbingly boring music. The musicians are more gifted than the ones in my childhood, but I feel unmoved. Nor it seems are many of the people around me, for the singing seems half-hearted aside from the odd young woman raising her hands. I feel like a spectator of a slick performance. My children are taken out mid-way through service so that they can be taught in an ‘age-appropriate’ manner, which by the sounds of it involves low expectations, ill-disciplined children and fun. I feel vaguely uneasy about this and wonder how this is connecting my children culturally to our forefathers in the faith.
Don’t get me wrong. There is a lot my church is doing right. They love God’s Word. They care for the lost. And in the trends I mentioned above, they are far better than many other evangelical churches. I’ve been in one evangelical church where we sang a song with exceptionally trite lyrics while we were encouraged by the song leaders to jump around with our finger-pointing in the air until we (actually I point-blank refused) had done a complete 360. This was repeated. Multiple times. On the opposite extreme, we have other more formal and traditional churches. Often the gospel is absent in the sermons (thank goodness for the liturgy of the Anglican church in these cases), and the youngest members are in their 50s. They are dying churches. So yes, better a church that is living, preaching the gospel and growing.
True, relevance is important. We want people to understand the good news of Christ. However, have we overbalanced? I am not sure that we have understood the importance of difference and tradition. The Church is meant to be a light in a dark world. Darkness and light are polar opposites. Shouldn’t it be a slightly jarring exercise coming into the light? We all know the experience of being blinded when coming out into the sunshine after being in a dark room. Church ought to be that light. It ought to be different.
The Church has seen popular culture and attempted to model it in a ‘sanctified’ way. But this is a mistake. In his book Future Men, Douglas Wilson comments on Pop Culture. “Pop culture is a disposable culture for those who agree to consume it. But because cultures are meant to be handed down to subsequent generations, because cultures are meant to be preserved, a consumable culture is really an anti-culture.” Why on earth would the Church want to copy this anti-culture? We have a rich and vast heritage. One that has been bought with blood. Why would we want to toss this out the window for what is cheap and tacky for the sake of relevance?
Christianity should change and shape culture, not be moulded by it. From my experience, it all seems to be going the other way in evangelical churches. We are shaped by our informal culture into informal services of worship. We are shaped by a culture that cannot bear silence and reflection, so we eject any silence and reflection from our meetings. We are shaped by a culture that separates families, so we eject our young from worshipping with us. We are shaped by a culture that embraces egalitarianism, so we want our leaders to be on our level regular guys, and we despise anything that would make us feel awe because that would remind us that we are dust. We are shaped by a culture that despises the old and embraces novelty, so we throw out tradition and the treasures of the past. And we will have nothing to pass on to our children because we have taught them to do the same. One only prays they don’t toss out the gospel when they toss out our ‘anti-culture’ pop evangelicalism.