If so, then I'm hopeless.  Really, though, what's the meaning of the weasel?  Mike?

To use an old uncool Puritan word, most of what we're talking about here is adiaphora, isn't it?  Indifferent.  Isn't that what you're getting at, Mike, when you say that being cool is a double-edged sword, and that at the end of the day what matters is being faithful to the gospel?  There are all kinds of things out there that have real spiritual significance, but it's hard for me to see goatees and shark-tooth necklaces as among them.  As I think about it, I'd say you should be who God made you and be faithful to the gospel.  If God made you cool, be cool---but prepare yourself for when cool passes you up and you're just a has-been (ask the people still wearing bell-bottoms how that works).  If God made you Ned Flanders, be fine with that, too.  At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter.  It's indifferent.

The problem, though (and in answer to Matt's question), is that yes, I think there are many people out there who have decided that coolness is absolutely not indifferent---and therefore they are chasing it in the vain hope that their coolness will make Jesus more attractive to the world.  But of course Mike's already pointed out the flaw in that:  You can be as cool as you want, but eventually you have to tell them the gospel, and then you will become suddenly, shockingly, and irrevocably uncool.  Grow your goatee as thick as you want, Christians are not finally going to be cool if they're talking about the cross. (Although, now that I think about it, you can probably pull it off if you kind of ignore the cross, and just talk instead about "the Kingdom" and living a good, compassionate, inclusive life.  But that's another blog post....)

Another thing:  We're coming at this mainly in terms of how pastors should think about coolness.  But there are also church members out there for whom coolness is decidedly not an indifferent matter.  There are people who, in looking for a church to join, put coolness right near the top of their list.  Whether music, or style, or architecture, or art, there are many, many Christians who are at least as concerned about finding a "cool church" as a true one.  Here's a question:  How many young Christians out there would, forced into the choice, pick a church with cool music, an art gallery, and a pastor that wears blue jeans but doesn't talk much about sin and atonement, over a church pastored by an old-school geeky guy who preaches the gospel faithfully?  Alot of people would make that choice, I would guess---or at the very least it would be an excruciatingly hard decision.

If that's you---take a second and be honest with yourself---then you might want to ask if you've allowed things that ought to be indifferent to become way too important to you.  Maybe you've let your priorities get messy while you weren't watching, and you need to spend some time cleaning them up.  When you look for a church, or look at your own church, what matters to you?  Faithfulness to the gospel?  Or something else? 

We have it good here in America; in most cities you can find just about everything you want in a church---gospel faithfulness and a comfortable level of coolness.  But what if God calls you to a place someday where there aren't fifteen churches?  What if you have to live in a place where, perish the thought, you can't find a church that has everything you want?  Seems to me it would be a good idea to figure out now, explicitly, what it is you value the most---whether it's an ounce of coolness or an ounce of faithfulness that you're more willing to give up.