For about the last year or so, we've been reading to my oldest son Catherine Vos's old book The Child's Story Bible.  It's a loooong book.  So far, the kid's slogged through 222 large, two-column pages of stories about the ups and downs of Israel's and Judah's various kings.

Tonight's story was about King Hezekiah and the rout of the Assyrian army of Sennacherib.  The book, simplifying things a bit perhaps, presents Hezekiah as a really good king.  Here's how it ends: 

At last the promised fifteen years were over.  Hezekiah slept with his fathers.  He was buried in the finest of the tombs of the sons of David.  All Jerusalem and Judah mourned for this good king.

At which point my son looked up and, with the perfect expression and voice of a kid who's in the know and really really juiced about it, said, "Yea, but an even better king was coming!"

Talk about warming a daddy's heart!  Amen to that, little guy!

Esp. for those in seminary...

45 suggestions from Derek Brown.

HT: Justin Taylor

Alright, I have a game to play here. I had some thoughts about this coolness thing. And then I thought, "Those thoughts are kind of in the David Wells category." No, not as insightful or profound as Wells, but  sociological type thoughts. You know what I'm saying?

So, in keeping with our culture of celebrity here, let me address the topic of cool as if I were David Wells. To put it more piously, let me try to think about this topic in a way that Wells has trained us to think, i.e. sociologically and theologically. Then, I propose that Gilbert address the topic of cool as if he were...how about Piper. McKinley should address it as if here were...Driscoll, of course. And then Thabiti, I think you need to address the topic as if you were...I don't know...maybe counseling guru David Powlison? If you guys have better ideas, go for it.

So here's me trying to be David Wells furthering our conversation about cool:

What occurs to me in all this is how much our ability to "encounter God" or "engage Christianity" or "gather to worship" is affected by the  media and marketplace. Making cool a component of ministry, or requiring cool from one's church, means that we're letting everyone from James Dean to Eminem shape how we relate to God and his people. That is, we're letting all the vocabulary, postures, and attitudes of "cool," however that's culturally defined in 2008, shape the way we love God and one another. Aren't we?

Now, to some extent this is inevitable, since we're all culturally bound. But what if we factor in Dever's point at the Whiteboard--culture isn't morally neutral?

Analogously, if all the music I hear on the radio, television, or ipod has highly professional and studio perfected, won't that affect how I approach the time of singing and praise on Sunday mornings? Think about it:  someone in a worship service in 1900 expected, at best, a single piano plunking away the different parts of a hymn. Seldom in their life would they have heard anything better. Consider where then their focus during singing and praise would be--requiring less from the music and more from the words, perhaps? Now, compare that to the awkwardness we can feel when the only musical accompaniment is one hammer-out-the-chords piano player. How many Christians might be tempted to say they can't "worship" with such poor accompaniment?

Now, every person in every culture is enculturated like this, in one way or another. I just think it's worth observing that we often act as if the mental and emotional categories we've been given through professional, studio musicians on the radio and television affect our "worship" ("I can't worship to that!"). So then what does it mean to worship "by faith" and "in the Spirit"?

If you want, you guys can even rate my Wells performance.

Greg,

I may not be able to answer your question about baptism, but when we're talking weasels... you're right in my wheelhouse.

The answer is yes, weasel tattoos are profoundly cool. James Dean knew it, Fonzi knew it, Wilfred Brimley knew it. Out of my deep and abiding respect for 9Marks ministries, I won't go into all of the origins of the weasel. Suffice it to say it's got punk rock roots. But don't worry, you're cool enough in my book. You've kind of got an emo thing going on.

You know that game they play sometimes on TV football games, where they come up with some convoluted collision of all the rules of the game and ask you, the faithful viewer, how you would have judged the play if you were the ref?  Let's play a little of that here, pastor-style.

Imagine you're a pastor in California right now.  On June 17, unless there's a stay granted, gay marriage will become legal in California.  What's more, marriage licenses will no longer refer to "Husband" and "Wife" but rather to "Party A" and "Party B." 

"Effective June 17, 2008, only the enclosed new forms may be issued for the issuance of marriage licenses in California," the directive reads.

Now, there's a good chance that on election day, November 4, a statewide referendum will amend the state's constitution and define marriage once again as being between one man and one woman.  But at least from June 17 to November 4, marriage in California will be defined as including gay and lesbian couples.

In other, starker words, from June 17 until at least November 4, California will have created something they're calling "marriage" that is repugnant to the Word of God.  Right?

So......let's say you have a young Christian couple in your church who wants to get married.  They want to do it in, say, September.  Do you encourage that young couple to go down to the county clerk's office and get a "marriage" license that calls them "Party A" and "Party B?"  Or not?

Do you tell them to wait till after November 4?  Go over to Nevada to get a license? 

Larger questions:  Would getting such a license be an example of Christians signing up to participate in an institution that is fundamentally, in its very definition, ungodly?  What happens if, in the next 10 years or so, marriage gets defined nationwide as including gay and lesbian couples?  Can Christians still keep happily getting "marriage" licenses from the state? 

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.

Hey Matt,

Thanks for your questions. Someone should write a memorable article on that topic. I think this is a thorny issue.

On one hand, I think it's good for us to tear down unnecessary cultural barriers that prevent people from hearing the gospel. So I'm fine with pastors "dressing down" and making their services accessible and intelligible to visitors. I don't want anyone to feel that they have to wear a suit or become a flag-waving patriot in order to follow Christ. That would confuse the gospel.

But on the other hand, I fear that we're trying to attract people to the gospel with our cool-ness. I worry that some pastors and church planters are trying to project such a cool, hip image that people will want to be like them.

The problem is, the gospel isn't cool. It's foolishness and a stumbling block. It's a scandal and an offense. We need to make the message of Christ and Him crucified the only content of our ministry. So we need to tear down unnecessary cultural barriers (the insight of the cool crowd), but we also need to reconcile ourselves to being fundamentally rejected by the world, not embraced by it. That's why Tim Stevens' handling of Acts 17 at WiBo was deeply frustrating to me. People will find you clever as long as you're talking about Desperate Housewives and Greek poets. Start talking about the god-man rising bodily from the tomb, and people will think you're nuts.

Ben Arment, who organized WiBo and is a good friend, attended my church for a few Sundays. One comment of his stood out to me. He was struck by how different I was on Sunday mornings compared to the way I might be on Thursday afternoon over a cup of coffee. He wasn't accusing me of hypocrisy (or so he said), rather he was noting an intentional shift in tone and demeanor. Whereas I'll be sarcastic and (attempt to be) funny in personal chit-chat with a friend, I am much more reserved and measured in my preaching and leading of the church. In short, I'm much less cool.

All of that is intentional. It's not too hard to draw a crowd, methadone clinics and brothels do it all the time. You could flash the tats and play some rock music and preach funny sermons and I promise you'll get a crowd if you do it well. But I think if I do that, I've obscured Christ and drawn people to myself and my personality. I'd much rather step back, tone down my largish personality, and try to draw attention to Jesus. The crowds looking for a show may not enjoy it as much, but in my experience desperate people who are looking for mercy rarely care about the kind of music you sing. They care about the Savior you hold out to them.

Sorry I didn't answer any of your questions, but I've exceeded the length of a decent blog post already.

I'm a vain man.

I was created to image God--his holiness, wisdom, and love. But there's something deep inside me that continually wants to parade my glory and wants for others to see my glory. It's an automatic impulse, like a dog that can't help but return to its vomit.

What's astonishing is, every time that I return to my vomit, God's Spirit again convicts me and mercifully calls me back. He is so faithful! I wish all the world would know how faithful he is. (World, come and see our merciful Lord. Treasure here!)

Given this battle inside of me, I have trouble with ministries that are built on "chasing cool." I say that not because I know that cool looking ministries are chasing cool, but because I know that if I were them I would be.

So here's my response to you, Matt. I assume that some guys in ministry are chasing cool. And they should stop. Jesus doesn't need cool. He wants faithfulness and faith, which is another way of saying that he blesses the humble. Chasers of cool, please, stop.

On the other hand, I don't think that all the guys who look cool are chasing cool. I think they're just dressing in the style of our generation. The dirty jeans and the untucked shirts that have a "cool look" to the Lands End generation are simply what they sell in the stores. That's what's on the rack so we buy them.

Bottom line: the chasers of cool should stop it. But if you count yourself among the uncool, I think we need to give the cool the benefit of the doubt and assume they're just being themselves and loving Jesus. Cool?

Hey McKinley,
Since you are so much younger than me (30 years? Hmmm...), perhaps you can help me with my damaged self-image coming out of the White Board Sessions.

I stuck out of the WiBo crowd like a Lands End model at an Indie concert. I was the PC in the Apple crowd! Mark Dever even began his talk with, "Greetings from the tucked-in generation." I was not cool.

The hip marketing group that was recently hired by Mircrosoft to fight back against Apple's very funny and very effective ads had this to say about being cool:

"To try to be cool is to not be cool. To chase cool, you're chasing something that already exists, which means you're always going to be on the wrong side of it, you'll always be following."

Here are my questions:
1. Is there a "chasing after cool" in the next generation of church leaders that is worldly?
2. Will this generation of leaders be on the "wrong side of cool" and expend great energy in the wrong directions?
3. Or is it merely the next generation's way of distinguishing itself from the previous generation and I should remember that my generation threw off Glenn Miller, Big Band and the jitterbug?

BTW: I'm not old enough to remember the Beatles coming to America. My era had The Police, Jackson Brown and The Cars (and Michael Jackson, but we don't mention him anymore).

Many thanks to all of you who publicly (comments) and privately (emails) criticized my being critical of WiBo.

A couple of thoughts:

1. I agree with Mike McKinley that Ben A. did a great job organizationally and must live a mysterious life that allowed him to pull together such varied speakers.

2. I agree with Ben A. (see his comments) that any meeting or conference is going to have highs and lows.

3. For the record, I think 9Marks, the organization I lead, needs to do a better job in presenting its ideas. I think we are probably one of the most boring conferences around. The material is too often dense and can become tedious to listen to. I think the material is very good. I just don't think a normal person can listen for 12 hours without an intermission, graphics or a bathroom break.

4. I know it is common for this generation of parents to rarely criticize or correct their children, but that is ultimately hurtful. It is deceitful. It is not preparing the children well. Faithful parents and pastors need to be able to criticize and correct without having a critical spirit. We work hard in our little corner of the world to learn to take criticism. It is for our good. We grow by it. The goal of criticism is to bring discernment. So we invite and even seek out criticism. At Capitol Hill Baptist Church we have built it into our weekly schedule with a "Service Review" that is done among the staff and interns. We spend hours evaluating events and rehashing talks. We have changed some things we do and think because of it. Impossible without godly, constructive criticism.

5. Finally, we cannot simply think that all the different models and techniques that are being thrown at us are equally valid. I want to write more in the future about Hebrews 13:17. If you think you (pastor) are really going to give an account someday to God for how you cared for his sheep, then you must discern what is being offered up in the name of "church." There are vastly different models being floated. You have to pick. Traditional? Willow Creek? Purpose Driven? Emergent? Missional? You're not picking between five different brands of detergent that essentially get your clothes clean. It's not paper or plastic; either one caries the groceries. You, pastor, are picking a model that very well can change the message and in so doing lose the gospel.

Thanks for the criticism. Keep it up!