Trendiness

In the past few years, I have had opportunity to visit many churches in the area where I live. Part of this was due to my position at the Rescue Mission, but part was also as pulpit supply (and just when you thought that the Sunday morning service couldn’t get any more tragic). I have noticed that many of these congregations are feeling the pressure to become “trendy.” We’ve moved beyond the contemporary stage – trendiness is now what we seek. Trendiness goes with the flow of culture and catches the waves of the newest look, feel, and practice. In order to move away from a stogy traditionalist look and flavor, churches have adopted styles they consider to be a departure from the old and outmoded rituals of yesterday.

If your church is stuck in a rut, if it unthinkingly follows patterns of the way people “do church,” I would suggest the following radical measures:

• Ditch the pulpit for a small table to hold your bottle of water or travel coffee mug. Make sure there is room to set a Bible on it (in some places this is optional)
• By all means, put away the suit and tie. For the maximum coolness effect, wear a plaid shirt, untucked. For extreme coolness, a ball cap is the right touch.
• 2 words: Praise band
• Don’t forget the coffee. If you are brewing espresso drinks in the lobby, you are approaching the pinnacle of relevance.
• Tats. The more the better – on everyone.
• Remove the “holy hardware” from the church and decorate the “stage” (because it can no longer be called a platform or altar) with wood from used pallets.
• And the pews; lose the pews. They are so 1960.

These are but a few of the things that I have seen that cause churches to consider themselves to be “on the cutting edge.”  Here’s the thing: does anyone else notice that these features have become more or less standardized and have become the accepted way of “doing church?” Those who follow this path do so, in part, as a way of breaking the traditional mold. Yet, in so doing, they have established a newer, more contemporary, but still just as normative, set of expectations as the ones they were trying to escape. When I was younger, people were wrongly criticized for not wearing proper church clothes to church on Sunday. That was wrong. I know someone who wore a shirt and tie (without a jacket) to church and was criticized because he was trying to dress above the rest of the people. So now, jeans, tee shirts and flip flops are proper church attire? I am not advocating dress codes, but it is amazing how we become what we are trying to escape.