It's a sad reality
I mentioned here that I was reading “Pop goes the Church” by Tim Stevens.
The book talks about leveraging pop culture in a church environment to reach people who don’t respond to ‘traditional’ methods. It was a great read (I finished it on Monday), but it left me feeling sad.
What made me sad was that the church has become so irrelevant that church leaders have to be ‘reminded’ (through books like this one) to engage popular culture.
It was not too long ago that popular culture WAS church culture, that the church was so intrinsic int he lives of people that it was impossible to separate church and culture. Now don’t get me wrong, with the mounts of corruption and selfishness in the church back then (I’m talking before the reformation), I’m not suggesting that we go back there.
But it is immensely disappointing to me that, specifically over the past 50-100 years the church was left so far ‘behind’ that we have to concentrate or work on being culturally relevant.
The book closed with some case studies. Stories from churches who choose to engage popular culture and the effect that has had on the local community. While the stories were probably meant to highlight a number of ‘key’ moments or events in the featured church, they were peppered with statements like, “this one time…” or ” a few years ago…”. That just highlighted the gap between church thinking and cultural ebbs and flows.
Christians often say we should be “in the world, but not of the world”. The problem with that attitude is it promotes a separation. It is often interpreted and “don’t be completely in the world” and so the gap widens.
I long for the day that the church is again setting the trends of popular culture, and doing so in a way that glorified God.
So let’s not play catchup anymore.
Oh by the way I highly recommend reading the book, even if you have not been in a church in the last 100 years.
yes, I agree, while exciting that the Church is being involved it is also sad that we are lagging behind when we should be setting the pace, being the innovators, being the drivers.
It’s one of the reasons why blogging is becoming a passion for me – I want to see us being a part of that.
Phill(synapticlight)
I also read Pop goes the Church, which inspired me to get more involved within Social Networking as a form of Popular Culture as well as an extension of what I was doing for Video at Church.
The book was great, there were so many times; while I was reading, that I thinking
Yip that’s our Church
Been there
Going there
Wish we were doing that
Thank goodness we don’t do that
I even got to blogging about Social Networking:
http://synapticlight.com/2008/08/07/the-church-and-social-networking/
http://synapticlight.com/2009/01/30/the-church-and-social-networking-2/
But I got caught in the trap of thinking that we should be using the tools, catching up in the race, and finding our place in Social Networking.
Like you say for Pop Culture in general -
“It was not too long ago that popular culture WAS church culture, that the church was so intrinsic int he lives of people that it was impossible to separate church and culture”
We should be setting the pace
We should be leading the way
And I love where we are and where we are going at our Church – in a lot of aspects of Popular Culture. We have even started a website, a blog, a FaceBook group and a twitter account. But that’s nothing on our Worship band
getting there
Phill(synapticlight)