Do you go to a church that has designed itself with every thing that you could think of to tickle your imagination on Sunday mornings? What would happen if one day it was just all gone, all the big screens, video clips, cool music, pastor with his “talks” that market Jesus in the most fun and attention grabbing way . . . all vanished and gone? What would be left over? Would you still want to come? What would your faith look like? What do you think would happen to the people that go to the church? Would you read the Bible and have a relationship with God? Would you look at your faith with all the distractions gone and decide that maybe you’re not really a Christian? Would you feel confused about what it is that justifies you in the sight of God? Would you really even have a clue?
“What sort of foundation have we in Christ? Was he the beginning of our salvation in order that its fulfillment might follow from ourselves? Did he only open the way by which we might proceed under our own power? Certainly not.” (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, III. XV.V.)
It seems very much like these sorts of churches make church culture into an essential part of faith, a way by which we in our own power might attain what only Christ has made way and attained for us. In the eyes of these churches, any church that is not innovating in similar ways as them is dead and should just give up, because people cannot and will not accept Christ without all of the “buzz marketing”. God in their eyes is powerless to redeem those who would know Him without us marketing the crap out of Jesus and candy-coating the gospel (if they’re even fortunate enough to understand it).
Piper says it best recently on his blog when described “not as an innovator”.
I heard Collin Hansen say in an interview that John Piper is not an innovator.
I hope I can live up to that tribute. I would like it to be true. I am very happy with the simple role of blowing the boredom out of people’s brains with long-forgotten, old-fashioned, faithful blasts of biblical truth.
So let me try to prove how uncreative I am theologically. Here is C. S. Lewis saying fifty years ago in his Reflections on the Psalms what I have spent most of my adult life trying to say:
The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever”. But we shall know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him. (p. 97)
And I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. (p. 95)
If it were possible for a created soul fully (I mean, up to the full measure conceivable in a finite being) to “appreciate,” that is to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme beatitude. (p. 96)
I am a shameless conservative (=conserver) in repeating and embellishing such magnificent biblical insights from the past.
So, if it’s all gone, all taken away, what’s really left over? When you innovate the crap out the Gospel, there’s no Gospel left. The Cross + anything = nothing. What would you be left with?
Personally I’ll stick with having my boredom blown out of my brain “with long-forgotten, old-fashioned, faithful blasts of biblical truth” and leave all of those other pastors’ cool opinions, stories, creative takes on the gospel, and video clips to bore the masses.