The Perils of 'Wannabe Cool' Christianity

Writer Brett McCracken says many pastors and leaders are concerned about young people leaving American churches, never to return.

On August 13, 2010, a McCracken article about “wannabe cool Christianity” was published in the “Opinion Journal” of “The Wall Street Journal.” His book “Hipster Christianity: Where Church and Cool Collide” was published in August 2010.

McCracken writes, “As a 27-year-old evangelical myself, I understand the concern. My peers, many of whom grew up in the church, are losing interest in the Christian establishment.”

He says statistics show an exodus of young people from churches, especially after they leave home and live on their own. In a 2007 study, Lifeway Research determined that 70 percent of young Protestant adults between 18-22 stop attending church regularly.

McCracken says the plan to keep youth in church “has taken the form of a total image overhaul, where efforts are made to rebrand Christianity as hip, countercultural, relevant.”

“As a result, in the early 2000s, we got something called ‘the emerging church’ – a sort of postmodern stab at an evangelical reform movement,” he says. “Perhaps because it was too ‘let's rethink everything’ radical, it fizzled quickly. But the impulse behind it – to rehabilitate Christianity’s image and make it ‘cool’ – remains.”

McCracken says “Wannabe cool” Christianity can manifest itself as an obsession with being on the technological cutting edge. Churches like Central Christian in Las Vegas and Liquid Church in New Brunswick, N.J., have online church services where people can have a worship experience at an “iCampus.” Other churches encourage texting, Twitter and iPhone interaction with the pastor during services. But one of the most popular methods of making Christianity hip is to make it shocking, McCracken says.

Dan Burrell of Lake Lure, N.C., writes about “cool churches” on his danburrell.com blog: “Having just moved, I am looking for a new church…Sadly, I ended up in such a church today. I knew I was in trouble when the opening song was – I kid you not – ‘Sweet Home Alabama.’ I almost left…this type of church has become exactly what they claim to hate in the church of their ‘fathers.’ It is extremely cliché, focused on a single generation, lost in a world of their own creation and mistakenly thinking that they are somehow relevant…The last church I attended…had a wonderful grasp on multi-cultural and multi-generational ministry with blended worship, a wide range of dress styles…creative outreaches, etc....but the ONE THING on which there was zero compromise was the clear, expositional preaching of the Scripture…Sadly, churches such as that are difficult to find and often drowned out by those on the far fight and far left who keep telling us that the other is out of touch or simply wrong.”

In the book, “The Courage to Be Protestant,” David Wells writes, “The born-again, marketing church has calculated that unless it makes deep, serious cultural adaptations, it will go out of business, especially with the younger generations. What it has not considered carefully enough is that it may well be putting itself out of business with God. And the further irony is that the younger generations who are less impressed by whiz-bang technology, who often see through what is slick and glitzy, and who have been on the receiving end of enough marketing to nauseate them, are as likely to walk away from these oh-so-relevant churches as to walk into them.”

If evangelical Christian leadership thinks that “cool Christianity” is a sustainable path forward, they are severely mistaken, McCracken says, adding, “As a twenty-something, I can say with confidence that when it comes to church, we don't want cool as much as we want real. If we are interested in Christianity in any sort of serious way, it is not because it’s easy or trendy or popular. It’s because Jesus himself is appealing, and what he says rings true. It’s because the world we inhabit is utterly phony, ephemeral, narcissistic, image-obsessed and sex-drenched – and we want an alternative. It’s not because we want more of the same.”