I got my new issue of Christianity Today in the mail this afternoon, and they've got several articles about worship - what it should be, how it looks in the modern church, etc. One piece is an interview with a professor at Grove City, a gray-haired little guy with wire rimmed glasses, a buzz cut, and a bow tie, who has written a book called Why Johnny Can't Sing Hymns. T. David Gordon is his name.
"Many believe that kind of [pop-influenced] music is more 'seeker-friendly,'" the interviewer suggests.
I guess I just really liked his response:
"But it's like reaching the rich young ruler by throwing money at him. . . I'm not so sure that accommodation to an individual's consumerist preferences is consistent with the gospel call. . . I'm not sure we should say, 'Well, what kind of music do you like? After all, we're just worshiping God here, and we have no standards other than what you like.' Saying 'it's all about you' isn't the way to go about evangelism. It might be better to say, 'You may wonder why we sang a hymn today written by Bernard of Clairvaux in the 12th century. We do it because we think it's a good reflection on what our Redeemer did. We don't really care whether it's new or old.' That might cause a person to say. 'Here's one institution in the entirety of our culture that isn't driven by consumer preference. Isn't that curious?'"He put into words something that kept bugging me when I was church shopping last summer: our culture's obsession with consuming product after product after product has filtered into even our churches and our worship. Organizations whose motivation is profit, economic engines chugging along trying to make a buck, naturally bend to the whim of the consumer, as it's the whim of the consumer that determines the success or failure of their ultimate goal: making money. But what is the ultimate goal of a church, small 'c'? Getting as many bodies into pews every Sunday as possible? Growing big enough that you need four services and a satellite campus? Drawing thousands every Sunday by offering the most attractive spiritual product? Should faith be treated as another consumer good, when the ultimate success of the Church, big 'C', is not determined by consumer behavior, or by how many people prefer the Christian brand over the Jewish or Muslim brand in a blind taste-test.
I never liked those Christian t-shirts that make bad puns out of brand names. Besides the fact that they're sometimes embarrassingly cringe-inducing, I think what always made me pass over them at Christian youth events was that they seemed to be saying, "Hey! There's nothing wrong with a consumer-driven culture where our goal is to consume more and more, and where we identify ourselves with the brands we wear. Just make sure your brand is 'Jesus!'"
Shouldn't the Church's approach to culture be something more substantive than taking whatever we find around us and subbing in Christian words for the cuss words, and pictures of sunsets and butterflies for pictures of sexy women? Obviously the t-shirts are silly and innocuous, but I think Mr. T. David Gordon is on to something in suggesting that the Church should be something qualitatively different from its surroundings, something not driven by every marketing trend and consumer preference. Something that seeks the beautiful and the true, and not just the cool or the comfortable. No?
