3. The elevation of everything hip or cool.
I believe in using the culture to reach the culture. But using what’s hip, cool or otherwise current is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
Walk into an evangelical leadership conference and you’ll realize that people feel they have to dress the part to be in leadership. I won’t stop using what is cultural to express what is timeless, but it can’t ever become the goal. Sometimes it’s good just to be your uncool self.
4. Alienation from the past.
For sure, some evangelical churches feel like you walked into 1950, while others feel like you walked into a Hollister store or some vintage store (see point three, above).
What I’m talking about here is an alienation from the rich tradition of 2000 years of excellent theology. When a leader’s bookshelf or Kindle only has works from the past five years on it, you wonder how sustainable that theology really is.
5. A lack of love for the world God created.
When you come from a place of judgment or pride, it’s easy to look down on those who are not like you. The most quoted evangelical verse of all time, however, says that God loved the world.
And he does. He loves people far from him. He loves people who are different than Christians. He loves people where they are at. He loves the planet.
Has it all been deeply twisted by sin? Absolutely. But under the Father’s heart is a deep and abiding love for his people and creation. What if evangelicals reflected that love by how we treat outsiders and the world God made?
Again, I write this only because I feel all five tensions and am not above any, which is how I feel about the five epidemics facing the mainline church as well.
What would you add to this list? What do you disagree with?
(Oh, and remember … mainliners and evangelicals, play nice in the comments.)
