Show me an adult man with a knob and I’ll show you a basketball player. Show me an adult goat in sandals and I’ll show you a young shepherd.
As a child, I remember that the youth pastor of my church was totally different from any other pastor I had ever seen. I quoted rock bands and went to church in jeans. It was great in a way that the other adults in my life wasn’t. I was proud to call my friends to church and see their negative stereotypes about Christians disappear. The youth group grew up and the children were affected. The difference in our group compared to others was that our pastor was legal.
- While young people (and their pastors) in the 1990s became the church and its pastors in the 2000s.
- This phenomenon apparently only grew.
- Now it’s an idea without discussion in many places: the best way to reach people is to be like them.
- To achieve our culture.
- We must incorporate what culture defines as acceptable and valid.
- If we are as cool as possible without giving up the gospel.
- In this way people will look at us and will not feel rejected.
- Maybe they even want to be as we do.
This can be seen both in the lives of our pastors (super cool guys, I’m talking about you and your emo lenses) and in the praise of the congregation, from where we try to get anything that seems strange to the religious visitors.
In a way, I think it’s good to be connected to the culture around us, but the commitment to being legal can conflict with pastoral attractiveness in many ways. Being the cool guy in the 9Marks group (which is almost like being the guy who’s a girlfriend at a Star Trek convention), here are some ideas:
In one way or another, we all carry with us a unique set of interests, talents, characteristics, and strengths that can be used to proclaim or hinder the gospel. For example, yesterday the technical assistance of the photocopier passed in front of the church where I am a pastor, he is a young man who loves wrestling. We created an affinity for this (one of the guys in our church also loves martial arts), and he was surprised that the pastor was tattooed, I shared Christ and he asked me for a Bible, cultural immersion point.
But there are other ways in which my appearance can hinder evangelization. I spoke of Christ with a Muslim who makes the sauna at the same time as me in the gym, once or twice a week. We have a certain level of friendship and almost always. Talk about spiritual problems. I have no doubt that the fact that there’s a big fox tattooed on my biceps doesn’t make me interested in my faith any more. A point for those who don’t have tattoos. That’s why I wear a long-sleeved shirt on Sunday mornings. In an instant, my tattoos help me; in another, it can make things difficult.
To what extent is a pastor’s desire to be considered great or great motivated by vanity or pride? Knowing the depth of our depravity, delusion, and pride, we must always examine ourselves. Is it the reason why I dress a certain way or listen a certain way? Song a good reason? Or at least a part of me wants to avoid comparisons to Ned Flanders? We must be aware that our pursuit of legal law should not feed the vanity and pride with which we must struggle on a daily basis.
In fact, I’m afraid (and here I’m talking about something I see in my own heart) that sometimes we’re, even a little, motivated to look for people out of pride. To what extent is our desire to be legal a desire to reach people not for the glory of the gospel, but for our own glorification?An intimate question for any pastor: if the Lord were to call him the pastor of 60 bored believers until they were safe, without a spectacular awakening or a ministerial explosion, is this call taken seriously?Or is it an apparent loss of his gifts and his life?
Don’t even think about becoming a pastor if you want to sound reasonable to most people or if you want to influence a large group of friendly people and their ideals. The proclamation of the cross is crazy for much of the hipster art community. we must love the Savior more than our respect for others.
Also, much of the attitude of being very kind has little to do with the work of a pastor. Sometimes you have to be embarrassing. You must love boring and extremely strange people with true love who does not seek to mock them. You have to cry with people when they experience unexplained tragedies. Much of what it means to be a pastor is deeply “illegal. “
There is a great danger in being so proud of our freedom in Christ to wear black clothing that we begin to treat the Christians of Ned Flanders who love the Lord and have served him faithfully for years without much respect. In fact, perhaps the Lord will be more satisfied. with his humble (but not so sophisticated) approach than yours. The fact is that love for other Christians is a mark of the true believer (1 John 2:10). This mark should be even deeper in the shepherd. We have more in common with one believer in Myanmar and another in Duluth (even if you don’t know where these places are, or even if they exist) than with the people we’re trying to reach Christ.
The big question is that we can’t choose who will be in our herd and we shouldn’t even try. Should the church try to get closer to the “boy”, belittling and despising the ordinary and embarrassed boy who is there every Sunday? If we read Ephesians carefully we will see that the church is made up of all kinds of people: cool and boring, masculine and sensitive, punks and emos. Honestly, in my experience, the sensitive guy who doesn’t strive to be really cool probably looks 10 times more like the biblical profile than a man should be, even if he doesn’t ride a motorcycle and doesn’t watch violent sports on TV. . Shepherd the flock, thank God for the diversity of the body of Christ, and love people who are not like you.
When he was in high school, a well-meaning boy tried to play what became known at the Radnor Junior Colégio as the famous “Rap of Jesus”. It was the early days of hip-hop success, and the genre wasn’t even completely Good, this man, a thin white boy, delayed the development of hip-hop by about ten years for some heinous five minutes. I later discovered that what he was singing had not been written by himself (thank heavens), but was later released on disc by another boy.
The fact is that not all Christians are good at this, some do, but you probably don’t. Seriously, ask your wife. She’ll tell you the truth. Don’t try to be something you’re not just trying to impress non-believers. This is a bad application of theology and will not deceive anyone. It is this kind of thought that has produced more of the gospel music we hear there. No, really. Right now, I insist.
The more we understand the world (and its definition of what is attractive and what is great), the less we should be attracted to it. In an increasingly bankrupt, morally and spiritually bankrupt society, it is our differences with culture that serve to spread David Wells speaks of it better than I do in his book God on the Moor:
At this point, evangelicals must expect a true awakening in the church, wishing it to be again a place of seriousness where an avid aversion to the norm of this world is cultivated, because the norms of the world are understood, and where worship is separated from all that is extravagant, where the Word of God is listened to carefully and where the desolate and the homeless can find refuge.
Let us pray that our churches will regain the quality of fiercely opposing the norm of this world, even if it is not legal.
The conclusion of all this is: all that God has made you. If you’re a little hipster, so be it. Be a hipster for Dieu’s glory. If you go the other way, much better. But Christ. it must be the center of everything you seek in your pastoral vocation; it means sacrificing our pride and persecuing those who are not like us; this means evangelizing beyond the limits of our tastes and preferences; and in the end, it can lead us not to be legal.