“I’d rather be a fool in the eyes of man, than a fool in the eyes of God.”
Okay, so that’s a lyric from an old Petra song. (I was never a big fan.) Although the music had a lot to be desired, this particular lyric still stands strong in my heart.
It seems that much student ministry today is focused on creating a cool factor as a big draw. I’ll be the first to admit I’ve designed entire student ministries around creating a cool buzz way too many times. “Jesus is cool; it’s cool to follow Him; and you can look cool doing it.” In fact, we sometimes flip the cool-fool equation to “it’s cool to follow Jesus and you’d be a fool not to.”
Cool! (Hard to believe how long that word has lasted…)When I read the letters of Paul, I see more references to being a fool for Christ than being cool for Jesus. I wonder how cool it was to be beaten, shipwrecked and killed for your faith. I wonder how cool people thought it was to “consider everything I’ve gained as rubbish….to share in Christ’s suffering….becoming like Him in His death…being the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world.”
The interesting thing about being cool or being a fool is that both are determined by the opinions of others. Friends, peers, and culture make the decision. I always tell my own kids (10, 12, 15) that the moment you try to be cool for others, you become a slave to them.
QUESTION: I wonder if, in our attempt not to seem too radical, we’ve allowed the Gospel to become a slave to the cool factor? Have we diluted the message just enough to allow it to fit more neatly into our current lives? Have we effectively created weak, impotent, cool Christians because it’s safer than challenging students to be counter-cultural fools for Christ?
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Written by: Carl Blunt
Check him out @ thelifebook.com
Follow him @carlblunt
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I so relate to everything you are saying here. One of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my 10+ years of youth ministry has been this need for all things Christian to be “relevant” and “cool.” Once at a Christian music festival, I saw someone wearing a t-shirt with a design playing off of the Mountain Dew slogan. It read “Do the Jew.” I shook my head and thought “Is that what we’ve come to?” Sadly, in this attempt to being culturally relevant, the Message is lost. The message is sacrificed on the altar of cool. At my previous church where I worked with middle school and high school youth, the parents were completely content with movie nights. But, to have their kids discuss Bible issues, it was scary and uncomfortable and at times, unacceptable. During one meeting when we were discussing curriculum, what I thought was a good Bible study was voted down. Why? Because it brought up homosexuality as a sin. And that stance didn’t match that of this particular denomination. That’s the biggest reason my husband and I left. Our loyalties to the denomination were to be stronger than our loyalty to Jesus and the Word of God. You’re right. There’s nothing “cool” about the gospel. And, we as a church need to re-think how we do things.
You’re right, being “cool” is all in the perspective. Some people might not think the right thing is “cool” but it’s still the “right” thing!
We talked about this at our Youth Worker Network meeting. Relevance is a servant of the Gospel not the other way around. We need to get the Gospel right before we try to wow them with an MTV-like atmosphere. We can’t out MTV, MTV but, in the person of the Holy Spirit, we definitely have more power at our disposal than MTV, or Disney