I certainly get it that we need to be savvy to our culture (yes, I'm reading "The Culturally Savvy Christian" by Dick Staub right now…), and I see it that old ways of communicating won't necessarily 'work' in a new culture. My concern though is that we are in danger of diluting the message in trying to 'make it relevant.' I'm afraid we are in danger of forfeiting the message of the cross because the culture may find it repugnant. I'm concerned that while trying to be cool we are going to forget that we are aliens, strangers in the world…..we're ragamuffins, to use Rich Mullins' term (and yes I know I'm risking irrelevancy by quoting a dead guy who never wore black Rob Bell glasses).

I guess I'm ok with letting people know what our church is doing, and even using advertising and such to connect with the unsaved. What I disagree with (and which I'm not even sure your post or your friends at church marketingsucks.com are saying), is the idea of some church growth expert telling the 'leadership' of a church, "you want to know how to grow your church? Hey we'll tell you: identify your target market, make a ripping website and get a killer sound system and hire some metrosexual musicians (like Zakk Fouteknote!) and get a really dynamic guy in the pulpit. Doesn't matter what he says, just be what the focus groups say they want and you'll see! If you build it, they will come!!"

Ok that's harsh. But truly I'm not a fan of megachurch 1.0 that did these kinds of 'market research' and made their decisions based on demographics and research. Have you noticed I haven't mentioned God yet? Where does Jesus fit into the demographics? Will the hip pastor preach on being transformed by the renewing of our minds? And carrying our crosses? Or being hated on account of Christ?

I'm really hoping the Staub book I mentioned above will help me get how to do this. We need to be experts about our culture without selling out (or buying in to) our culture. "Reaching out without selling out" someone said.

If I may be so bold as to take a bit more space, I'd like to stick in the Table of Contents from the book:

SAVVY
1 The Popular Culture We Are In
2 The Christianity We Are In
3 The Story We Are In

SERIOUS
4 God's Deep Presence
5 God's Transforming Presence
6 God's loving Presence

SKILLED
7 Countering Culture Like Aliens
8 Communicating Culture Like ambassadors
9 Creating Culture Like Artists

I think this looks pretty good…crucial I think will be the middle section on God. Barna research about the Church shows a pretty stunning ignorance of even the basic attributes of God.

Anyway, thanks for the dialogue…as you can see I struggle with this some. I just want all of us, Jesus' bride, to be true to Him whose (*mixed metaphor*) road is narrow, not broad………