Pop Goes The Church Book Study2

Okay, as you recall, I am doing this book study via my blog with Kyle Phillips, Nate Liston, and Dan Hudson.

For this post we are supposed to share our thoughts about chapters 2 and 3 from the book. Chapter 2 was titled "Lost in Translation." Tim Stevens' main point is that we need to be aware of what we are saying in our church environments because it is either interpreted as nonsense or it makes no sense at all to people outside the church.

He gave a couple of humorous examples of how things actually can get "lost in translation." One was a story of himself sharing in a meeting of details of prostrate surgery happening on his friends' wrist. That was very funny, by the way!

It reminded me of when I was in Bible College (I went to the school Jesus went to) and one of our professors got up to speak in chapel. This professor preached regularly in chapel and he would always cry at some point in his sermon (in fact, we would place bets when he was speaking on how long into his sermon it would be before he would start to cry).

Well this one particular chapel sermon was the most memorable one he ever preached. He was preaching on evangelism and he was talking about Andrew following Christ and then bringing others to meet Christ. And this is what he said (I kid you not):

"We all need to be like Andrew and bring our Peters to Christ."

From then on, nothing else he said registered. The whole chapel was filled with young college students trying to keep themselves from having a hernia from laughing out loud. It was awesome!

Ultimately the message of the chapter resonates with me...even though I am terribly guilty of using verbiage that must sound ridiculous at times to non-Christian people. So it is a good reminder for all of us.

Chapter three is titled,"Why Pop Culture is So Popular." I must admit this chapter really left me a little unsettled. The stats he shared near the beginning of the chapter about how much media is being consumed by the average American made me want to vomit in my mouth.

We are entertaining ourselves to death! But ultimately Tim is correct in saying that we have failed the culture (as the church) because we are so "STUCK" behind our stained glass windows we don't want any of the world to creep in (I think that was an old Petra song!)

He highlighted the moral failures of high profile church leaders (most recently Ted Haggard) and that is like we are taking a sledgehammer to our own knees! People are receiving spiritual guidance from the pop culture and the church mostly wants us to boycott McDonald's!

We have to grow up. We have to engage, leverage, push and shove our way into the forefront with our message. We have the only message that is the hope for this lost, dark world! If we would stop boycotting everything and start trying to redeem the things Satan is using...we might start making significant headway into reaching more people for Jesus.

Most churches preach against Halloween participation...why not have a great big huge alternative event on Halloween? Most churches preach against secular music...why not use a secular song in a worship service that communicates deep spiritual truths?

We need to begin to redeem things that Satan is using to send people to hell.