by Rod D. Martin
August 4, 2013

After posting those articles this morning about Millennials leaving the church, I kept thinking.  And truly, I think what is missing in the rush to make church “contemporary” or “cool” (and let us not even go so far as the hopelessly failed Willow Creek “seeker sensitive” model) is simply this:

You can never outbid a socialist. You can never out-shock a reprobate. You can never out-cool the world. The church is not here to be “cool”. The church is here to be true. The church is here to be stable, like the Rock on which it is built. The church is here to be set apart: holy. And it should make you feel an authenticity and worshipfulness and awe which is wholly lacking as we increasingly chase the wind.

Memo to pastors: the very fact that you do anything immediately renders it uncool. Don’t even bother. Be the spotless bride of Christ, the glorious church, awesome as an army with banners. Be part of — and more importantly, lead — something bigger than yourself, something with two thousand years of history and eternity before her. Call your flock and those outside it to the sacrificial work, the work of the Great Commission, the work of taking up your cross daily to follow Him. Do not sugarcoat it. Boast in it. Boast only in it.

And they will come. Just as they have always come. They can find a better party anywhere.  They’re not coming to you for more of the same:  they’re coming for what they lack.  They come to Christ for what no one else has:  salvation, meaning, purpose, wonder.

Is your church a place where they can find it?