Last week I read a book written by Tim Stevens (the Exective Pastor at Granger Church in South Bend, Indiana). Tim's book is Pop Goes the Church. Essentially, it's a guide that can help congregations use popular culture, trends, images, movies, books, and catch phrases as a way of reaching people with the gospel. It is obvious that this method has worked well at Granger, as they are one of the most high-tech, pop culture-savvy congregations I've seen anywhere, with over 10,000 people worshipping with them on weekends.
When I got to the back of the book, though, I was astounded to read about some of the churches that have used pop culture images and trends to produce spectacular growth, including one congregation that went from 0 to 2,900 people in worship in less than two years.
These congregations make our 10% growth here at Calvary look rather insignificant, but we do what we can. But hey, I don't look like Tim Stevens, either. He's hip, has a shaved head, and a little VanDyke-style beard. Me--I'm a guy rapidly approaching fifty with a double chin and a growing paunch of a belly. About the only thing "hip" or "pop" about me is that I still have 25,000 baseball cards stashed away in the closet and I drink Starbucks coffee about three times a week.
I have a feeling that my best attempt to capture "pop" culture in worship is when I show a video clip from a movie that has was formerly in Video format and was recently converted to DVD. (I still can't get the "12:00" to stop flashing on my VCR.)
I ain't gettin' any younger. Anybody wanna buy some baseball cards?
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