Dec. 15, 2005 — An Alabama church holds a "Fear Factor" youth ministry event, where teens swallow goldfish and try to escape a locked coffin to learn how to overcome fear in their lives. Actor Stephen Baldwin sheds his bad-boy image, finds God, and starts a group called Livin' It, which encourages young people to skateboard for the Lord. Dozens of Christian rock festivals across the country draw millions of revelers to events that rival the bawdy Lollapolooza.Since when did being a Christian teen become so cool?"The day of the Christian kid being viewed as a nerd are long gone," said Bill Graening, the director of the Alive Festival, a three-day Christian music festival held each summer in Ohio that draws up to 20,000 people a day.At least 80 percent of U.S. teens between the ages of 13 and 17 identify themselves as religious, with the majority identifying as Christian, according to the National Study on Youth and Religion, a six-year project funded by the Lilly Endowment.
For More Teens, Jesus Is Way Cool
That's right- it's cool to "be of this world", and still consider yourself "religious". Forgive my skepticism about "skateboarding for the Lord", and people "shedding bad-boy image, finding God, and starting groups" that are "serving God". Like you can flip a switch from one character to another.I'm really torn on this. The fact that there's an outreach that's drawing up to 20,000 people a day is awesome. But are the fruits real, or are they just "comfortable"?Grace and Peace...
Groh_frog: I, as a teen, share your concern. I live among them, and, being one, can see the issue from the inside out. It's alright to enjoy skateboarding, music rallies, and other events--but, when we return home, the issues of life overload the fun moments and Christianity, where it shows its deepest strength, is no where to be seen.It's not all like this, but the majority of my peers (many who'd love to wring my neck if they read this) don't really have a deepness for God (and I myself am one to raise my hand in that group). For, another statistic not shown is that of the 80-90% of postadolescent "drop-outs" of the faith. It's just no longer "cool" to be found a believer when you wake up and realize you're no long a kid.The Lord needs warriors, laborers, not just jesters and musicians (Amos 6:5,6). David not only praised God, but He was first in prayer, first in repentance, and first to say, "Yahweh is my God"--even when hiding alone in a mountain. May my generation grow up in the Lord with the same heart and mind that fuelled David to act like an archetype of Christ. Amen.Another lamb,Benjamin
Actor Stephen Baldwin sheds his bad-boy image, finds God, and starts a group called Livin' It, which encourages young people to skateboard for the Lord.
I like the message in the song on this website, it ain't traditional by any means.
I'm really torn on this. The fact that there's an outreach that's drawing up to 20,000 people a day is awesome. But are the fruits real, or are they just "comfortable"?
I think we might go there and pass out Paul Washer sermons on CD and preach to these preacious kids, the great majority of which are false converts.
The fact that there's an outreach that's drawing up to 20,000 people a day is awesome.
How is that somehow awesome? Just merely because it's any "outreach" that's drawing a ton of people makes it awesome? I fail to meet the connection you made.
It's not cool to follow Jesus. It's about as cool as being crucified is. To follow in Jesus' footsteps, you must die. Literally even. Being a Christian is essential being a Martyr. People will kill you, as Jesus said, and believe they do God a service.
Jordan
Jesus is cool? I believe if we're truly following Jesus we'll be rejected, not accepted.
If your a Christian, and all your unsaved buddies think you're cool... then you arent living for Jesus. Something is wrong.
I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man than a fool in the eyes of God.
Krispy
This is exactly how my church is. People come have fun and at best have a "form of godliness" but then when it comes down to it they are not there for God they are there for themselves, which isn't a bad thing because hey, Jesus is there for our happiness right! THat is the most grieving thing to think that people actually think this way.
Oh that God would revive these churches!!
... and you're there because...?
(Only God can direct you to leave, I'm just curious why you havent)
Krispy
... and you're there because...?
Maybe to be a living witness to them?
Jordan
Do you ever think that we might be looking at the "Jesus is cool" thing wrong?
I know what you guys are seeing and saying, this generation of kids hate parents, they hate authority and they hate God.
To say that Jesus is cool is giving them a chance to see God for He really is. Yeah, we say that following Jesus is tough, most of these kids are rebellious to begin with, and they don't see life as a bed of roses. When they give their lives to the LORD, they will become so radical in their evangelism, that it will scare us fuddie duddies. I don't want to judge this work, for if it be of God, you cannot overthrow it; lest haply you be found even to fight against God. Acts5:39
... and you're there because...?
Yeah mostly to be a witness and to keep ties with my family. I have talked about this before in the forums and have often wanted to just leave, but I believe God is going to keep me there until I am kicked out or the church saved... and others have failed to accomplish the latter before me so I may be leaving soon!
The main thing that is wrong with the "Jesus is Cool thing" is that it creates a lack of Fear of God and hate of sin which produces carnal christianity which sends people to Hell. (sorry to be so blunt)
Jesus is cool? I believe if we're truly following Jesus we'll be rejected, not accepted.If your a Christian, and all your unsaved buddies think you're cool... then you arent living for Jesus. Something is wrong.I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man than a fool in the eyes of God.
Krispy, i totally understand that, its 2 corinthians chapter 4 all over again... and if you really stop to consider -the word 'cool' in this context implies trend and its just not going to do justice to any of it if you accept jesus as a phase of your life and nothing more... thats totally ripping people off.
on the other hand, i completely endorse the way teenagers are having their lives filled with God-That, is cool! its also considered 'cool' in our church when you do have a heart movement for God as you could imagine, the culture in church does not want to frown upon new believers. there needs to be an aspect of respect and people need to not feel intimidated while they make the decision for Christ. in the same instance the pressure on a person in their walk of life could be the very thing that drives them to God, where they seek him instead of their circumstances, though would they do that if they couldnt get their headspace from an uncool lifestyle following an overbearing divinity? you might consider that teenagers are very emotionally driven these days, and its something im very sure God is working on to help them from being ruled by emotions. however, unless they have a heart movement and their friends bring them to Christ by presenting him in a cool way, then how are the friends following the great comission??
if God is cool, then people these days want to get to know what's doing, so to speak. people find it easier to relate to a God who is down to earth and cool (ie. condones having fun and accepts you for who you are) if God were uncool people would interpret that as angry, impatient and bored... just looking for us to get a clue and work our way back into his favour... a lot of people get so discouraged by that and this is what motivates them to try their best without God.. someone they can just do without. God is cool. he's understanding, he's reasonable, he's loving, generous and always forgives. he understands... his son went through the same emotions and situations, remember? so he's cool, he's like us, only, way better, and more down with it!!
and it's good that teenagers can get to know him as a cool God -not as an overbearing appeasement seeking divinity, like is taught in some places. its enough to turn a soul searching teenager right off!
Your post is so right on compliment I agree with you wholeheartedly.And Jesus is totally cool,Absolutely,The life of wickedness and bondage to sin was so much harder than a life of repentence and Joy of the Lord.Just give these kids Jesus and a Bible and let them decide.That's what somebody did for me,And I'm happy they did.And glad there's guys out there in the streets reachin out to messed up,fouled up lives.And besides It's Jesus alone who saves.All we need do is "Speak the truth in Love"
and for the record when i say, fun i mean fun in a pure sense...
by hanging out with the right crowds, by spending time at the beach/park throwing the ball around/ having a coffee... going camping and just general day to day things... its already known that we've sinned several times before we've eaten brekky in the morning. but if we spent all our time having to worry about that we wouldnt have a measure of what God's grace is all about.
i wasnt referring to the going to parties and getting drunk-doing drugs at rave parties and sleeping with a bajillion people out of wedlock.
we live in a fallen world amongst people with free will... God wants to reach them despite how far people try to run from him. sometimes the light burns our eyes a bit too much. thats what 139 paints well... where can we go to escape from God? we dont have to go anywhere, we only need to refuse him. would you portray God as 'cool' as you act out of love for people... because loving people despite everything they say and do is very cool of you. or would you rather preach ulti-matems' at them?
people find it easier to relate to a God who is down to earth and cool
I understand what you mean by this statement, however, lets be honest... God is [b]not
We should not be bringing Him down to our level (as if that were possible). Even when Jesus walked the earth He was still God, and was still holy, and was still sinless. And was still to be worshipped.
Krispy
if God is cool, then people these days want to get to know what's doing, so to speak
God his Holy, people already know what He is doing and hate Him for it because they are wicked and depraved. In fact the scripture says that they are His enemies. The God that you have described is no more then an idol named the LORD.
What is the end result of this? A bunch of false converts that have decided to "ask Jesus into their hearts" because He is cooler then MTV...
I think this is what Paul talked about when he said there would be a form of godliness that would deny its power in the last days.
Sorry if this sounds harsh, but time is short and there is enough deception going around to damn a thousand generations. I say this in love to all reading though.
HOLY HOLY HOLY is the Lord God almighty. I highly suggest you go to the sermons page and listen to these two Paul Washer messages.
[url=https://www.sermonindex.net/modules/mydownloads/visit.php?lid=8304]The Holiness of God
In Christ - Jim
When I read this thread, I immediately thought about this piece of satire:
http://www.larknews.com/december_2003/secondary_deaf.php?page=3
Kids don't want the church to try and be cool (worldly).
I know what you mean guys. I revere God. and i'm a 19 year old(going on 20) born again who has been serving God going on 6 or 7 years now. I love God, he's seen me out of so much torment. he's brought me out of the bounds of sexual abuse, mistrust of all authority in an extreme sense... i've recently been really hurt again by another authority over my life and am suffering for it now. i revere God more than just asking him to help me when im stuck. he's my dad. he loves me so much. he's always there. and his spirit, the comforter helps me get to know him more each and every day. when i sing the praise and worship i dont just lift my hands for show. thats an attitude of self-gratification. i was bawling in the last service. and i wanted to recoil. but despite that i lifed my hands to surrender to him and sang the song from the depths of my heart. God is meeting me in my circumstances and he is bringing me up... not me bringing him down to my level. that's an impossible approach that will land you on your face in no time. but he's been holding me in the palm of his hand for 6 years. without a personal relationship with God, i have to tell you-i'd have never have 'lasted' this long. and the reason being is because i was initially brought into an atmosphere where i was free to love God, it was condoned, accepted and people let you cry out to him when you were compelled to, because God hears us through our heartache. Kripy do you have quiet times? where you just seek after him... you must. and you must realise that he hears you and wants to see you grow as a person and he must long to see you strive for the potential you still havent reached. Thats the God i know. and i met him in an atmosphere where he was cool. where he understands people like me. and he actually gives a rip. if he isnt cool, without being an idol apart from all he is then i'll be damned anyway. because i've been living out of the leadership and the care that he has over my life, the provision he has for me every day and the people he has put in my life to impart Godly wisdom into my life. without this 'cool idol' i would never be all i am today. i would still be a hard emotionless case locked inside a gigantic fortress, that i made by pushing people away instinctively. if you want to know more about that ask me.
now i revere him with all my heart. and i love him just as dearly.
i also call him cool because despite what anyone else thinks i'm down with all he's about. the word cool is open to an individual's interpretation. don't condemn a person for their choice of words!
the way i see it isin this quote by a man named Dr. Johnson: God himself sir, does not propose to judge man until the end of his days."
so why should you and i?
arbustum... good word, and I dont necessarily disagree with what you have said.
However, at the same time, we are not free to worship God as [b]we[b]He
Example... Cain & Abel. Abel worshipped God as God wanted Him to. Cain worshipped God, but as [b]he
In Cain's heart I think he sincerely was worshipping God... yet God rejected his offering because it was not what God wanted Him to do. It was disobedience.
To obey is better than sacrifice.
And I am not against all modern forms of worship, ok? But I think a lot of it goes way too far and is actually a stench in the nostrils of God.
Krispy
the way i see it isin this quote by a man named Dr. Johnson: God himself sir, does not propose to judge man until the end of his days."
God has a long history of judging people before the end of their days, many a time ending their days through his judgement.
We are also called to judge those in the church, those who profess to be serving Christ. (1 Corinthians 5).
In Christ - Jim
Uhmm... yep. I agree. Look at the life of King David. A man after God's own heart, yet judged and punished for his affair/murder. David said his sin was before his eyes all his days, meaning he paid dearly for it. That is God's judgement before the end of his days.
Whoever Dr. Johnson is, I would recommend you not pay much attention to him [b]if
Krispy
sermonindex wrote:
At least 80 percent of U.S. teens between the ages of 13 and 17 identify themselves as religious, with the majority identifying as Christian, according to the National Study on Youth and Religion, a six-year project funded by the Lilly Endowment.
Does anyone stop to think that perhaps the next wave of persecutors are being raised up for the West? Today I had a discussion with a guy, who identifies himself as a Greek Orthodox Christian. Our discussion bent itself towards how "the muslims have got it all wrong about God" (his words). The basis of his comments was that they didn't belive in "name day and Easter". I told him that their are alot worse problems than Islam, in our country, meaning sinfulness amongst believers (although not saying it directly). He had no answer as to what God required of him, when I asked.
Earlier, when he commented that he couldn't understand why anyone wouldn't want to believe in God, I asked him what he thought God would say if He walked into his establishment (he operates one of many takeaway food shops in a factory area in Melbourne) and saw the pornographic magazines that he was selling? Again no answer. Mind you, he has much to say about what everyone else is doing wrong.
The thing is, on top of all this, he has some very definite opinions which are subtly antisemetic. When I see this man, in particular, I can understand how Hitler could persuade the majority of chritendom, in his nation, to reject the Jews, and discard half of the Bible, in favour of an Aryan eugenic delusion.
Andrew strom made comments about the Tornoto Blessing being sent by God to test His porphets. The observation was made, that the Vineyard movemnt ushered it in, and "prophets"[sic] spread it, and now most of the Vineyard has rejected it, while the "prophets"[sic] contiue in it, adding increasing delusional fads, from gold dust, to angelic visitations, amongst other things.
Look at the fads of "sword weilding" and "cape wearing", for example, that was big in the late 90s, and then listen to the vocabulary, which gathers momentum, as the next "prophet"[sic] has a greater "revelation"[sic]. It gets hard and harder to understand what they are going on about, as they refer to "new levels" and "double portions", taking these supposed "Biblical terms" and reducing them down to heretical statements, that all but totally ignore context.
And what is the result? A new wave of "super Christians"[sic] who know nothing of regeneration, with their eyes firmly fixed on the ministries of men. Doesn't this remind anyone of the state of the church, leading into the dark ages? And don't forget that the greatest enemy of the Church was...well, "the church"[sic].
This is why I raise again the question that my post started with:[b]Does anyone stop to think that perhaps the next wave of persecutors are being raised up for the West?
By the way, , here is a link to an Australian equivilent to this article:[url=http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,20779864-5007190,00.html]New wave of cool
Seems like another instance of where we are in danger of being carried off by our reactions to the errors and ungodliness of the day.
"Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart: So shalt thou find favour and good understanding in the sight of God and man." -Proverbs 3:3-4
As I understand it, a ship may capsize in either direction, left or right.
And we can make an idol of any of God's attributes, not only His love.
Chris
Awww guys!
you know better than that.
God's endorsing the correct attitude, the proper principals to go about life in. its about the responsible attitude and the correct choice to make. take the parable of the talents for example. where one takes the 5 and comes back with 10, another takes the 3 and comes back with 6. they chose to invest and see the fruit of their choices in a beneficial way. the one with a single talent chose to despite the market bury his chances, bury his ambition, bury his opportunity and sacrifice the opportuinty to reap further down the track. it was obviously an opportune time in the market to invest as the others made double what they had.. not just one of them but both of them...
meanwhile we're debating whether God holds people to the little things they do as they do them when we also proclaim that Jesus paid for that kind of stuff and took it all into account when he hung there, nails through his arms and feet and saw your life and each sin you would commit before and after you got to know him for who he is.
suffice to say -yes in the Old Testament, people were judged before the end of their time. it was the way the old covenant worked. many came to a short and swift end because they refused to repent and were struck down on the spot *smite* *smite* *smite* but since the new covenant that Jesus kinda rectified, we are now given the course of our life and face the judgement seat at the end of our time, where we will be cast into hell or withheld in Heaven. well atleast, not untill the second coming...
meanwhile we have a lot of people in this world that will attach a name to themselves... though how many of you know what your "christian name" actually means off by heart? Mine's Holly and it's got no other reference than to a shrubbery.
but names like Aidan and Claire and Margaret and Stanley? what do they mean? (dont really need to know) but my point is... there is a lot more to a name than is given for the sake of having... still whats among the most common reason a child is named as they are? because the parents thought it sounded cool at the time. people will assume names as they have been conditioned to accept in their lives, or as they themselves condition themselves to want to adopt and not always for how deeply they can then represent themselves in a single word. i dont believe that people mean to harm Christianity by calling themselves christian then rebelling against the truth of it. i honestly believe they are just hurting and confused and really didnt give the concept of 'christian' much thought.
Guys what you tolerate does not make you any less of a christian... it does mean that you are accepting more negativity and more ungodly stuff into your life yes. but if all we did was spray Hospital grade disifectant about our homes and make all the germs go away... we wouldnt be able to live past the front door and we're no good staying cooped up where its all kootsy-coo safe. you need a bit of relevance to reach the lost hurt and dying. please try and open your hearts. i implore you to. this coming from someone who only found jesus because one friend did exactly that.