We've heard of "what not to wear."  What about, "What not to watch?"

An attender at our church emailed me the following:


Great  question.  So what does the Bible say about all of this?

First, the Bible tells us that we should be careful what we ingest.  In the 101st Psalm, the Bible says:  "I will set no worthless thing before my eyes..." (Psalm 101:3a, NASB).

 "Vile thing" (which is the way the NIV translates the Hebrew) is a difficult translation.  There is little doubt that it is associated with evil, but its meaning is obscure.  It suggests associating yourself with the netherworld (cf. Canaanite mythology), and the goal is to steer clear of any such associations.  It goes beyond avoiding evil, and intimates setting before our eyes something that draws us into evil, or brings evil into our lives in ways that should have been avoided.  Calvin translated it as, "I will not set a wicked thing before my eyes."  Leslie C. Allen's translation is: "I have set before my eyes no wicked purpose."  Willem A. Vangerem translates it as "I will set before my eyes no vile thing." 

Let's offer a cultural translation:  I will set before my eyes nothing that is obviously evil for evil's sake, or cultivates evil in my heart.  Or as Theodoret of Cyr wrote in the early centuries of the Christian movement on this verse, "I walked in the innocence of my heart in my house."

The upcoming release of Antichrist by Lars von Trier has raised the question of "what not to watch" for more than just Christians.  When passed as fit for general consumption by the British Board of Film Classification, an article in London's Daily Mail ran the headline:  "What DOES it takes for a film to get banned these days?"  The film plumbs grotesque new depths of sexual explicitness, excruciating violence and degradation, causing even the most mainstream of critics to wonder if there is a line of decency that should not be crossed.  In the article, Christopher Hart writes


Many times this is an easy assessment, such as rejecting pornography, or even mainstream offerings such as Zack and Miri Make a Porno.  And I agree with Christopher Hart - I do not intend to watch Antichrist.  But what of significant films such as The Reader, or The Wrestler, both filled with nudity and sexual situations?  What of the violence present in such valued films as Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan?  Or, as the email asked, critically-acclaimed cable shows as True Blood or Dexter?  Like the Bible itself, evil is often presented in view of a larger story of redemption.

So what to watch?   The Psalmist suggests that it is a question of our motivation for watching certain things, coupled with what it does to our souls.  If our motivation is not what it should be, it would not be wise to watch; if it affects us in evil ways, opening our hearts and minds to things that we have no business opening them to, then it is clearly wrong.  If it has no redeeming value, but exposes us to much that is not, why would we spend time with our one and only life on such things?  Which means this is a deeply spiritual issue that must be resolved by each person individually through prayer and reflection, and often on a case-by-case basis. 

I have often felt the Holy Spirit prompt me, when wanting to watch something on TV, through Netflix or in a theater, whether my purpose was worthwhile or wicked.  What is my heart's intent?  That is, without a doubt, one of the most revealing of questions.  We have a choice to make about what we take into our hearts and minds.  Often that choice depends less on a hard and fast biblical rule than it does our life of prayer, and our sense of whether viewing something will help us speak the Kingdom of God into the world.  And there is much I watch, and read, and listen to, for that very reason - it helps me speak into the world for the sake of the Kingdom.

But there is a second biblical idea, found in the writings of the apostle Paul in the book of Philippians:  "...this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best" (Philippians 1:9-10, NIV). 

The Bible would encourage us to think carefully and deeply about whatever it is that we do end up watching.  Far too often we simply allow ourselves to absorb media messages without thought, much less critique.  We are intellectually and spiritually passive when we should be intensely active.  In talking with a group of women about the movie He's Just Not That into You, we agreed it was cute.  But then I pressed them on the story, which was deeply vacuous.  Not a single decision by a major character was satisfying, much less God-honoring.  Upon reflection, they agreed.  But that is the key - to learn to discern.  This is why watching something for mere entertainment is never a reason to watch; media always affects, always presents, always engages; which means we must never be passive in our engagement.  And this goes beyond film; there is as much rank evil in a 90-second commercial break during a football game as there is in the latest Seth Rogen farce.  But do we see it?

So what not to watch?  We are told to set no worthless thing before our eyes; the larger question is whether we know what is truly worthless.


Sources

John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, Vol. IV (Baker Books), p. 89.

Leslie C. Allen, Word Biblical Commentary, Psalms 101-150 (v. 21), p. 1.

The Expositor's Bible Commentary, "Psalms," p. 745.

Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Old Testament VIII, p. 206.

Christopher Hart, "What DOES it take for a film to get banned these days," MailOnline, 20th July 2009, www.dailymail.co.uk.  Direct link (if still active):  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1200742/CHRISTOPHER-HART-What-DOES-film-banned-days.html

According to data just released by LifeWay Research, Southern Baptist membership will fall nearly 50 percent by 2050 unless the aging denomination reverses a 50-year trend and does more to reach out to young adults.  According to Ed Stetzer, director of LifeWay Research, "The difference in the mean age of Southern Baptists versus the U.S. population shows SBC members older, especially since 1993."

This is but the latest in a long litany of lament over the aging of the church.  Some blame a secular society; some blame traditional approaches to ministry; some blame new forms of individualism that lead Christian young adults away from institutions in general.

Can someone who has pastored for over twenty years offer something from the trenches?

The natural flow of the church is to skew old.  Left to itself, that is what it will do.  It will age.  You take your hand off of that wheel, and that is what will happen.  I know of one large, innovative church that is well-known in leadership circles that watched its median age from its youthful beginnings from the seventies go from the twenties, to the thirties, to the forties, to the…well, you get the point.  Every decade, the people got, on average, a decade older.  And they were a church known for ongoing innovation!

But it wasn't innovation that was the problem.

I had a wake-up call on this a few years ago.  I was asked to speak at one of the largest and fastest-growing churches in the United States, made up almost entirely of twentysomethings - NewSpring Church in Anderson, South Carolina.  The pastor, Perry Noble, is a former student of mine.  He tells people I gave him the kick in the pants he needed to start a church.  I think he just needs someone to blame.

But I will never forget standing with Perry, waiting to speak, and seeing the band that took the stage, and the people who filled the seats.  Instantly it hit me:  "Meck has become old."  That was hard to think, because we were known in our early years as being the "young" church, the "hip" church, the "cutting-edge" church.

Now I was watching another church hand me my lunch.

I went back to my church the next weekend, and it was as if God wanted to hammer it home.  Though it was a bit of a fluke, every person on stage that weekend was in their forties, save two - they were in their fifties.  I was the youngest person on the stage that day, and I'm no spring chicken. The irony is that we were still fairly young as a church - mostly folks in their thirties.

Right then and there I made a vow:  we will not grow old!  If the natural flow of the church is to skew older, then that means the leadership of the church has to invest a disproportionate amount of energy and intentionality in growing younger.  Much like the natural flow of the church is also to turn inward, and demands a disproportionate amount of energy to stay outward-focused.  I had always known that one; it was the skewing younger one that crept up on me.

Mecklenburg Community Church is now younger than it has ever been in its entire existence, growing faster than it has ever grown, and reaching more unchurched people than ever before. 

And one of the big reasons was the commitment to stay forever young.

So what did we do?  There are three headlines:

1.    To attract young adults, you have to hire young adults.  It seems simple enough, but it's often overlooked.  Very few churches intentionally hire people in their twenties.  But without twenty-something staff, you are cut-off from that generation's culture.  And not just in terms of contemporary culture, but in terms of technology, which these days is heavily oriented toward new forms of communication.  So if you don't know a tweet from a text, or the Ting-Tings from the Kings of Leon, then you need to hire some folks who do.

2.    To attract young adults, you have to platform young adults.  One of the unwritten laws of the church is this:  who you platform is who you will attract.  It's true.  It doesn't matter whether you want it to be true or not, it simply is.  If you want a church of forty-somethings, then be sure to litter your stage with that age-group.  But don't then sit back and wonder where all the young people are. 

Now, before you get all multi-generational on me, here's another unwritten law:  while you can platform older folk and repel young adults, you can platform young adults and still attract older folk.  Lots of them.  A twenty-something person is not attracted to a fifty-year-old man singing a David Crowder Band song.  But a fifty-year-old man is often attracted to a youthful, energetic twenty-something person who is singing that song.  And the twenty-something person enjoys having the fifty-year old man listening - and in his life.  The stage does not have to be entirely young, by any means, nor necessarily should it - but remember the law:  who you platform is who you will attract, whether young or old, white or black, male or female.

3.    To attract young adults, you have to acknowledge young adults.  To acknowledge a young person is to acknowledge their world, their sensibilities, their technology, their vocabulary, their tastes, their priorities, and their questions.  Notice I did not say "cater" to such things, only to acknowledge them.  A church that does nothing but speak to young adults is a glorified youth group, and not the vision of the new community detailed in the New Testament.  But they should be acknowledged.  So when using illustrations, don't overlook the world of iPhones and Twitter, texting and Facebook.  Become familiar with musical groups such as Coldplay and the Black Eyed Peas.  And by all means, embrace the technology of the next generation as it is fast becoming the technology for us all.  For example, I speak quite often on college campuses, and often in a forum of dialogue.  Recently, I've been doing it with technology that allows them to text me their question in the auditorium in which we are meeting, which is then thrown up on a screen.  Why?  It's what they are most comfortable doing.  And yes, it gains a certain degree of credibility in their eyes. 

Yes, a person who is fifty should come and find points of connection at your church. 

But that's not the problem.  It's the twenty-somethings that aren't.

Don't believe me? 

Ask a Southern Baptist. 

Sources

"Southern Baptists face further decline without renewed evangelism emphasis," Florida Baptist Witness, July 30, 2009, at http://www.floridabaptistwitness.com/10578.article

The CNN program "Crossfire," which boasted being about "left versus right, black versus white, paper versus plastic, the Red Sox against the Yankees," had daringly invited comedian Jon Stewart on to the show after Stewart had criticized them for their acerbic banter.  Each week, two guests espousing opposing views would be brought on to duke it out, and Stewart had noted the toxic fumes.  Hoping, no doubt, for more sparks to fly, Stewart disarmed the guests with words they did not expect:

"Why do we have to fight?"
   
It was a good question.  So good that shortly thereafter, the show was cancelled due to declining ratings, not altogether separate from repeated airings of Stewart's appearance on YouTube.

So why do we have to fight?

Sociologist Deborah Tannen writes that we live in an "argument culture."  Her observation is that we no longer dialogue with each other, contending that there has been a system-wide relational breakdown in our culture.  It is as if we approach everything with a warlike mentality so we end up looking at the world - and people - in an adversarial frame of mind. 

And Christians seem to be leading the way.

An editorial in Christianity Today discussed how no attribute of civilized life seems more under attack than civility.  The author, David Aikman, noted the extent to which certain Christians have turned themselves into the

"self appointed attack dogs of Christendom.  They seem determined to savage not only opponents of Christianity, but also fellow believers of whose doctrinal positions they disapprove.  A troll through the Internet reveals websites so drenched in sarcasm and animosity than an agnostic, or a follower of another faith tradition interested in what it means to become a Christian, might be permanently disillusioned."

I recently read of a large church that made the news due to a problem with a persistently caustic blogger.  A former member, he had become disgruntled over various actions of the senior pastor, and became further incensed that said pastor maintained the backing of the leadership.  With nowhere to go with his animus, and no means to lobby for his cause, he started an anonymous blog in order to wage a one-person campaign of bitterness.  It quickly disintegrated on both side to such a degree that the church complained to the police, who investigated and discovered the identity of the blogger, and now suits and countersuits are flying freely.

What a God-forsaken mess.

But the article had links, which led to other links, and before I knew it, I found myself exposed in a way I had never imagined possible to the sordid world of the bitter-blog, meaning blogs that exist for no other reason than to attack a particular Christian leader, church, or ministry.  I found that virtually ever senior pastor of a megachurch has one, intent on causing dissension and disunity and as much disaffection as possible.

Sadly, this is not new for evangelicalism.  I once read of a school president, who was also an evangelist, who made it clear that if any faculty or student attended a certain fellow evangelist's crusade, they would be fired or expelled.  If they wanted to pray for the evangelist, he suggested the following words:

"Dear Lord, bless the man who leads Christian people into disobeying the word of God, who prepares the way for Antichrist by building the apostate church and turning his so-called converts over to infidels and unbelieving preachers.  Bless the man who flatters the Pope and defers to the purple and scarlet-clothed Antichrist who heads the church that the word of God describes as the old whore of Babylon.

So much for Bob Jones, Sr., and his relationship with Billy Graham.  I am sure Bob Jones, Sr., was a good and Godly man in many ways.  Just not in this way.  But while this sentiment has been brewing for some time, what is new is the increasingly public nature of our vitriol, its widespread dissemination through the internet, and our growing comfort with its presence.  As Francis Schaeffer presciently observed toward the end of his life, it has almost become a matter of personal privilege:

"We rush in, being very, very pleased, it would seem at times, to find other men's mistakes. We build ourselves up by tearing other men down... we love the smell of blood, the smell of the arena, the smell of the bullfight..."

We may be pleased, but we are not being Christian.

In the gospel of John we have the poignant final words and prayers of Jesus to His disciples before the cross.  It is considered by many to be among the most moving sections of the New Testament.  What occupied Jesus the moments before His atoning death for the sins of the world?  Not surprisingly, His concern was that the world would recognize His gift.  And how would that happen?  Christ's torrent of prayer and pleading begins and ends with a passionate call for unity among those who claim His name.  The observable love between those who called themselves His followers was everything.  Why?  Jesus said it would be this unity, and this unity alone, which would arrest the world's attention and confirm that He was from the Father.

As has often been pointed out, when the Bible talks about such loving unity, it doesn't mean uniformity, which is everyone looking and thinking alike.  And the biblical idea is certainly not to be confused with unanimity, which is complete agreement about every petty issue across the board.  By unity, the Bible means first and foremost a oneness of heart - a relational unity.  Being kind to one another, gracious to one another, forgiving of one another - not assuming the worst, shooting the wounded, or being quick to be suspicious.  Biblical unity is about working through conflicts, avoiding slander and gossip, and being generous in spirit.

And this unity matters - so much so that the Bible reserves some of its harshest words of discipline for those who sin against it.  "Warn a divisive person once, and then warn him a second time.  After that, have nothing to do with him," wrote the apostle Paul to Titus (Titus 3:10, NIV). 

Many long to return to the growth and vibrancy of the early church, and well they should - but we often mistake it's dynamic.  As Tertullian noted, the awed pagan reaction to the Christian communal life was, "See how they love one another."

Such love arrested the attention of the world.  And it should have - it is, after all, the mark of a Christian.

Sources:

Too see Stewart's appearance on Crossfire: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE

"Rudeness, threats make the Web a cruel world," Janet Kornblum, USA Today, Tuesday, July 31, 2007, p. 1A and 2A.

Peter Wood, A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now (New York: Encounter Books, 2006).

On Billy Graham and Bob Jones, Sr., see William Martin, A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story (New York: William Morrow, 1991), p. 318.

Francis Schaeffer, The Mark of a Christian.

The Apology of Tertullian, AD 197.

Original publication date: August 19, 2009

“Let us pray, drum and YouTube.”

So went the recent headline in the London Telegraph.

According to Religious Affairs Correspondent Jonathan Wynne-Jones, “Christian services that feature DJs, songs by the Irish band U2 and prayers for the chief executives of Google and Wal-Mart are being promoted by the Church of England.”  Initiated by Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to appeal to the younger generation, the ideas aim to increase church attendance with more relevant and exciting services.

With only 7% of the country “churched,” one can appreciate the attempt.

One Holy Communion service begins with the congregation being shown a video clip from YouTube about a United Nations anti-poverty campaign.  Once worshippers are told that “our planet is messed up” and that “things are not right,” they are encouraged to approach the altar and rub sea salt on their fingers to represent tears before walking around and meditating at eight “prayer stations” representing themes such as “gender equality” and “environmental sustainability.”

A psalm is recited in “beat poetry” style, accompanied by African Djembe drums, as prayers are said “for the corporate world, for influential CEOs who oversee billion-dollar industries.”  Because of their “commitments to justice,” John Chambers of Cisco Systems, Bill Gates of Microsoft, Eric Schmidt of Google, and H. Lee Scott, Jr., of Wal-Mart are included.

There are “U2charists” which are services in which the congregation receives communion but sings the songs of U2 instead of hymns, including Mysterious Ways, One, and I Still haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.

There is also an event called “Transcendence” in which traditional Latin chant is set by DJs to hip hop or ambient dance music.

Before you assess such efforts on the grounds of whether they are walking across a needed bridge into a fallen culture, or stepping off a cliff into cultural compromise, consider making your assessment from a different angle.

Does the Church of England know why they are doing these things?

This is not only a pressing question for the Archbishop, but for every church leader as they grapple with mission, strategy, and method in light of reaching out to an increasingly post-Christian culture.  There is a myth that churches are successful because they do certain things; in truth, churches are successful because they know why they do certain things.  In other words, there is a clear missional target on the wall.

This is why the most effective churches lead the way for innovation, and those who borrow their innovations get frustrated when the church they copied drops what they copied for something even more innovative.   

This is far from original with me.

Bestselling business author Jim Collins, whose previous works Built to Last and Good to Great charted how the mighty rose, has recently come out with a book titled How the Mighty Fall.  What perplexed his naturally curious mind was a simple but profound question:  If you were in organizational decline, what would be the signs?  What made the question more pressing was Collin’s early sense, later confirmed through his research, that decline is analogous to a disease, perhaps like a cancer, that can grow on the inside while you still look strong and healthy on the outside.

He calls it “the silent creep of impending doom.”

One of the earliest signs is companies saying “We’re successful because we do these specific things,” as opposed to the more penetrating understanding and insight:  “We’re successful because we understand why we do these specific things and under what conditions they would not longer work.”

This is the foundation for any and all innovation; otherwise you are simply gathering an assortment of tactics independent of a mission.  Biblical fidelity is, hopefully, a given, but once you are confident you are working within those parameters, you must then determine why it is you do anything:  What is the foundational nature of your mission?  What are you trying to accomplish?  Who are you trying to reach?  

If you know why you are doing something, you know whether it is effective, and are quick to discard things that no longer work.  If you are attempting to evangelize the unchurched, you are not attracted to any and all innovation, or even innovation that may reflect the culture of the unchurched; instead, you are after innovation that is effective at evangelizing the unchurched.  

I have never experienced a “U2charist.”  I have no idea whether it is an effective bridge into the culture that presents the message of the sacrament in ways that transform lives through a fresh confrontation with the claims of Christ.  Or whether it is “pointless,” “shallow,” and “embarrassing” (as suggested by its critics).

But I do know that the answer for the Church of England, or any other church, is not simply the incorporation of the music of U2.

It is the Church of England, and any other church, knowing why they would be interested in music at all.  

Then we can determine whether it should be U2.

James Emery White

 
Sources

“Let us pray, drum and YouTube,” Jonathan Wynne-Jones, The Sunday Telegraph, June 14, 2009, p. 14.

Jim Collins, How the Mighty Fall (New York: Harper Collins, 2009).