Earlier today, someone pointed me towards this New York Times review of the current Broadway revival of Godspell.  If you’re not familiar with the concept, suffice it to say that Godspell was the original hippie attempt to present Christianity in an “edgy” and cool way, most notably by presenting Jesus in bozo-the-clown style garb:

What’s that you say?  Jesus dressed as a clown doesn’t strike you as particularly edgy or cool anymore?  That’s precisely the point the review makes.  For the reviewer, Godspell did such an effective job capitalizing on what was trendy in its day that it significantly impacted contemporary churches.  While that might seem like a good thing., the reviewer closes with the comment that watching this review of Gospel now just “felt like going to church.”

I can’t imagine being compared to church was a compliment for the show.  And it is precisely those churches which have bought into the attempt to be “cool” by banking on cultural trends like those originally inspired by Godspell which the reviewer seems to find most tried and boring.

This got me thinking about what the church’s relationship with “cool” ought to be.  We all know the first rule of being cool is that you can’t try to be cool.  Yet, it seems like the church tries over and over again to jump onto the “cool” bandwagon.  The humorous (and occasionally pathetic) results have been chronicled in blogs such as “Stuff Christians Like” and “Stuff Christian Culture Likes” (both take offs from the not at all church-related but highly entertaining “Stuff White People Like”).  The more the church tries to be hip, relevant, and cool, the more the church comes off as the nerdy kid at the high school dance who’s just trying too hard.

So what are we to do?  If the blogs I just mentioned highlight the dangers ecclesial attempts at cool, “Stuff Fundies Like” shows the dark side of a church refusing any influence by cultural trends.  What the fundies and the hipster Christians share is fear.  The fundies fear becoming tainted by anything less than 100% holy, and so they shun change or progress in all its forms.  Like the high school nerd, the hipster churches fear rejection, and try (at times) too hard to fit in to the going trends.  In doing so, they inevitably sacrifice some of their dignity.  I wonder what would happen if we were to accept that the church just wasn’t going to be “cool.” There will always be an element of the church that does—and should—go against the consumerist, self-centered, shallow trends of our culture.  Maybe it’s ok not to be cool.

When I think about myself as a teenager, I was certainly not cool—braces, bushy hair, bad t-shirts featuring more Disney characters than I should admit on a public forum such as this.  But I can never remember being made fun of at all.  I had my things—debate, drama, academics.  I did what I did extremely well.  And I always felt like I had a certain respect from the cool kids because of my own self-confidence.  I was never trying to be something I was not.  And the cool kids were always willing to talk to me in class and treat me like a decent human being (mostly because they were always hoping I’d help them with their homework).

Perhaps as a church, it’s time for us to realize that we have something of great substance—the Gospel, the story of God and God’s love for the world.  We might get farther and earn more respect from the cool kids in the world if we focus on being who we are and proclaiming those eternal truths, not on being hip.