Real Evangelicals of Genius #2: Super Cool Youth Pastor Guy

For other posts in this series, click the label at the bottom of this post.

Note: I don't know if this guy is a youth pastor or not, as all the images I could find were real people, and I'd kind of feel like a jerk if I put someone's staff bio picture on my blog to make fun of them. Instead, this is a picture that made me laugh, from www.larknews.com, a very funny site you should check out sometime. I'd like to think he's a youth pastor, though.

Today we salute you, Mr. Super Cool Youth Pastor Guy. You know what it takes to reach the youth of America: a fo-hawk, some tight jeans, and a cool tat of some Greek word. You know better than to bring any of those lame "senior pastor" jokes into your sermons. No, your sermons are decked out with references to "The Hills," as you sip your triple venti latte and show YouTube clips to "illustrate spiritual truths," or to watch a skater fall on his man parts. The youth are the future of America, and they're not going to come to church if it's lame! Your totally rad (is that word still cool?) youth ministry is here to eradicate lameness, complete with haze machine and electric guitar worship solos. So here's to you, Mr. Guitar-Hero-Master-For-Jesus, because no one can relate to the immaturity of an adolescent quite like you.
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Perhaps I'm being harsh with Super Cool Youth Pastor Guy. I'm not trying to be, it's just that I find it funny sometimes how much like a high school kid a high school pastor can act. There's nothing inherently wrong with it, but I wonder what kind of implications lay behind the actions of many youth ministries around the country.

Let me first start out by saying how much I respect youth pastors. They're vitally necessary in most church models, and what they do can have an enormous positive impact. They're also frequently pressured to get as many kids in their youth ministry as possible, so even well intentioned youth pastors can be somewhat forced to tweak their presentation (and even content, at times) for the sake of being "relevant." So I understand where they're coming from. Plus, I know several guys that do it right. But that's not who this is about.

That said, I think "relevance" has become something of an idol in many churches today. We have to make church relevant to unbelievers so they'll come and hear our message. Without going too deep into why I see this as a potential problem, you can see that at some point this can have a spiral effect, until even the content of the gospel is altered in some (extreme) cases. Most of the time, though, our strive for relevance just sends subtle messages.

It seems that by catering to the pattern and the culture that the world sets, we set the church in competition to the world by trying to provide all it offers in addition to the spiritual side of things. Christianity then becomes somewhat of a "good deal." Perhaps you will see why I think this is incorrect. Following Christ is nothing short of a total renunciation of the world and its ways. It doesn't mean that we have to live like Quakers or something, but it does mean that the church is not the place for entertainment -- it is the place for the edification of the body and the teaching and preaching of the Word of God. It doesn't have to be boring. But if we're concerned that the only way our church members will sit through a service is if it has enough bells and whistles, then perhaps we have a larger problem than relevance. Perhaps the problem lies in the health of our congregation.

You can see how this larger issue relates to Super Cool Youth Pastor Guy, but specifically my question for him is this: does a high school kid need a peer he can relate to a model he can look up to in his youth pastor? No, they're not necessarily mutually exclusive, but I can't help but wonder if we're out of balance here.