How do sell copies of a dying medium? Put a hipster looking Jesus on the cover. It’s kind of interesting… the whole, “What if God was a dude?” routine. Hipster, yeah, it has been done before and we get it. Not really surprising.
What is more shocking is that Newsweek thinks Jesus is an Anglo-Saxon looking dude who doesn’t like buttons but snaps on his shirt. The Atlantic thinks he looks more like an Urban Outfitters Jesus. Give the cover a look and you decide which one it is:
The cover article is by Andrew Sullivan and he writes of the decline of Christianity. It takes him about 500 words to get to the point: Christianity is in crisis. I’m not troubled by the inaccurate depiction of Jesus or that Sullivan tells us what we already know about Christianity, but that he makes a bold statement without follow through. The article accurately describes the crisis but without remedy. Sullivan goes into great detail about how Thomas Jefferson and his edited ‘Bible’ sought to make faith palatable and how that’s supposed to correlate to solving the crisis.
The article really does not contribute anything to discussion of how to concretely connect Christianity to post-moderns or to enact reform. Sullivan writes, Continue Reading…
What’s become evident is how many people have been hurt by religion/church. We wondered, “What if there were unapologetic monks who actually stood up to religious bullies? And what if we threw in a bit of ‘snark’ just to make it fun and interesting?”
It would seem that we are still a religious nation, but obviously church leaders want to know how many of those 90 plus percent are Christian. Logically, many ask the question, “If we are such a God-believing country, then why is church attendance so low?”
Is 
A recent 
Several years ago, I read a dramatic billboard sign that compelled the reader to think about Satan. The billboard read:
For years we have heard reports and studies tracking how churches are dying and God is slowly “disappearing” from Europe. 
Is celebrating a holiday that honors ghouls, demons, ghosts, and everything that goes bump in the night dangerous or even evil?
As you can see, it looks more like a market than a church. Such a welcoming property and building. The church is only 20 years old and Holly is the founding pastor. Below, Holly is standing and we are meeting in the sanctuary. I loved this sanctuary. The building is only about 12 years old.
Holly comes out of the Southern Baptist tradition, but was ordained in the Disciples of Christ church. The sanctuary is welcoming and seating is structured in a “U”. Holly’s take on leadership was interesting. She talked about making mistakes, as all pastors do, but learning from them. She was honest and candid about her leadership and ministry.
