To comfort or to challenge?

I've heard many professors say that you need to do theology with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other - meaning, of course, that we need to keep theology grounded in the reality around us, that we need to understand both how God has acted in the past and how God continues to act in our world today. Theology and "real life" need to question and challenge each other; otherwise we run the risk of constructing a lovely theoretical system that has no practical application.

Last week the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's Faith + Values section ran a cover story entitled "Rock of [younger] ages" which described the growing phenomenon of new churches aimed specifically at the under-35 set. While most of this article was hardly news to me, I was surprised to read that such churches are springing up in the Twin Cities area at the rate of about one per month. Here's a quick synopsis of the journalist's take on these "unchurchy" churches:

• They don't use the word "church" in their name, in an effort to distance themselves from the traditional images of church that young people may have.
• They can generally be described as "low church" - very little ritual.
• Multimedia (video and music) are a primary means of communicating the message.
• Informality reigns supreme, both in the casual dress of the worshippers and the worship space itself (often set in an auditorium or school cafeteria).
• Relevant, practical, and useful are the popular buzz words used by young adults to describe their attraction to the "non-church" churches. 

While I read this article, my other hand held Richard Viladesau's Theology and the Arts, a book I'm reading for my course in Theological Aesthetics. Viladesau argues that since aesthetic experience is a central means for humans to access beauty and truth, art is central to theology. Music, the visual arts, even liturgical worship are human mediations that can either reveal or inhibit divine revelation. Therefore we need to develop a deeper sense of appreciation for beauty and the arts so that we can more fully apprehend God's revelation to us. 

Viladesau has a wonderful phrase about the need for "conversion from our egotism." Liturgical worship must not simply stroke our egos and feed our desires - it must also challenge us so that we can love wider and deeper. It must pull us out of ourselves, to broaden our worldview so that we can love that which is "other." Worship must help us to move from our particular loves and preferences into compassion, solidarity, service, truly agapic love.

So I'm always ambivalent, perhaps even troubled, when I hear about this growing tendency of churches toward "relevance" as if it were the Christian ideal. Jesus was not primarily concerned with marketing his message in attractive ways or winning lots of friends - his way led to the cross, to suffering, to unpopularity because it challenged the status quo and made people rethink what it meant to love God and neighbor. I understand the strong desire to draw people into our churches, especially the younger generations that every church seems "out to get" these days. Evangelization does call us to take the Gospel to those who have not heard it and to speak it in their language. But we can't simply allow people to remain where they are - otherwise I believe our efforts to evangelize have failed. The Christian message demands "conversion from our egotism." Preaching the Gospel must help us to see our own need to grow, our own sinfulness, or else it can easily become a temptation to complacency or self-righteousness.

Viladesau argues for the need for conversion in aesthetic taste - that, for example, liturgical music cannot simply be limited to what a particular group finds appealing. Our common worship of God through music and song must connect us to a wider community and a larger reality than our own lives. If I come to church on Sunday and all I hear is music that sounds just like what comes out of my iPod or the car radio, am I ever challenged to think about the world, myself, or God in a different way? When churches simply give up on trying to invite young adults into their more traditional forms of worship and look to "young adult services" as the answer, are they ultimately doing young people a disservice by not integrating them into the life of the larger community?

It's a fine line to walk. We want to gather people in, but we also want to remain true to the traditions of our faith. And since questions of worship style and liturgical music are often the battleground for these battles of theology and pastoral approach, I think we can't afford to gloss over the essential connections between how we worship, what we believe, and ultimately how we live as a result.