Coolness and Christianity

I recently saw an article about how Abercrombie and Fitch specifically markets too cool people and away from those who are not cool.  In particular it does not stock clothing in XL or XXL sizes for women since by their logic "cool/hot" cannot exist in those sizes.  Men are allowed to be those sizes on the assumption that big athlete types might need larger sizes and we all know athletes are cool.  On the one hand it seems like marketing genius ... cool people don't want to wear the clothes that uncool people are wearing so find ways to make sure only cool people can buy your stuff.  It also seems a little flawed, after all, uncool people have money to burn too, and as we learned from the Dr. Seuss classic about the Snitches, selling coolness to the uncool is a great way to make a quick buck.

Coolness can rear its head in the church as well.  The pressure to be cool, and to market to the cool kids of the world, has grown in the last few years as the overall decline of the church, and particular churches such as The United Methodist Church, means that we are starting to feel a little anxious things and looking for ways to grow.  One of the obvious ways is to get more of those "cool" kids to come to worship.  Cool is currently being behind in UMC (and probably most church circles) as young adult (ideally of the married, with kids, and maybe a steady source of income type).  [Side bar ... I am aware I am trafficing in stereotypes and apologize, I think they reinforce my larger point even if they are far from being universally true]  In an effort to attract "cool" a lot of churches have tried to figure out what we need to do to be cool.  We have not yet resorted to the risque ads of A&F which is a good thing.  We have however tried to figure out if changing our worship styles, sights, sounds, and even smells (coffee in worship anyone?) would help in making us more cool and thus more appealing.  The customer is always right as I have often been reminded.

Where I think we fall off the rails on all of this is that following God has never really been about cool.  In fact many would argue that some of the coolest moments to follow the church were potential some of our darkest (think Constantine and suburban 1950's).  If we look at figures in the Bible we are generally struck with how uncool they were.  Noah as considered kinda crazy by his peers (perhaps rightly so), Moses was only used by God AFTER he was an outcast, a murder, and forced to resort to shepherding.  Abraham and his wife were ancient before they started a family and Sarah's days of tempting rival rulers were long behind her.  Even Jesus lived the height of uncool, hanging out with tax-collectors and others of questionable moral character rather than being a good religious leader and only associating with others of an appropriate peer group.

Maybe it could better be said that to be a faithful Christian is to be uncool, to risk our coolness for the sake of Christ.  After all, our main symbol, a cross was meant ultimately meant as a mockery, the worst and least cool way to die and yet that is what we claim for ourselves.  Maybe what we need to focus on in the church is not what we can be doing to be more cool but what we can be doing to be less cool ... and more Christlike.  It might not win us popularity, or more funds, or even more members ... but it would be faithful to God, and that has to count for something.