Traveling back in time...
| Everything now is vintage. Vintage clothing, vintage boutiques where you can get vintage furniture and vintage jewlery. Stores like Urban Outfitters and Anthoropologie are thriving on re-inventing decades past. Is it that we are intrigued by vestiges of days gone by? Do we find comfort in relics of a different time? I don't really know when the phenomenon began. Even though I was in middle school or younger when the Seattle grunge rock scene emerged - some of this movement was visible there. A group of depressed indie-rockers expressed the sentiments of many who were frustrated with society. Michael Bolton and his mullet was replaced with darker music brought to us by Nirvana, Soundgarden, Soul Asylum and others. The music articulated desire, need and the search for deeper meaning. I wonder if the whole vintage movement doesn't fit into the same family. In our churches, much of the last 10 years has been filled with feel-good, seeker-sensitive psychology that doesn't offend, doesn't call for repentance, doesn't really do anything. I don't know what I think about the emerging church movement - mainly because so much of its theology is toilet water - but I do see a return to the archaic, to vintage Christianity that is free from pretension. That, I love. When I was first introduced to the Acts29 church planting ministry, my first thought was - "what does Acts 29 say?" Of course, it almost immediately hit me - we are Acts 29. That is a beautiful picture to me. And of course we can't reinvent the early church - but there was something so simple and touching about the faith of those believers. They possessed something I don't have. There was something so amazing about the Reformers, hundreds of years later, that is missing from my life. Their resolve and commitment to God and His Word seems to be almost absent anymore. I don't know what the answer is. But I know that high-tech, overproduced Christianity isn't appealing to the masses. What was offered to society in the New Testament however, is. What a strange paradox. Whether this whole vintage movement is just a fad or what, I don't know. But at least in my life, I hope what is old, will become new again. Christie |
posted by Anonymous