Re-vamping Old, Boring Churches

I recently heard about a pastor in New England who insists that the church can't be named "1st Baptist" any more, because it's not a relevant name to the community, and carries bad PR baggage. I wonder, does this fellow know how many enormous "1st Baptist of Wherevers" there are throughout America? He's also cancelled Sunday morning worship services for the summer. They're doing an evening service combined with fellowship activities, like a BBQ cook-out.

I think it's true that there are lots of people who would be prejudiced against any Baptist church, simply because so many Baptists have such a poor reputation for legalism and fighting. If calling my church "Daystar Community Church" removed a mental obstacle to someone visiting, I would do it, too. But it really depends on the perceptions of the community. There are as many different Baptist ministries as there are stars in the sky. They're not all KJV-waving Pharisees, to be sure!

There's a huge kaleidoscope of factors that play into a church's numerical expansion. If you don't provide life-changing preaching, and an atmosphere faith, godliness and love, then a dog-n-pony act won't work.

Does updating the music help? People do pick churches partly based on the music, and that's hard to predict, too. The traditional hymns are as much a mixed bag as the contemporary praise music, and some of the contemporary stuff is more Biblical than many hymns. I find many of the traditional hymns to be sappily sentimental, some of it distastefully romantic (In The Garden -- blecch), and the music sounds like you should be poling in a skiff wearing your straw hat with Aimee Lou, twenty-three-skiddo.

I would be interested to know if this aforementioned pastor made his philosophies and approach known to his new church when he candidated. If they called him already knowing what he was likely to do, that's one thing. If he sprang all this on them, that's another.

Question, though: Even though one might study the way this man is going about re-vamping what sounds like an old, dull ministry, is it right to object to the idea of re-booting a church so that it's more appealing to the community? I've known a lot of conservative churches that seem to go out of their way to deliberately contradict the tastes of the community. They are even proud of how peculiar, dull (they call it "reverential") and out-of-step they are.

I do not believe that trying to be appealing -- whether musically appealing, or locating the building so that it's more visible and accessible to cars, or even just giving the place a fresh coat of paint -- automatically makes you a sell-out.

I don't think there's anything admirable about deliberately defying community tastes, any more than it's wise to always follow them. It's like, if the community was full of 1st gen Japanese immigrants, and they love sushi and rice balls for meals, it's not a virtue to deliberately serve them hot dogs and mac-n-cheese and call that "not selling out to the culture".

And it's the same thing with music. If nearly everyone else but your little group of thirty hate the style of music you use in worship service, I think you have to ask yourself whether it matters to you. Are you proud that they hate it? Do you take it as a mark of superior sanctification that people won't come to your church because the music is so blah? If so, then I don't know where your head is at. You've abandoned the mission Christ gave us.