Christianity has evolved in various ways since it began two-thousand years ago- sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad. In its purest form, the message of Christianity never changes, only the method in which the message is transferred. The first decade of this new millennium was no exception as the Church witnessed many monumental shifts in its culture.

The Emerging Church,

As the decade began, many young Christians in the post-modern world started to feel disenfranchised by the Modern American Evangelical Church Culture and its penchant for consumerism.
So in response, there was a strong push to get back to the roots of New Testament Christianity. This was done somewhat successfully as these young progressive Christians turned their attention towards authentic community, responsible stewardship of resources, compassion and justice for the poor and oppressed, and the importance of the words of Jesus.
But the ‘hard to define’ movement became more known for their candles, prayer labyrinths, and doctrinally vague leaders prone to relativism than their desire to grow closer to Christ; and has now been confusingly divided into two classifications: The Emerging Church, and the Emergent Church. It will be interesting to see what the new decade has in store for this mysterious trend in Christianity.

Multisite Church,

One surprisingly successful and pleasant trend of the 2000’s in the church world was the emergence of Multisite Churches.
As churches began to grow and were hungry to reach others for Christ, instead of launching large giving campaigns and erecting enormous fortune-costing buildings that could seat thousands of people only to find out that they would have to add more services or build larger buildings as they continued to grow, they began to open up medium sized campuses all over the metro areas where their ministries were based.
This has enabled churches to reach more people in more areas of their cities for less money. They reach more people because it’s easier for people to invite their friends to church if the church is in their own neighborhood, and the church can do that in multiple neighborhoods at the same time. It’s cheaper because they can rent a facility on Sundays to hold their worship gatherings in various neighborhoods or can erect many smaller buildings on smaller pieces of property versus a giant building on a humongous piece of property; and can centralize their leadership and administration in one location.
Technology has allowed this to be possible in recent years. One pastor can deliver one message to multiple campuses and tens of thousands of people at one time through relatively cheap satellite or internet broadcasting. Or the pastor’s message during the church’s first Saturday evening service can be recorded and then shown to the following services during the same weekend at several locations. Throw in a local campus pastor to shepherd the people and a live campus worship band and you have yourself an authentic church service. And the strange thing is, studies show that the congregations prefer to watch their pastor via video versus in person.

Hipster Pastors,

Another interesting trend in Christianity during the past decade was the emergence of Hipster Pastors. In the past pastors were expected to dress formally wherever they went so that they would be distinguished from the rest of the world. Inevitably this caused people to see pastors as individuals who were elevated above the rest of society and, subsequently, they became totally unrelatable and irrelevant to the very people they were trying to reach out to.
So a few progressive leaders across the Evangelical world starting dressing down, and starting dressing hip so that they would be seen as culturally progressive within their unchristian communities in order to be relatable and relevant to the new world they now found themselves in.
Pastors like Rob Bell, Mark Driscoll, Ed Young, and Steven Furtick have become almost as well known for their urban-progressive-yet-casual-fashion-sense as they have their theology.
And now on Sunday mornings all across America you are more likely to see your pastors wearing jeans, untucked shirts, bulky glasses, tight t-shirts, fashion-forward boots, and even flip flops than polyester suits, ties, sweater vests, and nicely polished oxfords.

A Look Ahead:

While this has been merely a brief snapshot of the past decade, it will be fascinating to see what the teenage years of the New Millennium will have in store.
Here’s to hoping for less plastic ‘spinner’ hubcaps, Facebook Farmville requests, and guys wearing pink shirts with popped collars; and more awesome ‘As Seen On TV’ products like the Snuggie and the ShamWow, Fail Blog YouTube Videos, and of course- world peace.
“Peace Out!”- Another expression I hope we can leave in the past!

Television,

During the 2000’s, Survivor started a Reality TV revolution. It spurred on countless other Reality Shows with topics ranging from ‘Home Remodeling’ to’ Talent Shows’, from ‘Normal People Living in a Big House’ to ‘Dating Shows’, and from ‘Plastic Surgery’ to ‘Dumb Celebrities Living in Small Town America’.
The 2000’s saw the complete and total destruction of MTV as it transitioned from being a cool channel that showed music videos all the time, into being a channel that showed trashy Reality TV about teens living very abnormally wealthy lives and grown men hitting each other in the crotch with hockey sticks- on purpose.
But there were some amazing things that happened to television in the 2000’s: flat screen TVs and the DVR.
Big screens became affordable, packed amazing high definition pictures, and could now easily be hung on the wall as their weight radically decreased.
And no longer would you be forced to watch commercials or be a slave to the time slot your show was on. All you now have to do is tell your cable box to record the shows of your choice, watch them on your schedule, and fast forward through all the Snuggie commercials.

Celebrity,

The 2000’s were a decade of celebrity obsession. The masses waited with baited breath to find out the status of Brad and Jennifer, Brad and Angelina, Nick and Jessica, and John and Kate. It was big news when a young starlet thought that ‘Chicken of the Sea’ was chicken, not tuna. And everyone stood in awe whenever a celebrity came out of the closet. But probably the most tragic example of America’s celebrity worship over the past decade was the rise and fall, and rise again of Brittany Spears.

Music,

This past decade saw the total evolution of the music industry as people stopped buying CDs and starting listening to music on the mega successful iPod. The iPod hands-down was THE gadget of the decade. This meant complete acceptance of illegally downloading music instead of paying for it at all. And now instead of relying on millions of dollars in revenue from record sales, artists have to be creative in their money making, heavily relying on concert ticket and merchandise sales in order to make a buck.
And sadly, an overall snapshot of the world of music during the 2000’s cannot be given without mentioning the death of the music biggest superstar Michael Jackson.

Film,

Batman movies are cool again- ‘nough said.

One thing became apparent quickly in the new Millennium; Green was the new Black.
Now saving the environment, once reserved for liberal hemp-wearing hippies in towns like Eugene and Berkley, was hip!
Words like ‘Carbon Footprint’, ‘Global Warming’, Eco-Friendly’, ‘Clean-Energy’, ‘Bio Diesel’, and ‘Hybrid Car’ became as common as reruns of the Fresh Prince of Bell Air on Nick at Nite. And Al Gore, who once was seen as the boring robotic Vice President for Bill Clinton, was now the global superstar for environmentalism.

As the decade and the millennium began, the economy was soaring high off of the last remnants of the dot-com boom. And as people were freely spending money, banks were freely lending it without doing their homework to make sure that it could actually be paid back.
Because people were borrowing so much money so freely, they were investing in real estate like never before- buying big houses that only a decade earlier they would not have been able to buy. And the prices of homes sky-rocketed.
And as the decade drew to a close, people’s interest rates on their loans rose along with the prices of the homes. People, who were barely scraping by with lower interest rates, could no longer afford their mortgages. House were in foreclosure like never before, property values began to take a nose dive, the stock market plummeted, employers laid off record numbers of employees, and before we knew it we were in a full-on recession.

One of the most notable technological and social changes that took place during the past decade was the ways in which we communicate.

Texting,

The decade started with almost every adult in the nation owning a mobile phone, and people talked on them proudly- some even sporting new high tech ‘secret service’ish’ headsets to gloat in their new self-found importance.
But almost overnight text messaging became THE way for young people (specifically) to communicate. No longer would you have to have obligatory small talk with someone when you wanted to tell them what time you would be home for dinner. Now you could simply type a short response and have it sent in no time and get back to playing that critically important video game without ever having to hear the sound of a human voice.
Texting has fundamentally changed the way we talk and type. Abbreviation has become the new grammatical norm; as we regularly use phrases such as, “LOL, WTH?, TTYL, BFF, and OMG” in order to spend even less valuable time actually communicating with someone.

Social Networking,

About midway through the decade a new behemoth of communication broke onto the global scene: Social Networking!
Almost immediately, two websites emerged as THE way to connect with friends old and new on the worldwide web: MySpace and Facebook. You no longer needed to actually communicate with your friends, now all you have to do is check their status updates to see what they’ve been up to. Wanting to meet your best friend’s new girlfriend, but don’t have the time? No worries, all you have to do is send them a friend request and check out a few pics and your good.
Facebook and MySpace make things like keeping up with long-lost high school friends, and annoying relatives, seamless and instantaneous.
Throw in Twitter to the mix, with its on-the-fly microblogging that simultaneously updates your Facebook status, and you have a system that in less than five years has revolutionized the way we connect and communicate with others. And there’s only room for this new medium to grow and evolve.
With all seriousness though, Texting and Social Networking can be used to keep in contact with more people, more often, in less time. My only fear is that, if we are not careful, real face to face intimate relationships will suffer and turn into mere virtual connections.

September 11th:

THE definitive event of the 2000’s was, without question, the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001. This horrific event will forever be seared into the consciousness of the American people who woke up that fateful morning to see the world changing in front of their eyes.
That day has caused a roller coaster of emotional, political, and societal ups and downs ever since: the nation was united in mourning and resolve; the nation became divided as it began to look within its own borders for sources of terrorism seeded from overseas; wars began and many of our young men were sent abroad who would never again come home, our nation agreed and disagreed on the validity of these wars, and security was tightened up in ways never seen before in everything from sporting events to air travel.

For the last several weeks I have been eagerly awaiting the premier of “V” – a new TV series on ABC.

The show highlights how the world would react if a technologically superior race of human-like benevolent aliens suddenly showed up on our front door step asking for water in exchange for advanced technology.

The show’s premiere particularly delved into how Christianity would handle the situation; and it did so quite well. Originally the world turned to the Church to see how it would respond to the situation. But as the aliens began to perform miracles that before only God could preform, people’s devotion starting turning towards the aliens and their promise of hope in a new world and away from the devotion and worship to God. The aliens set themselves up to be saviors in a broken world. It was a fine metaphorical expose on culture, religion, and politics in modern day America.

The Bible said such things would happen (minus the aliens) and to an extent they already have several times throughout history. So, while this is a weird topic, it leads to a good question. How should (and would) the Church respond if a false savior showed up offering breakthrough and hope to us in such a time as this?

10 Great Idaes for the Recession

So the economy is not in the best shape. Ok, maybe that’s a major understatement! As far as money goes, things are bad. Most economists believe that this is the worst shape that the economy has been in since the Great Depression.

Words like stimulus, recovery, and bailout have taken on new meanings and have made their way to the forefront of our collective consciousness.

And while I could be writing an article explaining the spiritual and sub sequential theological reasoning for our current recession, or writing an article to give people who are faced with gut-wrenching financial decisions encouragement and hope; instead I will take this time to draw your attention to things you can be doing, and spending your limited income on- here in the heart of the Mid Willamette Valley- during these tough economic times:

1. Looking to get away to your favorite Disney theme park this summer, but your finances simply won’t allow it? No need to worry, there is a local-cheaper alternative:

The Enchanted Forest- It’s only a few miles South of Salem on I-5 so there’s no need to book an expensive plane ticket or hotel room. And for only about $100, you and your entire family can have a great time! At the Enchanted Forest, in only one day, you can visit the Snow White’s Seven Dwarves’ Mine, plummet down a log plume, catch a hilariously cheesy play, and witness one of the most spell-binding water shows this side of Vegas- plus much more! For more information visit www.enchantedforest.com.

2. Love going out to dinner with your significant other to that special place where the waiter with the fake accent knows you by name, but can’t afford to go anymore? Don’t stress, there is a cost-effective alternative:

Taco Bell- Offering nearly 10 local locations to serve you, wonderfully delicious fast food, an extraordinarily low priced menu, and a tacky-early-nineties Southwestern motif- there’s never been a better time to cross the border! Not romantic enough for you? Bring your own candle and a vase filled with stolen- I mean handpicked flowers to add to the table and you’ll have your lady swooning in no time at all! www.tacobell.com

3. Family can’t afford to go on your annual week-long cruise through the Mexican Riviera any longer? No need to fear; you can set sail right here in our own back yard for a fraction of the price- and time:

The Willamette Queen- Your historical desire to be Roll’n on the River can be fulfilled in our very own Willamette River. The Willamette Queen departs daily from its port at The River Front Park for a variety of river cruises including sightseeing and lunch excursions. You may not see pristine blue waters and dolphins, but you can enjoy the unique wildlife of Western Oregon and the hospitality of the boat’s captain Richard Chesbrough. www.willamettequeen.com

4. Using your mobile phone for texting is fun and convenient, but in these hard times, texting can become an unnecessary luxury with expensive charges of $.05- $.10 per message. There is, however, a revolutionary cost-effective alternative to constant texting:

Talking- Who knew that you could use your voice to communicate with someone face to face. You’ll find that using this old fashioned form of communication is fun, intimate, and exciting. Seeing someone’s eyes while ‘talking’ with them is fascinating- they actually have to focus on you. This vantage way of expressing yourself really brings people together!

5. High-Speed internet fees getting too expensive to keep up your MySpace and Facebook habits? That’s ok, I have a new idea for you:

Neighbors- Those cars that you see pulling into garages every evening around 6:00 PM; they actually have people in them. And if you can get up the nerve to walk out of your…front door…and over to the house next to yours, then knock on their front door; you may actually have someone open that door and speak to you. It’s a foreign concept, I know, but this is actually a great alternative way for making new friends.

6. Obsessed with the Twilight series? Love going to Borders to drop some serious change on Oprah’s latest pick, but after groceries you’ve got no green left? Here’s a fresh idea:

The Library- Who knew that with the flash of a free membership card that you could have access to tens of thousands of books for free? Simply pick the book you want to read, read it, and then take it back! What a phenomenal idea! www.cityofsalem.net/departments/library

7. For years you’ve enjoyed riding your fancy prize bred horse with all of your country club friends, but ever since you were laid off from your job you simply can’t afford to keep Clipper any longer. So how can you get your horse riding fix without the expenses of owning a horse?

Salem’s Riverfront Carousel- For only $1.50 you can hop on a beautiful hand carved wooden horse and ride it up and down around a beautiful track of many colors. My favorite horse? Cloud Walker, who strangely has a skinned cat for a saddle. www.salemcarousel.org

8. Starbucks is probably the most common guilty pleasure here in the great Pacific Northwest. But the four-plus dollar a cup price tag can really be a drag when the creditors come-a-calling. Solution?

Juan Valdez- Aaaah…store bought coffee! The joy of looking at the mustachioed Columbian coffee farmer and his mule Conchita every morning! Four dollars a cup?! How about four dollars a can? Instead of waiting in a long line at the local drive through before work, you can wake up 10 minutes early every morning and brew your own coffee straight out of the can. You can reminisce to the days of your parents, where there were only two choices for your coffee: black or with cream and sugar? www.juamvaldez.com

9. Get kicked out of your apartment because you couldn’t pay rent? That’s ok because:

Moving In With Your Parents is the new Buying an Exclusive Downtown Loft. How cool would it be to have your old room back? How great would it be to have Mom do your laundry again? Think you’d be imposing? Pssht! They’re your mom and dad! You’re not imposing!

And I know that some of you may be thinking,” But I have a spouse and kids!” That’s ok! The more the merrier! Right mom and dad???

10. Tired of paying high heating bills? Who isn’t? Well just in time for the recession; possibly one the greatest products ever made available for purchase has been released! Now you can flip channels with your TV remote, type on your laptop, or even read a book all while staying warm- even though your thermostat is turned down low- thanks to:

The Snuggie- Yes friends, I am talking about the “blanket with sleeves”. The Snuggie has all the warmth and comfort of a blanket, with the convenient functionality of a coat!

Ok so it’s just a robe worn backwards, but you still want to be styl’n when your cash flow has been cut off right? And for two Snuggies for $19.95 (plus shipping and handling) you can’t go wrong! www.freesnuggie.com

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