Yes. Someone has to. My blog is a litmus test for this type of thinking. Will you read if I talk about WordPress, faith, music, writing,church. What does it me to be truly evangelical. It frightens me to use words that have become empty in their context.
Love me some haters.

Posted by Jim Gray on January 19th, 2009 at 7:56 pm

What a facinating article. I’m looking for a marketing expert to help with a project, could you help?

Posted by John Taylor on April 23rd, 2009 at 4:41 pm

Great point. Case in point: what does “Christian coffee” taste like?

Keep up the good work, and thanks for the Oberbrunner reference.

Posted by Phil Henry on May 5th, 2009 at 8:51 am

Absolutely agreed.

If Christians want to be relevant, we have to stop copying the mainstream while switching out certain words or images (e.g., “Got milk?” –> “Got Jesus?”) — although of course there are art- and commentary-related exceptions to that, I would suppose. And we need to branch out from “Christian music” and “Christian movies” and “Christian novels” into the greater, wide world.

If we segregate ourselves, we separate ourselves from the world we are supposed to live in and work to change. Ideas and products labelled “Christian” might as well be labelled “irrelevant”, in many people’s minds.

This situation can be more than a little frustrating.

Posted by chaidrinkingfool on May 6th, 2009 at 3:21 pm

[...] here is something I read [...]

Posted by Mike Foster on reaching « blindly pursuing life on May 18th, 2009 at 6:09 am

The previous comments, and the blog-post, all assume that Christians “must” produce art for nonChristians. That art “must” be some sort of outreach.

What if a Christian simply wants to give expression to their faith in a way fellow Christians will appreciate? I guess the psalmists were “shallow” and “irrelevant” because they were too overt about their faith in Yahweh.

The early church did NOT grow in leaps and bounds by seeking to produce “relevant art.” They grew by strengthening themselves in biblical basics and by sharing the gospel with people with whom they rubbed elbows.

Posted by Andy on May 18th, 2009 at 3:33 pm

You know, that’s a good point. I find Christian iconography, for example, beautiful. I find some hymns to be beautiful. I don’t have a problem with Christian artists creating art for Christians. Not at all.

I do have difficulty with…Christians who talk about wanting to be relevant, and want Christianity to be relevant who don’t interact much with the common folk, as it were. If you are an artist who wants to produce work that’s theological/academic–or even just use words that have some special meaning in the Christian lexicon–if it’s something that people other than Christians (perhaps even specifically your particular flavor of Christian) would have difficulty relating with, then don’t complain about your work not being relevant outside of Christian culture.

There’s truth in the statement about the beauty and truth in not seeking to produce specifically “relevant art”, and there’s truth about the target audience being all human beings.

Share your story through your art. If you want to share it with everyone, Christian or not, you may need to take an extra step or two–such as avoiding Christian lingo that will only be confusing if words will be a large part of your art (please note that I did not say to avoid Christian language entirely: I did qualify that statement). I’m also annoyed by the derivative marketing attempts I’ve seen (see my earlier post for an example). It’s an awkward attempt to reach a more general audience by recycling a campaign with a previous wider non-religious application. As it’s obviously lacking in creativity, I think it’s a “miss” with the very audience that it’s trying to reach.

Chuck Norris and Rick Springfield are two artists (okay, that may be arguable, but for the sake of the main argument, please just accept the idea ) who have created work that isn’t targeted toward Christians, and not all Christians would find their work acceptable, yet both helped point me toward Christ.

Posted by chaidrinkingfool on May 26th, 2009 at 9:43 pm

I don’t think either that there is any need to adapt the message about forgiveness by any means. Whichever “adaption” makes it just worse because the altogether level of christianity is already low. And anyway all protestant denominations are branches of the Catholic church: http://barnabasnagy.com/2009/05/28/all-protestant-denominations-are-branches-of-the-catholic-church/

Posted by Lirybka on May 28th, 2009 at 4:46 am

I was thinking largely about being wary of the use of words that may have a completely different meaning in some Christian contexts than elsewhere, such as the word “eternity” being used by some Christians to mean a time and/or place that begins after one dies. Most non-Christians (and perhaps most Christians) understand “eternity” to mean “always”, “all time”, or “forever”.

Using a word in a specialized Christian manner while trying to communicate with all people can be confusing.

Posted by chaidrinkingfool on June 1st, 2009 at 12:44 pm

Hi there! Interesting thoughts here. I can’t help but think of the Apostle Paul. Everything about him was “Christian” yet, you could find him traveling around, going to synagogues, etc. where there may not have been any Christians. My focus will never, ever be to water down my Christian witness or be any less vocal and/or literal about my faith. My focus is to make sure that my faith is out there for the masses to see whether they find it “relevant” or not. Humans don’t save other humans. Humans plant seeds for God to change hearts.

Posted by mwah! on June 24th, 2009 at 11:34 am