My resolution of not scrolling through Facebook “very much” failed this morning, landing me on this gem posted by Matt whenever it was that he woke up in the middle of the night. It’s a conference going on this very moment called Exponential. This year’s theme is Hero Makers.
Matt beat me to the punch by observing that Jesus, when you become a Christian, does not offer you a cape, but, unhappily, a cross. Here’s your cross, he says, and you get to carry it until you die, which you also get to start doing immediately. He’s not even sarcastic about it. There are no jokes to make the horror of what he is proposing go down easier. I know because it was the gospel reading this Sunday. Indeed, when Peter pulled Jesus aside to ‘rebuke him,’ Jesus responded with no humor at all.
So, there’s probably nothing wrong with the Exponential conference. Looks like there are some good speakers, and some less good ones. And church planting is obviously a good idea. Telling more people about Jesus and inviting them to come to church, rather than no one at all, is, one might say, the point. But I find it depressing that the word ‘Hero’ has to be attached to this endeavor. No less depressing than wandering around a bookstore aisle looking for something christianish to read and discovering that more than half the books are pink and covered in flowers. You know, because I self identify as a female person, and so to let me know that the books for me, they’ve been made lavender and baby blue, because I’m too stupid to find a book to read without being beat over the head by a pastel sparkle unicorn.
I mean, I’d love to have been in the planning meaning where they landed on Hero Makers. Surely they were all talking enthusiastically about church planting and evangelism but then someone pointed out that no one would come, because who even cares any more. But then the young man in the skinny jeans leant forward in his chair and was all like, I Know! I’ve got it! Heroes! We can be heroes and we can make heroes! Because literally everything about the Bible can be summed up by that word. No wait, that doesn’t sound right. Maybe it’s that nothing about our culture is interested in the invitation to come work really hard at a thankless task until you die, which is probably a more realistic vision of church planting in 2017. Come! Be Discouraged! And spend lots of time looking for money! And discovering that no one has a deep seated need for anything but another iPhone!
I actually liked the little blurbs under each heading in the About section. What they’re trying to do, on the surface, is good. You can’t do it alone, they say. You need people to help you. Here’s how to go get them. But to make it just a little more palatable, you still get to be a hero. It’s just that you’ll also be making heroes. It’s going to be awesome.
I wish the evangelical christian marketing industrial complex would observe Lent one year. Just one time. They could all sit around and examine themselves and read the Bible out loud to each other. They could say the great litany. They could, just for a year, publish all the books in bland dust covers with the titles printed plainly in Times New Roman. For one year, everyone would be forced to read the titles and then read the books without any sparkle and Instagram and rock music to entice them. No heroes. No unicorns. No flowers. Just the words and the gospel.
Now that’s a funny joke.
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