{"id":3680,"date":"2011-09-02T13:15:29","date_gmt":"2011-09-02T17:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/?p=3680"},"modified":"2011-08-31T14:48:13","modified_gmt":"2011-08-31T18:48:13","slug":"is-your-church-too-cool-longing-for-a-little-tradition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/is-your-church-too-cool-longing-for-a-little-tradition","title":{"rendered":"Is your church too &#8220;cool&#8221;? Longing for a little tradition?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h6>by Rachel Held Evans ~ Relevant Magazine<\/h6>\n<p>People sometimes assume that because I\u2019m a progressive 30-year-old who has no children, I must want a super-hip church\u2014you know, the kind that\u2019s called \u201cThrive\u201d or \u201cBe,\u201d and which boasts \u201can awesome worship experience,\u201d a fair-trade coffee bar, its own iPhone app and a pastor who looks like a Jonas brother.<\/p>\n<p>While none of these features are inherently wrong (and can of course be used by good people to do good things), these days I find myself longing for a church with a cool factor of about 0.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s right.<\/p>\n<p>I want a church that includes fussy kids, old liturgy, bad sound, weird congregants and\u2014brace yourself\u2014painfully amateur \u201cspecial music\u201d now and then.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.relevantmagazine.com\/god\/church\/features\/26050-is-your-church-too-cool\">CLICK HERE to read more<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Rachel Held Evans ~ Relevant Magazine People sometimes assume that because I\u2019m a progressive 30-year-old who has no children, I must want a super-hip church\u2014you know, the kind that\u2019s called \u201cThrive\u201d or \u201cBe,\u201d and which boasts \u201can awesome worship experience,\u201d a fair-trade coffee bar, its own iPhone app and a pastor who looks like&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32,100,8],"tags":[22,2214],"class_list":["post-3680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian","category-commentary","category-news","tag-church","tag-commentary"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Is your church too &quot;cool&quot;? 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