“With Hipster I wanted to challenge this notion and show how form matters: that perhaps the way Christianity is understood and appropriated is different when packaged in Helvetica, skinny jeans, and small batch whisky than when it’s packaged in robes, pews, and pleated khakis. Not that one is necessarily preferable to the other, mind you; just that they are different.”

Four years ago I published my first book, Hipster Christianity (Baker Books), which sought to explore the complexities and questions surrounding what happens “when church and cool collide.” I wanted the book to provoke discussion — which it has — and inspire critical thinking in the church about her identity and the meaning of “relevance” in the 21st century.

Though “hipster” is in the title and much of the book (especially the first half) discusses the overlap of hipsterdom and Christendom, the book is less about hipster faith particularly than the notion of “cool” generally: how is it leveraged, manifested, and interacted with by churches, pastors, Christian institutions, and individuals? Perhaps more than anything the book is an invitation to consider the way form matters in the Christian life. Indeed, a common response from those who feel implicated by the questions of Hipster goes something like this: “What we’re doing is simply putting the gospel in different packaging and updating the style of its delivery as to be relevant to a particular audience. The medium may be different and new, but the message remains the same.”

Are the medium and the message really so detached that, no matter how an idea is packaged or presented, its meaning remains the same?

But is this really true? Are the medium and the message really so detached that, no matter how an idea is packaged or presented, its meaning remains the same? With Hipster I wanted to challenge this notion and show how form matters: that perhaps the way Christianity is understood and appropriated is different when packaged in Helvetica, skinny jeans, and small batch whisky than when it’s packaged in robes, pews, and pleated khakis. Not that one is necessarily preferable to the other, mind you; just that they are different. 

Christians of all people should grasp the inextricability of form and content. The Incarnation itself demonstrates it. The Word made flesh is content meeting form (John 1:1-18). The gospel is not some ethereal, conceptual “message” as much as it is an enfleshed reality and storied form. The gospel message is embedded within and derived from a medium: the medium of a man named Jesus, out of a nation named Israel, crucified in a place named Calvary. As believers we are part of the enfleshed gospel narrative too. Our lives are to be the forms where the gospel takes shape, through the working of the Holy Spirit. We are the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27). We are not just the gospel proclaimers or message transmitters; we are in a profound sense the gospel enacted and enfleshed. 

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