Perhaps you have heard about the youth ministers who are using ‘Halo 3′ to reach out to teens? Depending on what side of the fence you sit, this is either promising news or it makes you irate (unless you are on the fence like Focus on the Family). Some believe video games are just another tool in their arsenal for evangelism, while others think that condoning the violence sends the wrong message. As one person in the article points out, the debate brings into question all kinds of youth fellowship. But what if we put the activities aside for a moment and focus on the question of, “What attracts people to the gospel?” So you get them in the door with Halo, Ultimate Frisbee, whatever … what next? Act cool and be their best friend? Give a sermonette during the Super Bowl commercials (no!)?

The following article excerpt is taken from Touchstone Magazine, September 2007, “Retaking Mars Hill,” Russell D. Moore (henryinstitute.org).

Early in my ministry, I served as a youth pastor in a Baptist church near an Air Force base in Mississippi. Like every other Evangelical youth minister, I received all the advertisements from youth ministry curricula-hawkers, telling me how I could be “relevant” to “today’s teenagers.” The advertisements promised me ways I could “connect” with teenagers through Bible studies based on MTV reality shows and the songs on the top-40 charts that month.

All I knew how to do, though, was preach the gospel. Yes, I knew what was happening on MTV, and I’d often contrast biblical reality with that, but I fit nobody’s definition of cool – including my own.

A group of teenagers, mostly fatherless boys, some of them gang members, started attending my Wednesday night Bible study. Some of them arrived at the church engulfed in a cloud of marijuana smoke.

I found they weren’t impressed with the ‘cool’ supplemental video clips provided by my denomination’s publisher. They laughed at Christian rap stars, in the same way I laughed at my high-school history teacher’s effort to “have a groovy rap session with you youngsters.”

But what riveted their attention was how weird we were. “So, like, you really believe this dead guy came back from the dead,” one 15-year-old boy asked me. “I do,” I replied. “For real?” he responded. I said, “For real.”

They were amazed at the fact that my wife and I had dinner together, and that we didn’t really want to be somewhere else. “Dude, this is like Nick at Nite,” one said, referencing the black-and-white family sitcom reruns on television each night. “The mom and dad are here, ‘how was your day,’ and the whole deal.” They couldn’t believe that in our church, elderly people and teenagers talked to one another, that Latino military officers joked around with white enlisted men around a Sunday-school coffeepot.

It seemed strange. And, just as at Mars Hill, this strangeness commanded attention. Some believed; some walked away. I was heard, and I was even loved, but I was rarely cool.

So how is it then that Christians “attract” the world? Like Russell Moore’s experience, we attract the world by being the “for real” and “weird” blessing of Life in the midst of death that God in Christ has re-created us to be: by loving one another “in Christ,” by serving one another “in Christ,” by embracing one another, by forgiving one another; bearing with one another, bearing one another’s burdens — “in Christ.” That is, it occurs on no other or no additional basis (be it fun and games or how “cool” we act); just on the basis of the simple fact that each has been crucified and risen with Christ and so are new creations, the old having been passed away and buried with Christ. We “attract” the world to Christ by “going” into the world as brothers and sisters and letting the world see and hear, letting the world taste and touch the “for real,” “strange,” “peculiar,” and, yes, even “weird” Life of Christ. This is the fundamental reason the Lord sends us out two-by-two.