I'm trying to get a handle on *why* image might be bothersome or downright offensive.

I sat with this for awhile before posting. The thread title alone gave me a hint of the topic, but I was peasantly surprised to find the original post asking how people might be feeling about it.


I found it bothersome. It's hard to say why, because it's a nonverbal reaction..... :

I think every generation struggles to reinterpret the Gospel in light of their own particular times and culture; this image/approach seems, to me, to be antithetical to my times and culture.

I'm not particularly an old poop, or lacking in humor; I just know that for many people of my age (or older), I would not be the only person wincing and feeling like something that is precious to me is somehow not knowable to "today's" culture... in 'most any carload of folks I'd be likely to be riding with, down our big highway on the way to ministry class, that billboard would provoke various degrees of sadness.


For me, that discomfort comes along with the solid experience of knowing that, very often, these people (people in "emerging" church culture in general) seem to come to Hardi and me (and other "dinosaurs") because of the depth our spirituality has provided to us. That place in me that feels discomfited by this image is the very same place from which people draw from that resource.


So whenever I see one of these "flash-bang," emerging-church thingies, part of my inner response is, "Oh, here come some more people in need of our solidity...." And simply-- it can get kinda tiring, maintaining that resource against the insistent tide of change.

We are not against change, but we just feel the increasing pace of it in the un-connection-ness of the people insisting upon change-- when the day comes that they bring whatever present panic the changes have not prepared them to withstand.

(Since you asked.)

~Susan