Carl Trueman on church leaders and trying to be cool.

Loving this from Carl Trueman. Those who know me or have seen my picture will understand why.

'Of all the things `the kids’ seem to hate, somewhere in the top three have to be superannuated authority figures trying just that little bit too hard to look like nineteen year old campus radicals.

This is where baldness really comes in to its own. I praise the Lord for the fact that, while once so hirsute my nickname was `the Wolfman’ and I could have done a passable Roy Wood at a karaoke night (remember Wizard? One of Del-Boy’s favourite 70s glam-rock bands, I’m told), I am beginning to experience that process of cranial defenestration which could lead to me being called `Cueball’ or, for those of a certain vintage, `Kojak’ within a decade. Yes, I still have an overall covering, but even my kids take great delight in standing behind me, offering to polish my head `for a quid.’ Each time, I refer them, of course, to the baldy man’s favourite text, 2 Kings 2: 23-24; but once they work out the narrative connection to the sins of Jeroboam, son of Nebat, I suspect these verses will lose their disciplinary force.

Yet baldness is nonetheless a great gift from the Lord, in that it imposes a certain dignity on the ageing process by cutting off the various less dignified options (e.g., ponytails, which shouldn’t be sported by anyone over 30; and mullets which, frankly, should not be sported by anyone, anywhere, anytime. Period.). Of course, there are those, even Christians, who fight against this divinely-imposed dignity. Dreadful toupees abound in the church, along with frightful transplants, and the ubiquitous `comb-over’ or `sweep.’ The latter seems predicated on the false notion that, if you have six hairs to stretch across the barren landscape of your otherwise shiny pate, nobody will notice that you have gone completely bald. Or perhaps there is a belief somewhere that, in the country of the bald, the one-haired man is king. Come on, gents, parade your baldness with pride and accept the dignity which your divinely-imposed hair loss brings with it.

This brings me to my serious point: what is it with ministers and Christian leaders who seem to feel a compulsive need to talk about youth culture all the time and to adopt the styles of self-obsessed teenagers in order to demonstrate how `relevant’ their ministries are and how hidebound everybody else’s are? Above all, the arrival among the forty-somethings of the soul patch, that absurdly redundant tuft of hair just below the bottom lip, says it all. That middle-aged ministers think that they are somehow culturally more attuned or useful because they lecture their peers about what kids do or do not believe, and because they adopt the aesthetics and style of the modern metrosexual is a bizarre and sad turn of events. Three points need to be made loud and clear.

The priority of the minister is not to be hip or cool. It is not even to `connect with the kids.’ It is to immerse himself in the word, to know the gospel inside out, and to communicate that gospel with care, clarity, love, and force. OK, my criticism of the hair obsession and vanity of so many ministers is overstated; and they are scarcely the only Christians with skewed priorities. We all know Christians who are more concerned about where children are educated than the doctrine of the Trinity, or who are more passionate about Bible translations than guarding their tongues from malicious gossip. But the point of priorities is basic and important: don’t let your mid-life crisis determine the way you think about the gospel and the church. A hairstyle which tries to hide the ageing process is one thing, ridiculous but harmless; a theological agenda which mimics the world’s obsession with locating wisdom in the very sector of society with least experience of, and perspective on, everything is far more serious and potentially damaging. Let’s hope that the hairstyles of the forty-something clergy with soul patches are not sacramental: outward signs of inward spiritual realities. As to my brothers who are follicle-challenged but who faithfully study, pray and preach the gospel week by week, Be bald, be strong, for the Lord your God is with you.'