Gospel Trek

I recently moved up to Vancouver to be closer to my church family. I can't tell you how thankful I am for this new family I've found. The other night, I was up late for no apparent reason watching TV (which is a regular thing we do) flipping through the channels, we stumbled across probably one of the weirdest, awkward, yet hilarious things we have ever seen. I don't know if any of you have ever seen TBN (Trinity Broadcasting Network), but it's this old Christian channel that's put on by super-Pentecostal Christians that completely misuse and misinterpret Scripture. Well, they also created this channel for the younger generation called JCTV (Jesus Christ TeleVision, yeah I'm not kidding) that plays a lot of music videos, but occasionally has some shows on there that for some reason they think is going to appeal to our generation. Some of them are even these old videos from like the 80's or 90's that show extreme sports with that same era's Christian punk rock music. If you think Christian punk is bad now, it had to develop to get to where it is now. Even today, I saw a one with like the early 90's Supertones. They made some good music, but let's be honest, it can be quite cheesy.
So I flip to this channel and no joke we are caught by surprise seeing a large older bald black man in a Star Trek type suit. **Pause to ponder the paradox just created by that statement** If you think this is funny now, just wait. This guy was the Captain of a Christian star ship like from the old Star Trek. (I mean, excuse me while I sound like a nerd, but he didn't even have the right color to be the Captain! It was not accurate!) I don't even remember what the Captain's name was or his crew, but it was horrible. There were 4 others on the bridge (the command deck) and they were in the middle of this mission. The Captain was somber knowing what he had to do. While watching, we couldn't find out the name of the show, so we decided to call it “Gospel Trek”.


To say the least, we would never regularly watch this show because it was simply horrible. Yet, we were way too intrigued to change the channel at this point. It wasn't simply the concept of a Christian Star Trek show that caught our attention, but it was the horrible way in which it was done. No kidding, but for about 5-10 minutes the captain kept asking his crew whether or not there was something out around them in space. The funny part of it was that he would look at each one of them, and say, “Mr. Connors anything on your scanner?” “Nothing, sir.” “Miss Abernathy, anything on your scanner?” “Nothing, sir.” Then each one would question his motive for flying where they were. “Sir, nothing is showing up on the scanners, how do you know if something is there?” And he simply responds with, “I just know something is out there.” This goes for seriously 10 minutes, without commercial break of course.


After 10 minutes or so, they finally get a transmission that says, “If you don't leave this area within three of your earth minutes, you will be destroyed.” So the Captain powers down all his weapons, drops to 10% power basically making himself a sitting duck and says to these aliens, “Please, do not destroy us. We have news that you must here. We are not going to fight you. Please let us tell you this important news.” After a couple tries, the aliens finally allow them to tell their news. No joke, this captain proceeds to tell this alien race about Jesus and the Gospel. The aliens respond something like this, “This news you have told us intrigues us. We would like to learn more about this Jesus. Is there some literature that we can read to learn more?” The captain says, “Yes, it is called the Bible. It points to Jesus and talks about His life and what He taught.” Then the aliens ask for a copy of the Bible to be beamed down to their planet. The Gospel was presented and all the crew members apologized to the captain of the ship for their doubt that God's message needed to be spoken to this alien group. Wow.


To say the least, we were shocked. We still laugh about our “Gospel Trek” experience. But, of course, me being me, it left me thinking about why Christians feel the need to do things like this. Why do Christians feel as if they have to do their own parallel shows, music, or anything to what secular culture does? Was Star Trek such an effective culture change agent that there needs to be a Christian alternative? Seriously? What could possibly be so appealing? Did these people seriously think that a Gospel Trek presentation would bring someone to the Gospel? I mean, I won't rule out the possibility, but how do you think a non-Christian is going to look at this? Honestly, with a lot of the non-Christian friends that I've had, they'd laugh and use it to make fun of all Christians, including those of us who try desperately not to be cheesy.


I think the unfortunate thing that is happening in Christian circles is this desperate try to be “relevant” to this fast and rapidly growing technological society we live in. I honestly believe there are some things that we Christians simply should not try to do. Not because it's evil, but because I don't think it could possibly translate over to our message without watering it down or making it sound stupid. Sure, Jesus told us that His Gospel would be foolishness to the rest of the world, but that's because the world wouldn't understand the type of love that we show, not because of how stupid we make ourselves look with our lame attempts at trying to be relevant.


I would rather have a non-Christian (though I hate calling them that) laugh at me because I got myself hurt loving someone like Jesus did. I would rather be ridiculed because of the love that doesn't make sense to the rest of the world. I don't want to be laughed at because of a T-shirt I was wearing, or the WWJD bracelet that broke, or some cheesy Christianese phrase I throw out in common conversation.


My challenge to all of you who read this is to look more to learning how to live and love like Jesus did rather than trying to find a good place to shop to wear good Christian clothes that look cool, or find the latest cool Christian band and instead look into your Bible to see how Jesus encountered His culture with His love, His passion, and His desire for relationship with the least of people.