Is Taylor Swift the Key to Bringing Gen Z Back to Jesus?

The Church of the Holy Spirit in Heidelberg, Germany, recently hosted a Taylor Swift themed worship service. According to the organizers, the event was "conceived to attract younger people, as well as to focus on the profound religious convictions expressed in many of Swift's songs."

The pastor acknowledged that Evangelicals and Taylor Swift are not the most obvious allies - both having taken shots at each other in recent years. Yet he defended the pop star, emphasizing the strong Christian and political messages in her songs.

In any case, it worked. More than 1,200 young people showed up at this historic church on Sunday, May 12.

Without having attended the service, it's hard to know how to feel about it. Was the Bible taught? Was the Gospel preached? If I had to guess, I'd say no. And yet, they accomplished what few Western Evangelical churches have managed to do: attract a large number of presumably non-believing young people to their church.

Regardless of the substance of the service, the fact that they came is not insignificant. There are many ways to listen to Taylor Swift music. Bad covers of good music are just a bar away. This was no ordinary gathering of Swifties, and the 1200+ who came to The Church of the Holy Spirit knew it.

The peculiar picture of an old school German church packed with young people speaks to the growing spiritual hunger today. Yes, they wanted Taylor Swift, but they wanted something else, too.

Every pastor, missionary, and concerned believer wrestles with the question, "How do we reach a generation that won't walk into a church?". This particular event, while effective on one level, highlights both the power and pitfalls of relevance.

Was this a clever way to contextualize “church” to serve a new generation, or a shameless pandering and watering down of something meant to be sacred? Christian talkings heads have rallied to both extremes, but as usual, I reject the false dichotomy.

Jesus and the apostle Paul modeled a willingness to understand and incorporate the themes, stories, and language of the people they were trying to reach. Legendary missionary Hudson Taylor received significant criticism for adopting Chinese dress and customs to more effectively communicate the Gospel.

In my own context, I have spent thousands of hours crafting a modern day depiction of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus - devoid of leather sandals, a donkey, togas, or a single Roman soldier. Instead, I use symbols and imagery that speak to the times we are living in. In short, I try to be relevant.

When applied well, relevance is simply communicating the Gospel in a language that non believers understand. There's nothing holy or obedient about obstinately sticking to forms of church. Often, it's just lazy and ineffective.

So the key is leveraging pop culture to fill our churches? Is that how we will reach this next generation?

Maybe. Of course, there are limits. We need to be wise when choosing what aspects of culture to utilize to reach people. Sin is still sin. But our goal is not to maintain the status quo, or preserve our church culture like dying relics. We are called to make disciples.

This entire conversation comes down to this: Are we preaching Christ and Him crucified?

‍True relevance is not about altering the Gospel to be more attractive to secular culture. As the apologist Francis Shaeffer emphasizes in his seminal book, The God Who is There, “The problem which confronts us as we approach modern man today is not how we are to change Christian teaching in order to make it more palatable, for to do that would mean throwing away any chance of giving the real answer to man in despair, rather it is only a problem of how we may communicate the Gospel so that it is understood."

Whatever tool we use, the goal is for people to encounter Jesus.

If 1200 young people filed into this archaic church, heard a few Taylor Swift songs and a speech about justice and equality, and then left -  the Church of the Holy Spirit failed. But let's say hypothetically that the pastor waited for the last note of Taylor Swift's  "anti-hero" to ring out. Then piggy-backing on the song's themes of anxiety, insecurities, and self-hatred, he shared about Someone whose love for us is more profound than anything we can imagine.

He explained that this good Father loves us - and He proved it by sending what mattered most to Him, his Son, to earth. He told the audience that Jesus wasn't rich or famous; He cared for people. He fed the hungry and healed the sick. But the most important thing He did was to take on all of the brokenness in my life and in yours. He died and came back to life, so that we could be forgiven, healed, and set free.

This would be a great example of finding common ground and using it to point people to Jesus. That is the essence of relevance.

‍As long as the full, unaltered Gospel is preached, we should use any tool at our disposal to get it in front of those who need to hear it—yes, even Taylor Swift.