Great article by Andy Crouch at Christianity Today:

But our longing for “authenticity” also bears a suspicious resemblance to the latest plot twist in the story of consumer culture: the tendency to rapidly replace the squeaky-clean franchise with the “authentic” franchise. The leather seats in our sport-utility vehicle caress our stonewashed jeans as we put some blues-tinged pop on the radio and drive to the local Joe’s Crab Shack. It’s a ramshackle dive that you might think would fall down any minute, if you hadn’t seen it being built just eight months ago by a speedy professional crew that travels around the country building Joe’s Crab Shacks.

Read the full article for more.

This is a good reminder that our authenticity as believers and churches needs to be about authentic relationships, not style. Because style is, in the end, well, style.

And authentic relationships are only built over time. But the environment in which authentic relationships can develop is something that can be influenced fairly quickly.

The immediate issue, then, is this: what is the environment that encourages authentic relationships? Or, what is the environment that discourages authentic relationship?