I have been reading a lot lately about culture, not on purpose; it is just the raft of manuscripts that young writers send for my endorsement. I normally wouldn’t read these works, but I take them on because I benefit from their ideas. I find it funny that they want my wisdom, but then proceed in their books to tell me how much I don’t know. I’ve lost my edge, I’m yesterday’s news, I can’t possibility stay in touch with their thinking, vocabulary, ideas, methods, it is all moving faster than I do these days.

And in large partI think they are right, even a 61 year old committed learner like me gets weary of the new, I am increasingly drawn to the old, the ancient, what has staying power. Should I reread Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship or the latest research on the Church? Mere Christianity or Christianity Today? Peterson’s The Contemplative Pastor or Rev Magazine?

These days I am moved more by Caravaggio’s Disposition of Christ or even Dagas’ little sculptured horses and women than Christian literature. I enjoy sitting for fifteen minutes in front of a 13th century alter piece that features the life, the death and the resurrection of Christ. I like doing in church what the ancients did 1500 years ago; I like the simple God focused nature of the prayers, the confessions, the words of exultation.

But I do like being cool, which according to one of my young teachers, Earl Creps, is a combination of Hip, Beautiful, idiosyncratic and contagious. AOL used to be cool along with pleated trousers, but now it’s the iphone, or using the Mac, cool costs more because the elite fraternity of the cool has consecrated it.

I think there may be something to the idea that to know what is cool and then finding others who are cool can be helpful to your interest in evangelizing the world. I think the bigger lesson for me is since I am already cool, is to hang out with the young cool, to let them teach me how to speak to them, and there is much they can teach me.

Creps' soon to be released book on Reverse Mentoring proposes that the young can mentor the old. The young have a great deal to teach us besides how to get our electronics to stop blinking 12:00…… 12:00…….12:00……12:00. I must mention Alan Kraft’s soon to be released, When Trying Harder Doesn’t Work, wonderful insights, great illustrations, penetrating scriptural analysis. While I am pondering the depths of Muggeridge, Kant, or even Willard, I appreciate it when some novice interrupts in order to teach me.