Jefferson Bethke is pretty busy these days, being a new daddy and all, but he still finds time to share his humble wisdom with the faithful.
Who can forget his powerful "Why I hate religion, but love Jesus" video that whipped up a storm on YouTube, getting no fewer than 22 million views - and counting!
It was a message that resonated with so many Christians and no doubt many outside the church too.
Fast forward a few years and Bethke is still as busy as ever, blogging and creating videos about life and faith.
In his latest one, he has some pretty thoughtprovoking words to say about the trend of new hipster churches and whether they've lost sight of what church is really about.
To illuminate his point, he parallels these churches to the trendy new coffee shops that are appearing all over the place - the kind that have "coffee gadgets and whole bean roasting machines behind the counter" and "make fun of Starbucks".
"To put it bluntly, some independent coffee shops I go to across the nation, for the most part, treat you like a complete idiot. And are incredibly rude," he writes in the humorous post.
"Oh, and if you even mention Starbucks, then you can expect to be kicked out immediately. The look you get is as if anyone who drinks Starbucks is the least cultured, least informed, and obviously least cool person they know."
Two faults he sees with these coffee shops are that: firstly, they forgot they are primarily there to serve - "Without the customer they wouldn't be in business" - and secondly, they "forget where they came from".
"See the thing that really bothers me about the hipster coffee shops is when they make fun of Starbucks. They don't realise they literally wouldn't have a job or a coffee culture to build on without Starbucks," he says.
"They should be incredibly indebted and grateful to the big green mermaid ... Before Starbucks, if you wanted coffee then you could go to aisle 11 at the grocery store and get it."
And in his view at least, there are some trendy churches that aren't so different from the snobby coffee shops.
"We make fun of those who came before us, we call them traditional, we roll our eyes at the ways they do things, but realising we are standing on their shoulders. The Christian family is a community of honor, thankfulness, and humility. Smiting the people who laid the very foundation for us to do what we do doesn't encompass any of those three virtues."
Bethke uses his blog to call churches back to the one purpose they all share, regardless of whether they are hip or traditional - to love sacrificially and serve others in humility.
He stresses that he's not telling churches they shouldn't innovate or do things differently. But he asks them to remember the "banner of service" and keep a sense of "indebtedness" to those who've come before.
"Because here's the truth—if a church's main virtue isn't humility in line with the steps of Jesus, and suffering sacrificial love that puts others above self, then it will turn into something it wasn't intended to be," he writes.
"It really doesn't matter if you are a hip church or a more traditional church, the thing that makes it turn sideways is the spirit and posture of the people."
If you missed his "Why I hate religion, but love Jesus" video, watch it here:
