What Would Jesus Drink? Throwback Pepsi!!

Last night I stopped at a gas station after class. As I stood in front of a wall of soda trying to decide between the hundreds of different drinks I noticed one drink that stood out from the crowd. Throwback Pepsi. For those who don't know what a Throwback Pepsi is, it is basically a Pepsi the way they made it back in the 80's. The bottle has the old outdated red, white and blue Pepsi globe and, in a sea of soda drinks, it sticks out like your ugly cousins tooth at the family reunion. Even next to the new modern Pepsi bottles it looks pale in comparison. But the true glory is whats inside. At some point Pepsi decided it would be cheaper to use high frutose corn syrup in their drinks instead of real sugar and so the downward spiral began.

What is great about the Throwback Pepsi is that it is made with real sugar the way nature intended for us to drink soda.  As i looked at the outdated logo and cheezy graphics of the bottle I realised something. While Pepsi had done a great job keeping their image and brand hip and relavent to todays generation they had lost something. The packageing and presentation were great but the product was no longer the same.

As I drank my delicious liquid time machine, I was struck with the realization that many in the church have done the very same thing, myself included. In our desire to present the message of Christ in a hip new relavent way we have changed the content of the product. What was once a powerful message has become, in many cases, an excellently packaged, watered down version of what it was intended to be.

The Church has a duty to continue to update the way we present Christ to the ever changing generation but we must never let the packaging get in the way of the product.

Be blessed - Matt