Relevance
Buzzwords. You hear them all the time. You know, those nifty little words and phrases that resonate with us at a particular moment and then tend to spread like a virus from person-to-person until finally they become such an over-used part of our vocabulary that they lose any resonant power that they may have once had. We have a lot of them in the church world.
I became a Christian in 1986 and in those days a word was beginning to make it's rounds through the Christian community and at the time it was a word that gave us a light bulb moment causing us to nod our heads and say, "Yeah...that's what we need to do!"
The word was "relevant" with its various forms: relevance, culturally relevant, etc. etc. The perception at the time among church leaders was that the ways in which we were living and gathering and worshipping as the church was not relevant to the culture around us. Therefore, we were having less and less influence on the culture outside of our church because what we were doing inside our church did not make sense or strike an emotional or spiritual chord with those on the outside.
Well...to a great extent...that perception was pretty accurate. So, we took the necessary steps to correct the course. We changed our music to sound more like the music being played in the culture (a change for which I am grateful because I believe that the organ was invented by a demon and is the primary instrument of torture in hell). We changed our buildings to make them look less like churches and more like convention centers. We changed the way we dress on Sundays so that if someone would happen to straggle in from the street we would be dressed alike (another change for which I am grateful because I can't imagine NOT wearing my jeans and sandles on Sunday...and now the trend is to leave your shirt untucked which is great because it helps me to look less fat). We started drinking coffee in church (which I know for a fact is God-ordained).
We did a lot of work to make ourselves more "culturally relevant." And the result? In America regular church participation is at its lowest point in our nation's history. The number of churches closed every year outnumbers the number of churches opened. And both Gallup and Barna research indicates that lifestyle choices made by "Christians" don't differ very much at all from lifestyle choices made by non-Christians. The divorce rate among Christians is almost identical to the divorce rate among non-Christians. Apparently, our well-intended attempts at "cultural relevance" have not had the affect for which we hoped.
Os Guinness wrote a book in 2003 called Prophetic Untimeliness. Listen to the words written on the back of the dust jacket:
"Never have Christians tried to be so relevant. But never have Christians ended up so irrelevant. How can this be? The problem, says Os Guinness, is that our views of relevance and our efforts to redefine ourselves are captive to the seductions and pressures of our modern clock culture. Ironically, we end up as neither relevant nor faithful. And in the process we are in danger of losing not only our identity but our authority, our significance, and even our very soul."I've been thinking about relevance lately as we've thought about our ministry future here. Being relevant to the culture is a good thing. If you are a Christian in America today who desires to be used by God to impact your culture, you have to start by understanding that you are a missionary living in the midst of a pagan, pluralistic, multi-cultural society. Every effective missionary knows that to reach people, you have to learn the language of the mouth and the heart. You have to understand the prevailing worldview and the cultural customs. And then you have to be able to introduce the changeless nature of Christ into the culture in a way that grips the heart, mind, and soul.
But again (as we seem to be so good at doing) we have missed the point. By focusing all of our energy and resources on things like musical styles, clothing, beverages, building asthetics, 15-minute life improvement sermonettes, and self-help books we have still failed to actually engage the culture in ways that grip the heart, mind, and soul.
Our most obvious mistake has been that we have orchestrated all of these techniques of new & improved cultural relevance in such a way that we still require the culture to come to us to experience them and hopefully be impacted. You see, cultural relevance begins with one simple step. Being there! Being in the culture, not tucked away in our really cool, high-tech, coffee scented clubhouses huddled around hoping a pagan will walk in and sit down with us so that we can celebrate how effective we are at "reaching the culture."
I'm in the middle of a book called "The Relevant Church" by Mike Howerton. Actually, it is written by a group of people who all lead various ministries around the country and they all share their stories in short essays. I hesitated to buy it thinking to myself, "Oh brother, another book on relevance." But after skimming the table of contents, I decided it would be a good buy. And it is! I'm going to let Dustin Bagby finish this post with an excerpt from his essay in this book titled, "God Is In The Pub."
"To make an impact in the twenty-something culture, leaders need to be involved in 'real' culture, not just Christian 'subculture' events. If you are a musician, then you should be in the music clubs performing on weekends, not just at Christian coffeehouses. If you are a comedian, you should be working in the comedy clubs during the week as a way of meeting people and impacting the community. If you are an athlete, join a league and play with a random group of people, not just a church league. We encourage people to use their gifts not just 'in here,' but 'out there.'Unfortunately, many people who have grown up in church were taught to avoid culture at all costs. They were taught that we need to form an environment in which to live and then invite other people to join. The problem is that the peoople who we are inviting to join are not coming. Now it is time to go 'out there' and meet them. I find that most of jesus' teachings are about going and harvesting. I hear very little about sitting back at an event and hoping people who are not followers will attend. Jesus always went to where the people in need were.We need to stop inviting people to Christian events as our only form of outreach. Instead, start inviting people to spend time where they already are. There is a choice to be made here. We can either try to bring a person into our setting - however uncomfortable they may feel - or we can spend time with an individual in their setting and sacrifice our comfort. You will find people respecting your effort to get to know them on their turf. This makes the process of getting involved in a church much less intimidating (whether the person is a follower or not) simply because of the relationship and trust that has developed.For years, we have had an evangelical mindset that says, 'We need to create a cool event that non-Christians will come to. Then we can invite a bunch of non-Christians and share the message on our turf, where we fell most comfortable.' Instead, if we are going to reach people wh are not comfortable walking into a church service on a Sunday; we need to start thinking, 'Who can I invite to grab dinner tonight?'Cool programs will never do what time with people in a neutral or even an intimidating (for us) environment will do.'"