If you ever want to really insult a Christian, say the following:
"I don't think you're relevant."
That is our kryptonite. The idea of irrelevance keeps us up at night. Seriously, if someone doesn't find us to be relevant than we're probably going to need to fire the worship leader or at the bare minimum get him a pair of white Pumas. Irrelevance is simply unacceptable.
The weird thing though is that in some ways, Jesus was the perfect example of what it means to be "irrelevant." Think about it. His message was the exact opposite of what was going on in the world. People were expecting a strong, powerful, forceful savior and instead got a baby. The powers that be were drunk on the law and he preached against their hypocrisy. He shunned the people that were relevant and hung out with the irrelevant, the tax collectors, hookers and sinners. Now granted you could argue that to a world hungry for truth, the truth of Christ was very relevant, but I'm just saying it's an interesting thought exercise.
p.s. Let's be facebook friends. Find me by searching for theacuffs@yahoo.com
Saturday, March 1, 2008
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13 comments:
just to let you know... i think that what you write is highly relevant!
Around here, the term du jour is "culturally relevant." We visited a church not too long ago that had it printed in the bulletin, posted on their website, and mentioned no less than 6 times during the service. If you have to constantly remind yourself of your relevance, are you really relevant at all?
christianity is irrelevant.
my parents are christians, and i love them, and i'm happy they have something that makes them happy, but in all fairness, christianity is irrelevant.
it's a defensive fear. the way a kid that can't swim is afraid of being called out on his swimming abilities.
Jason,
I'm honestly sorry that you see it that way. That sucks that the Christians around you (not putting down your parents) treat it as something that merely makes them happy and is a defense mechanism. Christ, who started this whole thing, never said, "Follow me, I'll make you happy" or "When someone says something to you that you can't handle, use me as your cop out."
God is not about our happiness. He is about his own glory. He created us and wants to know us and we have sucked at that since the beginning of time, always screwing it up. So, when he came to Earth to end the sacrifices that we (the Christians that the old testament in the bible talks about) had to constantly give to be able to even be in the presence of God (because he can't be in the presence of sin), he sacrificed himself for us. He never said anything about easy (his life here was far from), he never said happy (but he offers joy and peace that is beyond belief), he never said injustices in the world wouldn't keep me up half the night because some people are such jerks to other people and make me angrier than I knew I could be and he never said we would be rich (he called people all the time to sell everything that they had and follow him). He did say that he loves us, wants to know us and he died for us. I hope God will help you see what he's about, because he is beyond what I can explain on this blog comment. Seek people out who can explain it to you.
I think the whole relevance this lacks... authenticity.
It may just be a semantic issue, but I think Christina Truth is always relevant, but the ways it is presented aren't always culturally contextualized. Paul gives a great example of how to contextualize the Gospel in Acts 17, when he quotes Epimenides and uses it to reach out to the Stoic philosophers. Methods change, but truth doesn't.
thank you, thank you, thank you!
It is funny that the majority of churches that are culturally relevant are indeed only relevant to a specific part of culture.
How about a "strip bar relevant church"
Jesus wasn't culturally relevant, he was the opposite!
Going to those that the church didn't approve of and rejected!
Why do you think they killed him?
He challenged their authority!!!
Let us stop looking for satisfaction in a church or leader and let's turn our hearts toward Christ himself.
His spirit will lead us to the "cracks" in the floor of society and make us more relevant than a church could ever be...
furthermore, my hope is that others don't come to your website and try a way to "work around the law" in order to make their church effective.
we try to recreate Christ himself and get mad when we fail at doing so.
we want to produce a formula that works and is satisfactory.
guess what?
it doesn't exist!
introduce people to Christ and watch your church, the church, us,
grow exponentially.
Mad props to you and your blog!
A couple of years ago my church decided to change our mission statement to "A Relevant Biblical Community."
I gag every time someone says it.
"To present Christ in a culturally relevant way". How many bulletins have I seen that on? Yeah, that's gonna save the lost. I can just see them reading the bulletin:
"I've been trying to understand this whole 'for God so loved the world' concept, but no one's ever presented it to me in a culturally relevant way! Well, thank Buddah I found this place!"
That is just rather sad. And most of the time they really mean being relevant to all the young people. I'm sure a lot of churches struggle with this.
whatever happened to being "in the world, but not of it" ? why not stand out as something different? Jesus did.
i'm really quite irked by all this relevant mega-church suburban "comfortable" Christianity.
I gotta disagree with most of the comments here. The idea of being relevant really just applies to the church wanting to be able to bring people in. If we dress like we're from 1920, and sing overdone worship songs that were written long ago (Lord I Lift Your Name On High comes to mind), and the pastor screams every word of the sermon, that seems pretty "irrelevant" to the "culture" of the people we're trying to reach. We want people, especially visitors, to feel comfortable. And by the way, there are tons of examples of how relevant God was throughout the Bible, and how relevant Jesus himself was in the New Testament, doing and saying things that related to the people. If he wasn't relevant to them he would have just been weird magical guy who freaked people out and probably scared them away. Anyway, thats what I think of when I hear "culturally relevant".
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