COLUMN: King of Relevance
More and more, people are checking out of church. The stats are sobering.
One-third of the population rarely or never attends church. Forty percent of 18-29-year olds never go to church. Only one-third of teens presently participate in ministry nationally and when that group was interviewed, only one-third of them planned to attend church when they left home or went to college. In other words, 80 percent of teens that are presently in church plan not to go when they leave home. When asked, “why is it your plan to not go to church?,” the overwhelming answer was that the church is irrelevant.
We have to re-think and redesign our church environments on the basis of relevance so as to posture ourselves to be more effective so as to not lose this next generation.
In the book of Ephesians, the apostle Paul is speaking about maturity and how, if we serve in the church, that the church body is built up and strengthened. Then he says in verse 14, “Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.”
Paul equates spiritual immaturity to a boat with no destination or no direction or no vision — just going wherever the wind blows it. Coming from a sailing background, I have often thought of the similarities of this scripture and the church. If we looked at what Paul calls, “every wind of teaching,” as culture, we would agree that the church should have vision and not be blown around by the culture.
But what if we looked at it like sailing. Then our goal would be to harness that wind or that culture to get us to our destination, which is connecting with people who believe the church is irrelevant. When we sail we don’t fight the wind — we harness it. What if instead of fighting culture, the church harnessed it.
We could not let culture dictate our destination either. Our destination would never change. It would always be to reach those people who are far from God. But, like the wind, we can harness culture to get to that destination and when culture changes, we adjust our sails or our environments to continue to carry out the vision of connecting with those who are far from God.
In order to do that, we must stay relevant to the culture. These days there is a lot of talk regarding relevance. Relevance is using what is cultural to say what is timeless.
Our job as the church is to take what is timeless (word of God) — it never changes — and put it into a context so that people can understand it.
That is why Jesus came. God sent His timeless truth and He put it in a context that people could understand. This context was in the form of a man, a man who was a carpenter, who spoke in terms of farming, of looking for lost sheep, of loving your neighbor.
He came with the timeless truths of God in a context that people could understand. He used what was cultural to say what was timeless. He used wine, vines, trees, birds, bread and fishing because that was the culture in context he was in.
Here are a couple of ideas to remember if we are to stay relevant.
We must distinguish between what is cultural and what it timeless.
If we were to go to the mission field, we would study the culture and we would learn the language so we would be effective. Then we would present the timeless truth of God in a context in which they understand.
As followers of Christ we are to be missionaries in the community in which we exist. We must present the timeless truth of God in a context in which this generation understands. That means our churches, our buildings and our programs. The mediums we use are all subject to change. But what is not open to change is the timeless message.
That leads us to the second idea then:
We can never assume that what worked yesterday, will work today.
If we are going to be intentional about relevance, we have to judge everything on the basis of, “Is it still working.” If not, that means the winds have changed and we must adjust our sails. Even as church members we cannot demand our churches continue programs that don’t work anymore just “because that is the way we have always done it.”
That also means what is working today probably won’t work tomorrow.
Wouldn’t it be great to be a part of the generation that turns those aforementioned trends around? The church is the closest thing to being with Jesus here on the earth, and he was the King of Relevance. So should we be then.
Pastor Eric Partin is the lead pastor of Shoreline Church in Destin and can be reached at epartin@cox.net.
