One is to accept the priorities of the world around us until our message starts to sound like every other message the culture enjoys. The other is to take a counter-cultural position and then make a case for why the Christian worldview is superior.
Focus the church on the desires of the individual attendee, or repeatedly make a case for the surrendered, selfless Christian life. We can definitely use language, imagery and music that are familiar to the culture, but our message cannot be compromised. We cannot surrender to selfish hedonism. Here's the choice we have as church leaders: make a consistent effort to look more like the culture, or make a consistent effort to guide the culture to something better.
Click To Tweet People have questions. We can either embrace the answers of secularism by borrowing from them , or make a case for the superiority of Christianity. We can try to be relevant by entertaining our selfish nature, or we can truly become relevant by making a case for what we believe, even though it is unselfishly counter-cultural. This second approach will require us to reason through the evidence of Scripture and demonstrate the superiority of the Christian worldview.
Scroll to continue reading. This book teaches readers ten principles of cold-case investigations and applies these strategies to investigate the claims of the gospel authors.
Subscribe to J. Warner Wallace J. Warner Wallace is a Dateline featured cold-case homicide detective, popular national speaker and best-selling author. He continues to consult on cold-case investigations while serving as a Senior Fellow at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. He is also an Adj. I am touched. I deeply resonate with what you wrote! It was am. Tuesday morning. At am. I was still wide awake.
I took the opportunity of the sleeplessness to pray. To surrender myself afresh to God. The Spirit-filled, God-directed life. God help me! The answer is given in the immediate context. Well said Mike. Carey, these points are so true and always have been. As you have always said, the message never changes, yet the methods must.
This too has always been true, and others have said this as well. It almost always boils down to preferences and not Gospel. If we have done it right those 99 will take care of one another, but that lost one needs to be found. We were never commissioned to seek and save the people who think as we do.
I strongly disagree with the worship of a specific musical genre and era. Stereotyping musical preference based on age or anything else is based in prejudice, not fact. Ex — Vocal pedagogy degrees at some schools have specific courses designed to combat vocal destruction. And some younger people are responding to things like chant and and older styles to the point they are attending more liturgical churches, or joining groups that sing shaped note music.
The music of Hildegard von Bingen has had a resurgence in places Music should not ever be an either or, but a yes — and! Celebrate this gifts being honed in you congregations rather than encouraging them to hide their lights under a bushel!
Celebrate all the gifts and talents God has given us! I enjoyed reading your article and all its comments! Thank you for your thoughts!
The value of this article is in the questions it raises. It is an invitation for any church to consider where they are at in the spectrum of change, how they are making the Gospel clear and how they are having real conversations to meet real needs. I do agree with a lot of your observations. I think many Christians are stuck in a place of criticism towards our culture and towards change. This is detrimental to our testimony which should be about making much of Christ.
For me, The word of God is alive and exerts power and is sharper than any two-edged sword and pierces even to the dividing of soul and spirit, and of joints and their marrow, and is able to discern thoughts and intentions of the heart. As so church is only relevant to me by teaching the true word of God and offering true fellowship. Many churches in America have become irrelevant. The question is, what makes it relevant — or not. To me, it would be addressing the cultural questions and challenges head on, rather than ignoring them.
Over the last five decades at least the big questions of faith were not addressed in church, so parents were not equipped at home. The void in their children was filled by the worldview of the public school curriculum. To make matters worse, many in the church held scripture to be a book of science and redemption.
If the local church does not honestly and compassionately respond to the big questions, someone else will and does. People are still looking for answers. We need to be the place that they find them. Good content but poor proof reading; I found the following errors on your page: 1. You used 2. In number 5. The need to be relevant has nothing to do with whether or not one is staying true to the gospel.
Of course we must stay true to the gospel! BUT we must always be contextualizing the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the particular needs of the people who need to be reached. There is a reason why the Reformers insisted on publishing the Bible in the common languages of the people. There is a reason why Charles Wesley wrote a new song every day! He said he did it because songs get stale so fast!
They all recognized the need to be relevant to the needs of the people. Good pastors know the need to be relevant. The difficulty with relevance today is that culture is changing several times within one lifetime instead of once over several lifetimes. Thank you for a great article! If anybody reading the article is discouraged about or feels contrary to the need to be relevant, pray for the power of the Spirit to move in you and your church, then cooperate with the Spirit to take steps towards Christ-likeness.
Jesus calmed the storm, but the disciples still needed to row to shore. Pray for the power of the Spirit, then get working on that oar!
Most of this is pretty dumb. Some very liturgical churches are bursting at the seams. Age makes you tired. Maybe constantly reading articles of the 5 to 7 things you need to do is another thing that ruins your church.
Make it less about what you do and more about where you focus. Helmut Eisert Relevancy can be objective and subjective. Hymns and old choruses are very relevant to the older generation. New style of music and songs are relevant to the younger generation. As the older gerneration is dying off, so is the need of their relevancy. I personally appreciate that there are still churches that know how to blend the old with the new to accommodate both the old and young generation.
I, as an older person, am elated with the new songs that have shifted from singing about God to God. The Bible is admonishing us not to neglect hymns as part of our worship to God. Acts ; Romans ; Ephesians ; Colossians etc. You have 1, 2, 2, 3, 5. Ok boomer! I went to a concert last night [Cory Wong … highly recommend BTW] and during the set he shared some thoughts about life, affirmation of purpose and calling, perseverance, and hope.
He is a secular artist but what he shared was truth and that crowd was listening and receiving life. God never changes, Truth never changes, but the way in which it is delivered and received certainly can, and does. My prayer is that the church can be remaining uncompromising in the truth but creative and relevant in its delivery and engage our culture on every level for Christ and His kingdom.
I am 66 and just retired last Friday. As hard as it is to hear, I believe there is truth in this article. The message of the gospel must always be at the core of all we do. However, as Jesus and Paul modeled for us, we must learn how to meet people with the gospel where they are and be relevant in their lives. That being said, there was one point I wanted to comment on: Everyone on Your Team is Your Age — I get the point of what you are saying and I love the part about intentionally developing young leaders.
The NT tells us that church leaders should not be new converts; leaders need to be mature Christians regardless of physical age. I believe a church that has ONLY young leaders is a recipe for disaster. There needs to be some harmony on the leadership team that includes the wisdom of years, with the energy and potential of youth.
A caution though :The wisdom of man does not indicate what God will do — it is only the wisdom of man. My husband and I serve in a church like Carey describes. If you have to ask who he is then you can understand…. But churches must understand that the gospel will always bring friction with the world in the form of its content. The message about sin and the need for repentance are subjects that attract worldly resistance in any culture.
When a church seeks to be relevant to its community, it creates an onramp for people to believe the gospel. When a church labors to be approved by its community by way of its doctrine, it creates a slippery slope for people to reject the faith. So how do churches seek cultural relevancy while avoiding the pitfalls that can come with it?
Here are eight ideas. Signup for email updates on our church and culture research. Skip to content Skip to primary sidebar. Photo by Bart Jaillet on Unsplash By Aaron Wilson A friend once told me about seeing an advertisement for a new church that had launched in town. Dig Deeper at Lifeway. I Am Going Daniel L. Sign Up.
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