When I was in ministry full-time I used to embrace the ideology of wanting to “make Christianity and the Bible relevant to our culture.” What I have come to realize as I have spent time out of full-time ministry and looking at church through the eyes of a “seeker,” is that all this “making” of Christianity relevant to our culture is actually doing the opposite!! In fact, it has nothing to do with Christianity at all! It is irrelevant to our faith all together!
You see, the latter part of the statement is true with the exception of two words; “Christianity and the Bible ARE ALREADY relevant to our culture!” Jesus accomplished this when he died for us. But where I believe many pastors (including myself when I was there) have and continue to go off track is in the former part of the statement, “make.” By definition; “make” is to create, build, craft or manufacture something out of nothing. So the thought implies that we need to create something other than the redemptive message of Jesus’ death on the cross in order for people to accept Christianity.
There is this fundamental belief in number oriented, evangelical church leaders, that we need to “get people through the doors” in order to present the gospel to them. This strategy is usually followed by the question, “how do we do that?” The answer: “create something to draw them in.” So, they study their target audience and then craft the style of worship and ministry to meet the felt needs of this audience. So in a sense what church founders are doing is trying to appear acceptable and relevant to this target audience. Mark Galli in his book, Jesus: Mean and Wild, puts it this way:
“To minister to college-educated, upwardly mobile twenty-and thirty-somthings – the target of a lot of new ministries these days (whatever happened to preaching to the poor and the prisoners?) – you wear Ambercrombie clothes, forbid hymns and organ music, and preach (no, make that “share”) without a pulpit, wearing an open knit shirt, jeans, and flip-flops. And it works, because lots of churches that do this sort of thing are bursting at the seams with twenty-and thirty-somethings.”
Now, I like wearing jeans and flip-flops (although the toes are not pretty!) just as much as the next person. But the point here is when the focus becomes about being a relevant church and having a relevant ministry and relevant worship based on the venue, style and creativity in order to meet the felt needs of the target audience, well, the point is missed! Isn’t the point of “reaching people for Christ” just that, reaching them “for Christ” and teaching them to die to themselves and to live for the cause of Jesus (Romans 14:8; Phil. 1:21). If you stop short of this, all you’re doing is creating a church in your image, not God’s. But this would make sense if your goal is to count people, because people count. And the more you can count the more you can relish in your success of growing your church. Is that Jesus’ Cause? (Read Matt. 25:31-46 and decide for yourself.)
I know a lot of churches that use this “making” approach as a means to presenting Christianity. If you can get people past the entertainment and marvel of the creativity – great! The problem I’ve observed with this approach is that most church goers, old and new, get stuck in the rut of worshiping the relevant approach vs. worshiping God. They mistake the Disneyland feeling as God’s power moving in their ministry.
Donald Miller speaks to this in his book Blue Like Jazz as he talks to a friend of his that was going to start a church that was going to be different than the old church, his friend told him that it was going to be relevant to the culture and the human struggle. Miller notes, “If the supposed new church believes in trendy music and cool web pages, then it is not relevant to the culture either. It is just another tool of Satan to get people to be passionate about nothing.” This is my point. This is what I’ve seen. This is what I’ve experienced. Ask someone what they like about the church they go to and see if you get and answer like, “I love the ____________!" (Fill in with…. ‘music, its great’ – ‘pastor, he's a great speaker’ – ‘drama, it’s really good’ – ‘media, it’s very professional’). Aaannnnd.....????
Let me make one thing clear, I am not against creativity and arts and music, I love these things, and I serve on my drama team at my church. What I am against is the church getting stuck in the mindset that we need to “make” Christianity and the Bible relevant to our culture. When this is the approach, the focus always becomes all about how one can be more creative and innovative. Some church leaders convince themselves that Christianity has become boring since Jesus walked this earth and it is up to their creative abilities to make it fun and exciting again! And if their church is growing numerically, then they “must be right!” And anyone that holds a differing opinion is a critic and hates the church and is bitter toward the world. Give me a break!?!
Ask the same question, “what do you like about your church?” to the people that attend the small, boring, irrelevant churches in your town and I bet you will get different answers. Being relevant, meaningful and powerful to our culture is more mysterious than any one of us can create.
Unfortunately, it becomes easy for relevant, meaningful and powerful churches that are growing numerically to mistake faithfulness for success. A topic I will tackle in my next post.
