Despite what anybody has told you, a culturally relevant church is not what your city, town, or context needs. And, just because your pastor wears skinny jeans, drinks craft beer, and preaches from his iPad, this doesn’t mean that your church is relevant. The church and its leadership might be cool, edgy and different and it’s probably even attracting hipster, home-brewing, techies. But does this really make a church relevant?
What are churches and pastors saying when they say they want to be “culturally relevant?”
If you’d allow me the liberty to break Canadian culture down into two broad categories, I would suggest:
- The Marketplace – characterized by hard work, a drive for success, advancement, diligence, excellence, self-evaluation, and discipline.
- Leisure & Entertainment – characterized by celebrities, PVR’s, vacations, Hockey Night in Canada, ease, consumption, and glass of Mike’s, a hammock, and Angry Birds.
By in large, when churches and leaders talk about being culturally relevant, what they are really saying is that they are trying to be “leisure and entertainment relevant.” Add to this, rarely is it well done. When pastors and leaders chase after this type of church relevance, which often happens in the name of missional, we very well may be hindering what God wants to do in our church and city. Author Hugh Halter makes the comment:
In most cases the church environments we've created fosters softness that hinders growth and involvement in God's mission.
I couldn’t agree more. The cultural values of hard work, endurance, reflection, hardship, and diligence don’t seem to be landing in our churches. This is especially problematic among our men. In particular, I believe it alienates those men who live in a hard-nosed, fast-paced work environment where anything worthwhile requires sacrifice. The temptation is to make church and Christianity easy, palatable, and without much consequence. The reality is, not many people live a world like this and when they hear this kind of Gospel, it just doesn’t make sense.
Churches shouldn’t be culturally relevant, anyhow. If we are to be relevant to anything, it would be to the person and work of Jesus as revealed in Scripture. Instead of the culturally relevant church, what I would propose is that the Church be Biblically relevant and culturally appropriate.
Missiologist Ed Stetzer writes that Christian engagement with culture means knowing what bits of culture to adopt, to adapt, and to reject. There are many parts of culture that simply are not relevant to the church. As Christians, we must think more Biblically and then work out how life and mission intersect appropriately with culture. Inevitably, this will take a church much deeper into culture. It will help the church better communicate appropriately, and now, instead of your church being discipled by culture, your church is discipling, transforming, redeeming, and loving the culture it has found itself in.
To my culturally savvy, cool, hip and urban ministry friends and partners, what do you think are the marks and traits of a Biblically relevant, culturally appropriate church?
This post was originally posted here May 23, 2011 and includes an interesting comment section worth reading and adding to.
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