Why Your Church Shouldn't Be Relevant

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:

1. The Marketplace – characterized by hard work, a drive for success, advancement, diligence, excellence, self-evaluation, and discipline.
2. 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. 

-Jer

You Lost Me

Ellen says...


Is the North American church overprotective, repressive, and shallow? "UnChristian" looked at outsiders and their perceptions of the church, and what we could do to respond to these very real concerns. With "You Lost Me", Kinnaman examines young insiders who have left disconnected from the church, giving them a voice and an opportunity for the church to respond in love.

About the resource...


You Lost Me by David Kinnaman
Paperback and Hardcover • Baker Publishing Group • 9780801013140

Millions of young Christians are disconnecting from church as they transition into adulthood. They're real people, not just statistics. And each one has a story to tell. The faith journeys of the next generation are a challenge to the established church, but they can also be a source of hope for the community of faith. Bestselling author of "UnChristian", David Kinnaman, with the help of contributors from across the Christian spectrum, offers ideas for pastors, youth leaders, parents, and educators to pass on a vibrant, lasting faith, and ideas for young adults to find themselves in wholehearted pursuit of Christ.



An excerpt... 

A generation of young Christians believes that the churches in which they were raised are not safe and hospitable places to express doubts. Many feel that they have been offered slick or half-baked answers to their thorny, honest questions, and they are rejecting the “talking heads” and “talking points” they see among the older generations. You Lost Me signals their judgment that the institutional church has failed them.

Whether or not that conclusion is fair, it is true that the Christian community does not well understand the new and not-so-new concerns, struggles, and mindsets of young dropouts, and I hope that You Lost Me will help to bridge this gap. Because of my age (thirty-seven) and my position as a researcher, I am often asked to explain young people to older generations and advocate for their concerns. I welcome the task because, whatever their shortcomings, I believe in the next generation. I think they are important, and not just because of the cliché “young people are the leaders of tomorrow.”

The story—the great struggle—of this emerging generation is learning how to live faithfully in a new context, to be in the world but not of the world. This phrase, “in but not of the world,” comes from Jesus’s prayer for his followers, recorded in John 17. For the next generation, the lines between right and wrong, between truth and error, between Christian influence and cultural accommodation are increasingly blurred. While these are certainly challenges for every generation, this cultural moment is at once a singular opportunity and a unique threat to the spiritual formation of tomorrow’s church. Many young adults are living out the tension of in-but-not-of  in ways that ought to be corrected or applauded, yet instead are often criticized or rejected.

In the vibrant and volatile story of the next generation, a new spiritual narrative is bubbling up. Through the lens of this project, I have come to understand and agree with some, though not all, of their grievances. Yes, we should be concerned about some of the attitudes and behaviors we encounter in the next generation of Christians, yet I also find reasons to hope in the best of what they have to offer. Apparently they are a generation prepared to be not merely hearers of doctrine but doers of faith; they want to put their faith into action, not just to talk. Yes, many young dropouts are stalled in their spiritual pursuits, yet a significant number of them are reinvigorating their faith with new ideas and new energy.

From this generation, so intent on reimagining faith and practice, I believe the established church can learn new patterns of faithfulness. You Lost Me seeks to explain the next generation’s cultural context and examine the question:

How can we follow Jesus—and help young people faithfully follow Jesus—in a dramatically changing culture?

Excerpt from You Lost Me by David Kinnaman. Copyright 2011, Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group. Used by permission.


DVD Resource coming Oct 2012

More free resources:
Video Interviews on New Day TV
Video Interviews on 100 Huntley St
Publisher's Page
Tables and Charts from the book

Born and raised on Vancouver Island, Ellen Graf-Martin now lives in the heart of Ontario’s Mennonite country with her husband Dan, where she continues to work in publishing and ministry.Learn more about her work at www.grafmartin.com