{"id":363,"date":"2009-06-27T00:25:56","date_gmt":"2009-06-27T00:25:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/june-qhow-relevant-is-relevancyq\/"},"modified":"2014-01-23T01:28:58","modified_gmt":"2014-01-23T01:28:58","slug":"june-qhow-relevant-is-relevancyq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/june-qhow-relevant-is-relevancyq\/","title":{"rendered":"How Relevant is Relevancy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a generation now the church has been concerned about whether or not the world is listening to our message.\u00a0 Books and articles continue to bemoan our plight of a decreasing effectiveness in evangelism and church attendance.\u00a0 This has caused many to make drastic changes to the methodology and polity of the church.\u00a0 But even with the major overhauls that have taken place, still many are not satisfied with the results.\u00a0 Our postmodern culture has caused the church to run the spectrum of styles from seeker sensitive to the emergent church.\u00a0 At the same time, many contemporary church proponents continue to be critical of traditional churches.<\/span><\/p>\n

One recent article,1<\/sup> written by a professor of writing and communications at a major university, expressed concern about what messages we are sending to the world by the way we conduct our church services.\u00a0 After visiting a number of fundamental Baptist churches, he \u201cmade an ethnographic analysis of the speech codes that we unconsciously use in our subculture.\u201d\u00a0 He means that he noticed a number of ways in which the world seems to be turned off by our church services.\u00a0 His use of \u201csubculture\u201d to describe our churches seems backward to me since I rather see the world as a subculture and the New Testament as a divine culture.\u00a0 But, of course, my point of view, according to this author, would be part of the (so-called) problem!<\/p>\n

First, he says, \u201cMuch of the speaking we do in church is unintelligible to outsiders.\u201d\u00a0 He sees our churches loaded with assumptions about the way people relate to one another.\u00a0 We talk of \u201chaving fellowship\u201d among believers, of \u201cwitnessing\u201d to unbelievers, and even of \u201chaving devotions\u201d with God.\u00a0 These kinds of expressions, the author thinks, are \u201cextremely strong forms of negation\u201d toward outsiders.<\/p>\n

Second, \u201cOur church buildings have few crosses.\u201d\u00a0 He explains that our churches have a pulpit with a preacher giving a \u201ctop-down\u201d monologue rather than a two-way dialogue.\u00a0 The Bible is our \u201cdominant symbol.\u201d\u00a0 The author wishes we could find other ways (having more icons?) of being more \u201cwelcoming\u201d to visitors.<\/p>\n

Third, the author relates how university professors have difficulty teaching Christian students in secular schools how to compose arguments.\u00a0 These students seem to think the Bible ends all arguments.\u00a0 \u201cBy refusing to do research [is this really true or just someone\u2019s opinion?] and construct arguments, these students were reinforcing the stereotype of Christians as obscurantist Bible thumpers.\u201d\u00a0 As a conclusion he says (of student essay contests), \u201cMy burden is that a theme of \u2018Balancing Biblical Truth and Cultural Relevance\u2019 should be an occasion for us to look beyond the discourses we use in church.\u00a0 We must rethink the unconscious messages by which our subculture alienates visitors.\u201d<\/p>\n

These kinds of thoughts are not new.\u00a0 The church has been wrestling with relevance for most of the last century.\u00a0 Before I give some rhetorical questions of my own, I want to say that\u00a0 we shouldn\u2019t lose ourselves in a minimalist mindset.\u00a0 Of course we do some things for the sake of visitors.\u00a0 Common courtesies, general cleanliness, friendly environment, even modern conveniences are things anyone would do when hosting visitors.\u00a0 The weightier issues here, however, have to do with the operation of the church itself; with whether or not we are changing New Testament Christianity to fit the world\u2019s desires.\u00a0 If we change what we are convinced we ought to be, are we even being honest with those who come in among us?<\/p>\n

Are we worried about a belligerent minority?<\/h2>\n

Are we attempting to reconstruct the whole house because of one squeaking door?\u00a0 When studies are made about cultural relevancy, the laboratory mice are always the teenagers, college students, or similar groups with a specific world view.\u00a0 Some years ago now, I engulfed myself in a study of postmodernism.\u00a0 It seemed that I saw everyone and everything through the lens of metanarrative, semiotics, or deconstruction.\u00a0 I finally had to slap myself back into reality and realize that the great majority of people I sit next to in the restaurant or pump gas next to at the gas station not only don\u2019t know or care about these terms, they don\u2019t fit into these categories anyway.\u00a0 I\u2019m not saying that these things don\u2019t pose a threat to our society, but I am suggesting that the church has overestimated postmodernism\u2019s effect on the majority of people.<\/p>\n

We ought to at least agree that Christianity has faced many things in its two thousand year history and it never profited by changing its message or methods to fit the temporary cultural winds.\u00a0 Jesus first instructed His disciples to enter into a town with the message of the kingdom and if there were those who were \u201cunworthy\u201d of the message and wouldn\u2019t receive it, they were to shake the dust off their feet and move on (Matt. 10:11-15).\u00a0 I don\u2019t think the Lord was teaching hard-heartedness or cultural obscurantism, but I think He was teaching us to not lose our heads when some in our society won\u2019t hear the message.\u00a0 At times that belligerent group may be large or small, but it should not affect the gospel presentation.<\/p>\n

\n

Should we continue down a proven slippery slope?<\/h2>\n

Surely we know by now that few things move from liberal to conservative, but rather almost always from conservative to liberal.\u00a0 The twentieth century alone is sufficient to warn us of individuals and groups who were once fundamental and solid in their Biblical convictions but through a sincere desire to reach more people have gone off into compromising arrangements from which they never returned.<\/p>\n

The apostle John warned the church not to bid \u201cGod speed\u201d (or \u201cGod bless\u201d) to those who have deviated from the message of Christ (2 John 10-11).\u00a0 To do so is to fellowship or partake in their wrong actions.\u00a0 We never gain more evangelistic results by compromising the truth of Scripture.\u00a0 Aren\u2019t we doing that with a lost world when we adopt their methods of worship and bring those into our churches?\u00a0 Many Baptist groups slid down this slope but few have recovered.\u00a0 They merely redefined their new position as fundamental.\u00a0 Our soteriological methods must always be governed by our doxological convictions.<\/p>\n

\n

Should\u00a0churches be sanctuaries or half-way houses?<\/h2>\n

Is it the purpose of the local church to reform the unregenerate or to strengthen the saints?\u00a0 Should we make our services debating contests or places of fellowship and admonition?\u00a0 It is interesting how those questions sound politically incorrect to our ears.\u00a0 We have been so conditioned by our culture that to think of the church as a sanctuary apart from the world, a place of rest from the battlefield, a realm of safety for our families, makes us feel as if we are somehow cowards or apathetic.<\/p>\n

How can we read the book of Acts and the Epistles and miss this?\u00a0 Read Acts 4:23ff; 5:12-14; 18:6-8; 19:9-10.\u00a0 It does not follow that because the church creates a sanctuary for the saints that the church will do less in evangelism.\u00a0 To the contrary, the church must teach, admonish, comfort, worship, and pray if it is going to be effective in evangelism.\u00a0 We must retreat to our training facilities if we are to perform mightily on the field!\u00a0 Our practices (to continue the analogy) are not closed to outsiders, but they are closed to the advice and control of outsiders.\u00a0 The church as the church will produce believers who are ready and able to truly evangelize.<\/p>\n

Do heralds bargain with the Master\u2019s message?<\/h2>\n

I\u2019m sure we would all agree that they do not.\u00a0 But some evidently feel that changing methodologies does not violate that principle.\u00a0 Our word for \u201cpreacher\u201d comes from the New Testament word for \u201cherald (kerux\u20142 Tim. 1:11).\u201d\u00a0 He was a trusted agent of the king who spoke the king\u2019s message to the people.\u00a0 He had no right to change or barter that message.\u00a0 His method of proclaiming the message was \u201cpreaching\u201d (kerusso\u20142 Tim. 4:2).\u00a0 The message itself was the subject of the preaching (the kerygma\u20142 Tim. 4:17).<\/p>\n

If we really believe the Bible is our authority for faith and practice, then we have no right to rearrange our practices because those we are preaching to don\u2019t like it.\u00a0 That may grieve our hearts and may even cost us relationships but it cannot change our devotion.<\/p>\n

\n

Are we to evangelize or win the world?<\/h2>\n

There is a vast difference between faithfully proclaiming our faith to whomever will listen, and insisting that every listener must accept our faith.\u00a0 We are commissioned to preach the gospel to every creature (Mk. 16:15-16) but not to win every creature.\u00a0 We don\u2019t baptize every nation but the converts from every nation (Matt. 28:19-20).\u00a0 We are to be \u201cwitnesses\u201d in all the world but there will be both times of revival and persecution.\u00a0 Must we insist that our time\u00a0 be a time of great revival?\u00a0 Must we say that if we are in one of those difficult times that we are doing something wrong?\u00a0 God doesn\u2019t ask us to evaluate our evangelism or our faith by how others respond.\u00a0 That is the Holy Spirit\u2019s business and we should be satisfied with His decisions.<\/p>\n

\n

Does our generation really not understand us?<\/h2>\n

Does the average American citizen have a difficult time following a simple sentence with nouns and verbs?\u00a0 Does even the punk rocker not know what we are saying when we speak of the gospel of Christ?\u00a0 I think he understands perfectly and reacts according to his conscience.\u00a0 We\u2019ve been watching too many TV shows and reading too many vogue magazines and watching too many Hollywood movies.\u00a0 The generations, cultures, and faiths may have their own homey way of speaking within their circles (where would the world be without such variety?) but to say that one cannot be understood by the others is to be a bit culturally myopic.<\/p>\n

The Bible does say that the lost man cannot grasp spiritual things (1 Cor. 2:14) and that unless the Holy Spirit works in his heart he will call it all foolishness.\u00a0 But this is not the same as saying he cannot understand language.\u00a0 Besides, if he could not even understand our language, then there would be no purpose to evangelism at all.\u00a0 The lost man understands all too well the claims of Christ.\u00a0 We are the ones who are uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

Do we really want to be like the world?<\/h2>\n

Are some trying so hard to be \u201cunderstood\u201d by the world because they love it more than the church?\u00a0 One has to wonder what the motivation is for turning the church of Jesus Christ into a cultural retreat for the world.\u00a0 If the local church assembly is to be designed by sinners, where do the saints find fulfillment for the New Testament commands of Christ?\u00a0 Where is the reverence?\u00a0 Where is the specifically Christian fellowship?\u00a0 Where is the love of the brethren?\u00a0 Where is the place to do the business of the church decently and in order?<\/p>\n

Some say that they make these changes in the church service for the sake of the lost who are there.\u00a0 But if they see that no lost are there for a particular hour, do they quickly dispense with all that and have a normal service?\u00a0 No, these changes are made for Christians who like it that way.\u00a0 It is because they spend the other six days of the week watching American Idol that they cannot bring themselves to love the church on Sunday.\u00a0 John wrote, \u201cThey are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them.\u00a0 We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us.\u00a0 Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error\u201d (1 John 4:5-6).<\/p>\n

\n

And So . . . .<\/h2>\n

Cultural relevancy is not all it\u2019s cracked up to be.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t the first generation of believers who have found themselves on the outside of cultural elitism. History and eternity will judge how we hold the banner behind a long line of faithful men and women.\u00a0 \u201cLet us not be weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.\u201d<\/p>\n

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For a generation now the church has been concerned about whether or not the world is listening to our message.\u00a0 Books and articles continue to bemoan our plight of a decreasing effectiveness in evangelism and church attendance.\u00a0 This has caused many to make drastic changes to the methodology and polity of the church.\u00a0 But even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[123],"tags":[143,170,148,136],"class_list":["post-363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-church","tag-methodology","tag-modernism-postmodernism","tag-progressivism-conservatism"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Relevant is Relevancy? - Aletheia Baptist Ministries<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/june-qhow-relevant-is-relevancyq\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Relevant is Relevancy? 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