Negative99

Sit back… this may get preachy! For my non-Christian readers, this could go totally over your head, yet it may be very pertinent to you where you are in your spiritual journey. For my Christian readers, just know that I prayerfully ruminated on this for weeks before deciding to blog it. I encourage all to read and use your minds.

The following message from Pastor Stan Key was printed on the front of the Worship Guide on January 15th, 2006, for Loudonville Community Church (LCC):

When I was growing up, churches seemed to compete with one another in an effort to be “holier than thou.” But the game has now changed. It seems the competition among churches today is centered on the effort to be “trendier than thou.”

Our praise band is better than yours… Our jumbotron screens are bigger… Our services are more seeker-friendly… Our pastor is cooler… Our ministry is edgier… Our cappuccino lattés between services are frothier…

The temptation to be relevant is great. But it is a temptation. In a desire to reach the unreached, the seduction is strong to think that newer is truer, later is greater, and bigger is better. We begin to actually believe that we must marry the spirit of the age in order to have an impact. Dean Inge captured the false allure of such thinking in his celebrated line, “He who marries the spirit of the age soon becomes a widower.”

Jesus saw through such seduction. The devil tempted him to turn stones to bread. “Give people what they want,” he seemed to hiss. But Jesus did not take the bait. Thank God! Man does not live by bread alone. He looked beyond our wants and saw our need.

The race to be trendier-than-thou is self-defeating. Not only does the church who falls into this seduction become guilty of what C. S. Lewis calls “chronological snobbery,” but this is the surest path a church can take to cultural irrelevance! The passion to be up-to-date is the surest recipe for becoming out-of-date. A church whose main purpose is to be “cutting-edge” will soon become either inconsequential or a place where a “different gospel” is preached. Years ago, Simone Weil said it well: “To be always relevant, you have to say things which are eternal.” I am slowly learning that the best way to be “cutting edge” is to be “retro.” Preach the Word. Study the Bible. Love your neighbor. Confess your sins. Do this, and many will wonder what you are up to! It is the things that make us different from the world that makes the Gospel attractive.

As your pastor, I want you to know that I am deeply committed to being counter-cultural. When people accuse me of being oldfashioned and out-of-step with contemporary trends, I say, “Thank you for the complement.” The only way I know to be truly “cutting-edge” is to preach the full Gospel of Jesus Christ! Let’s recommit ourselves to being in the world…but not of it!

Pastor Stan

A little background… our local newspaper, the Albany Times Union, had just coincidentally (or not so) featured a BIG front page spread on two other churches in the area, Northway Fellowship and Grace Fellowship. The article, titled Reconciling Religion and Relevance, praised these two “modern” churches for shedding many tired traditions of men and embracing cultural relevance. These two churches also happen to have thriving praise and worship ministries. The article boiled down to this… the Gospel message delivered in a relevant vehicle and mixed with a solid worship ministry was a recipe for church growth and cultural outreach.

On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock.
- Thomas Jefferson

I don’t believe it was a mere coincidence that Pastor Stan’s message, suggesting relevance is a temptation, appeared just after the article Reconciling Religion and Relevance was published. Indeed, his message seems to be a counter-point to this article. But unlike the churches in the article, LCC is not currently marked by sharp growth, nor a thriving worship ministry, so it’s hard not to think Grace and Northway aren’t being specifically targeted since they match the description Pastor Stan gives so well… they have better worship teams, edgier ministries, seeker-friendlier services, and at least one, in fact, serves cappuccino lattés between services (and they’re as tasty as they are frothy).

Nobody can deny that sacrificing sound Biblical doctrine in order to achieve some kind of über-current, super-relevant, contemporary church is definitely wrong. What I will deny is that a church has to sacrifice scriptural truth to be culturally relevant. It doesn’t. They aren’t even related. Some churches are both relevant and scriptural… some are just one of those… and some are neither.

In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, diversity; in all things, charity.
- Augustine

I don’t think anybody would argue against the case for a church being scriptural, but what about being relevant? Is relevance a temptation? Let me ask you this… how can you reach people if you aren’t relevant? We are all in this culture, like it or not. We’re all part of our society, be it as it may. We can lock ourselves in our steepled buildings and thank the Lord that we’re not like other people… or we can be Christ-like and start affecting people where they are. After preaching in the synagogues Jesus would go preach in the streets… and then go into the houses of the “un-churched” and eat and drink wine with them.

There may be some in today’s church who will read Pastor Stan’s message and take it to an extreme… they may take it as a green light for us to choose our favorite moment in time (usually the 1950’s or the 18th century) and lock ourselves, our praise, our message, our language, and our minds in that time period. Indeed, if you look around at today’s churches this is the norm. Talk about “chronological snobbery”! Somehow I don’t think being caught in a time-warp is going to draw non-time-travelers to the cross. How would it? We’re not going to reach people if we refuse to use the communication vehicles of their culture. I remember stories of early missionaries to some of the most remote mountain villages in the Eastern hemisphere… where Western pipe organs would be hauled at great expense to the newly established churches so that they could worship the “right way” with the “right songs”. People to this day still swear that the King James Bible (written in a language no longer spoken) is the only so-called God-breathed English Bible translation. Can you imagine?

If self-righteousness were an art form, many Protestants’ work would be in the Guggenheim!
- Brad Stine, Being a Christian Without Being an Idiot

NEWS FLASH: Right now… it’s now. It used to be then, but we passed then. We’re at now, now. As Christians, living now, we’re called to be relevant. We are here to affect our communities, and we can’t do that if we aren’t using the styles and communication vehicles of the culture. But why wouldn’t we do that in the first place? What so possesses a Christian to discard their own present-day styles? These are our styles, too! Yet, there still exist in today’s churches (in surprising numbers) “chronological snobs” who insist that sacred hymns put to centuries old tunes (tunes which have passed out of musical relevance) are the epitomy of true Biblical praise and worship… while those same hymn lyrics put to modern, relevant musical arrangements are discounted as attempts at being trendier-than-thou. Some even claim that the new arrangements are sinful, and even pornographic?!

I’m worried that some “chronoligical snobs” might read Pastor Stan’s message and see it as Biblical justification for their snobbery. Indeed, it’s hard not to read it any other way… and I was fairly concerned with the fact that he didn’t have anything good to say about relevance. A Wesleyan I work with thought it sounded like a classic bait-and-switch… using the fear of compromising sound doctrine to justify cultural reclusion. Unfortunately, that interpretation is pretty much how it reads.

relevant - adjective :: applicable, pertinent, material, significant, directly related and connected to the subject, object or issue

antonyms :: irrelevant, extraneous, immaterial, inapplicable, inconsequential, insignificant, unimportant, meaningless, pointless, senseless, useless, inappropriate, inapt, unsuitable

Sources :: Answers.com and Wiktionary

We need to preach the Word, study the Bible, and love our neighbors, and we need to do these in a deliberate, relevant, culturally effectual way… else we’ve done them in vain. Pastor Stan is right to implore us to let nothing compromise scripture and the Gospel message, but I am saddened to see relevance (in style and trend) being seemingly confused with the compromise of sound Biblical doctrine. I know that both can be embraced… and I know this because it was Christ’s example.

Good links: Relevant Magazine :: Acts 29 Network
Great read: Radical Reformission