‘Relevant’ is having direct bearing on the matter in hand, pertinent. My dad had a whole lot of stuff at his home which was not really relevant:- old switch gear from old telephone exchanges not used anymore, and which nobody wants except maybe someone who can think of some other use for its adaptation. One of the biggest problems in education is trying to help students see the relevance of what they are studying. I like applied maths better than pure maths for that reason. Without seeing the relevance it’s hard to be motivated.
Many fail to see the relevance of the church. D.H. Lawrence, the famous author, wrote; I know the greatness of Christianity…….I know that but for these early Christians, we should never have emerged from the chaos and hopeless disaster of the dark ages. If I had lived in the year 400, pray God that I should have been a true and passionate Christian, the adventurer. But now I live in 1924, and the Christian venture is done. The adventure has gone out of Christianity. We must start on a new venture toward God. Apparently he thought there was no point in looking to the church for a lead. Many have said similar things.
Whilst we would expect such calls from those who have no interest in the Scriptures, we notice that such calls for relevancy come from those who would be considered to be from the ranks of the religious. I have in my files an article cut out of the Toowoomba Chronicle some years ago where a newly -appointed Anglican bishop saw as his role to make the church more relevant for life in the 21st century (by church he means the Church of England, not the church of the New Testament, but it does highlight a common vein of thinking amongst many religious people).
Some speak of the vanishing role of the clergy. I have had more than one person wonder out loud, on finding out that I preached, just what do you do? They would have no problem if I had said I was a butcher or baker or candle-stick maker or a plumber or a painter or a bookmaker. I sometimes used to answer, tongue-in-cheek, Some would accuse me of not doing very much but it’s that weekend work that gets you down… Today things such as marriages and funerals, once the domain of preachers, are commonly officiated by secular celebrants. The secular view of life dominates and no wonder that the church is seen as irrelevant.
The question is, if the church is not relevant, who made it irrelevant? Certainly not God for He designed her to be relevant: it was the culmination of God’s redemptive plan worked out from eternity (Eph. 3:10,11). Interesting that some find God relevant but not the church, but that is ignorance of God’s design. The church is the saved (Acts 2:47). The gospel, which is the seed of the church, is still vital. The gospel is likened unto seed, and the power locked in a seed is incredible. I have read reports of seeds being taken from food stores left in Pharoahs’ tombs thousands of years ago, when planted in soil, sprouting to life. The gospel saves souls just as easily today as two thousand years ago when it was first broadcast.
Some years ago George Barna did a survey in the U.S., asking people if they believed that the churches of their area were relevant to the way they lived. Nearly 75% said they weren’t. We can only imagine what the figure would be if one were to do a similar survey in Australia. Part of the national stereotype of the average Australian is that we are supposed to be suspect of any form of authority, one of which is God. Some have suggested that Christianity would be more relevant if it were indigenized:- sing ocker hymns, burn gum leaves for incense, pass billy tea and damper around at the Lord’s Supper and so on. But as Bruce Wilson said in his book Can God survive in Australia, this solution would not work. They imply that if you wish to sell ice-chests in Australia, manufactured in Bethlehem and Nazareth and finished off in Canterbury or Rome, all you have to do is paint them wattle yellow or Ayer’s Rock red. The fact is that you will have great difficulty in selling even Australian-made ice chests today. Why? Because refrigerators have made obsolete the product itself. When it comes to the Christian religion it is not the packaging itself which Australians reject. They are questioning the relevance of the product itself.
I have no argument with the thought that the church has got to be relevant. I believe that the church that Jesus designed and built and continues to build is as relevant today as ever it was. I can understand why it is not perceived as so.
Denominational confusion is partly to blame. There are many people who see the relevance of God in human affairs, but cannot see the connection between God and the church. They don’t understand the vital connection between God and the church (Acts 2:47 – God adds the saved to the church). Jesus knew the importance of a united voice. As they say in politics disunity is death. The Devil knows this (Matt. 12:24ff). Can you imagine that Peter was a Catholic, Paul was a Methodist, John was a Mormon, Matthew a Baptist, James a Presbyterian, Andrew a Seventh Day Adventist, Thomas a Bahai’, Philip an Anglican, James a Jehovah’s Witness, Simon a Unitarian, Bartholomew a Lutheran, Jude a Quaker and Judas Iscariot thought one church was as good as another? And they were all guided into all truth?! Can you imagine the 3000 coming out of the waters of baptism on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2 and being divided up into a hundred denominations of about thirty members each? Acts 2:44 says they were all together. Why is it that people of the world can see the ridiculousness of that when so-called Christians can’t? No wonder people don’t think much of the church. These people contradict one another and yet they say they are all right – all preaching the truth!
The Toowoomba Chronicle, some years ago now, published some exerps from an interview with a Uniting Church minister commenting on the decision by his church to okay homosexuality. He asked How can a thing be sin and not sin at the same time? I reckon there’s a lot of people asking the same thing and shaking their heads saying These church people are crazy.
We are witnessing all sorts of attempts to accomplish relevancy. We live in an age obsessed with entertainment so religion has gotten into the entertainment industry, but you can’t compete with Hollywood, Bollywood, Nashville, Branson, et. al. And its soo self-defeating because if the church is only offering what the world offers and the world can do it bigger and better, what’s the point? If the church doesn’t have an unique reaon for existing, then get rid of it, I say. Ask a person if you have to be a member of their church to go to Heaven chances are high they’ll say ‘No’ – then what is the point of its existence? – it’s just clutter, surplus to requirements!
Some have tried the social gospel – being wholly concerned with man’s material and social needs. True, Scripture says As we have opportunity do good to all men, but that is not the unique reason for the church’s existence. Besides, can you really compete with Government-funded agencies and programs that cater for man’s physical and material needs?
So, how can the church be relevant? First, realise that the church will always be irrelevant in the eyes of many people. Some people are just carnal, fleshly, without a spiritual bone in their body. Their development has been purely in the physical area and can only relate to things of this world. Jude describes some as brute beasts, and Jesus counselled against casting pearl before swine. In this country we live in a prosperous age and traditionally in periods of prosperity man’s perceived need for God has tended to be miniscule. The history of the period of the Judges in ancient Israel bears out this pattern.
What we need to do is to show people what is real. Our technology has enabled us to control our environment better than the ancients. We may not be able to control the weather, but we see satellite photos of our atmosphere that enable us to determine whether we should take a brolly. We hop in our climate-controlled cars that allow us to see the pouring rain but which cocoon us in comfort to our home or office which are also insulated against the outside world, and we don’t have to go to the well for water, to the marketplace for the news, for all these things and many others are piped in and are at our fingertip control. We can fly faster than birds, and even jump out of aeroplanes at a great height, pull a ripcord, and a parachute will let us down gently lest we dash our foot against a stone. And the descent of the darkness of night is no terror, for we can flick a switch, and if we want, can light up the S.C.G. and play a game of cricket or Rugby league.
So we have built a comfortable enclave where we spend most of our life, and instead of worry about the environment we can adapt the environment to suit us. What need have we of God? Occasionally we get a little shaken – a death, a bushfire, a flood – but then we move on and insulate ourselves against those things to a large degree. What has happened is that in the control of various forces in the world we think we have obtained the power to create our own reality, our own morality. And for many people what I want to be true and and what is true is one and the same thing. I find it rather ironic that the church is considered to be out of touch with what is called this pie-in-the-sky-bye-and-bye philosophy. Wouldn’t that be a great reality? So modern reality believes that science has dispelled God and His heaven and the Devil and his Hell. We must keep telling the world it is God who establishes what is real – He made the universe and it is He who made us and not we ourselves.
Recently a preacher was recounting how he cursed in a sermon. No sooner had the word came out of his mouth than he saw children turn to their parents with their hands across their mouths and eyes wide is disbelief. What had he said? People who die outside of Christ will die and go to Hell. Shame it was that these children had not heard the word used in a Biblical context and they thought it was just a ‘bad’ word. What is worrying moreso is that if nothing is done then you don’t have to be an Einstein genius to look into your crystal ball and go forward a few years when these same little ones will be adults – elders, deacons, preachers, parents, Bible School teachers – and Hell will be no more real to them than El Dorado, Atlantis or never-never land. As it is, well over half of Australians don’t believe in Hell. A lot more believe in Heaven. Why? We think we create our own reality.
But things attributed to this technological generation are not unique to it – every generation thinks it is the one with whom wisdom will die – that it is superior in wisdom, insight and knowledge than the one before. We must preach the word (2 Tim. 4:2). Why? There is nothing else! We must show the world that it is short-sighted! Our generation is consumed with the here-and-now and has lost sight of eternal realities. In the first century Paul said the preaching of the gospel was a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks. We are like those Greeks:- they were into sports, and body image, and science, and politicking and philosophizing over a beer. But no matter how sophisticated we may paint it, its no different from that rich man in Luke 12 whose sole concern was in pulling down his barns to build greater to house his wealth which he was not able to take with him when he died that night!
Preach the word! Why? because people have itching ears and want fables and nice stories. Preach unto us lies, prophesy unto us deceits! (Isa. 30:10). We must tell the world what Heb.9;27 tells us – we have an appointment with death and judgment! We’re thrilled with medical advances but we’re still a long way from the record, held by Methuselah, who is not in any danger of losing it anytime yet – 969 years! Yet there is a three-word clause at the end of Gen. 5:27 – and he died. Then? John 12:48
The world doesn’t believe that old-fashioned moralities will mean anything at the judgment: that preaching an old-fashioned doctrine out of an old-fashioned book is relevant. And many a religious movement has succumbed to the pressure and decided the way to be relevant is to give people what they want. I tell you what’s relevant – telling people what sin is and how sin damns. Besides, for the church to be relevant its got to teach us to be better people, not wallowing in sin. I don’t find it surprising that religious movements that grow over the long run are those which encourage people to look up, grow up, and to shape up – to strive for higher things, not lower. Oh, churches that cater to whims and fads and fancies have an initial growth spurt because there are shallow people who are attracted, thinking they have been offered a good deal – a crown without a cross – salvation without repentance. But after a time they wane because there is no difference between that and the world, and besides, the world has more to offer.
It’s always been a problem. The church has always wanted to be accepted, for its more pleasant than being rejected, and it feels like souls are responding to the gospel. In early times when resistance was felt they persevered or wiped the dust off their feet – certainly they didn’t modify the gospel to make it more palatable. A new smooth cross might be more appealing but it won’t do what the old rugged cross will do. When Satan wanted to fight God what did he do? – he attacked God’s creation. When the Israelites of old didn’t like God’s message what did they do? – killed the prophets and stoned those sent unto them. They killed the messengers because of the message. Today the church stands as the symbol of all that is bothersome about God – God is in His Heaven but the church is here on earth, and it is easier to make a joke about the church than about God. The irrelevance of the church to many springs from the seeds of a giggle and a wink.
The church needs to tell the world that God is not mocked (Gal. 6:7,8). Man cannot live by bread alone and the church has got something relevant to say on this. Authorities are worried about our increasing dependency upon alcohol and other drugs. I saw an article in a paper a while go entitled Aussies rely on drugs to get through the day. I found it interesting that a secular institute, The Australian Institute, said, For decades we have all been striving for the good life. Now that most of us have it, a large proportion of the population seems to be dependent on medications and other substances to avoid falling into a more or less permanent state of anxiety, depression and despair. We are so blind to the failure of our materialism and secularism to give the good life than when a Government brings out a budget with more money for more Police, for more social workers, more counsellors, then we applaud it as a good successful responsible budget when it is simply a testament to failure in society.
What is being relevant? It’s wanting a better life with people of like mind to encourage me – that’s the church. It’s wanting help to know how to make good choices – that’s part of the church’s business (Titus 2:1 etc.). It’s wanting assistance in times of need – that’s church business. It’s wanting freedom from guilt – the church addresses that.. It’s wanting life to go on – the church preaches the gospel of eternal life.