One of the things that we’ve been discussing recently at Mack (Mackintosh Evangelical Church, my church here in Cardiff) is our outreach – how can we really be sharing the love of God with a needy world? We met on Wednesday to consider what we’re doing at the moment, and to think and pray about where to go from here, and I’m really encouraged that we’re doing this.
There’s plenty I could say on the subject, and I’m sure I’ll come back to it, but I found (via Dan Edelen at Cerulean Sanctum) an interesting series of blog posts entitled Relevance or Faithfulness? on the blog GospelDrivenLife. As I’m sure you realise, it’s a false dichotomy, and Mark Lauterbach has some interesting thoughts on the subject that are relevant to the questions we’re facing as a church.
I think the idea of “relevance” is one that’s much misunderstood. If Christians seek to be relevant by aping the attitudes and lifestyle of those around them, then what have we really got to say to the world that is actually worth saying? If we water down the Gospel then we make ourselves irrelevant. The difference between Christians and non-Christians is frequently superficial, lying in the language we use and our social habits, rather than there being any real difference in the basis on which we operate our lives. We need to have a deep distinctiveness communicated in the cultural language of those around us.
I’m reading Isaiah at the moment, and he, like many of the prophets, was cutting-edge relevant to the times in which he lived – relevant, in the sense of taking society to task on all the ways in which it was going wrong. That’s the kind of relevance we need to have – modelling Christian living as a challenge and alternative to the ways of the world around us. Challenge consumerism with contentment, apathy with passion, and the idolatory of self and pleasure and success with the Kingdom of God!