Relevance

What does it mean to be relevant when it comes to doing church? Whether that means being relevant in preaching, programming, nurturing, evangelism or anything else the church does? We hear a lot of churches say come and hear relevant messages. Or, we are a contemporary, causal and relevant church. What does this overused word mean?

Relevant is...

• Meeting people's felt needs and helping them to discover and fill their ultimate need- a life changing walk with Jesus Christ.
• Using methods to present the Gospel that are indigenous to your mission field specially in the area of worship.
• Watching your language and not using Christianese so that persons not "in" have a hard time understanding what in the world you are saying. People have not been to church have nop idea what a narthex, nave, doxology, atonement, or lectionary is.
• Preaching and teaching about relationships, marriage, raising kids, dealing with stress, finding purpose and meaning etc.- all in the context of the Biblical witness and always exalting Christ.

Relevant is not...

• Telling people what you think they need to hear.
• Expecting persons who have grown up with television, computers at age 5, MTV images every three seconds, and surround sound to sit through an hour to an hour and a half of linear worship with one or two talking heads.
• Simply putting up a screen, using movie clips, or playing contemporary Christian music.
• Arguing about the amount of water used in baptism, the color of the new carpet, whether to spend money on a newspaper ad or whether gay people should be allowed to become members of the church. We do this while people in our mission field are dying and going to hell, going hungry and have no place to lay their heads and suffer from physical, spiritual and emotional illnesses.