Relevance, Relate, Reclaim

Yesterday (July 13, 2015) I posted 3 questions on Facebook;

What if the church stopped trying to be relevant to the world and focused on being relevant to God?

What if we stopped trying to relate to the world and started helping the world relate to God through Jesus Christ?

What would being relevant to God look like?

 

Now I would like to address my thoughts on this area.

 

In considering the latest SCOTUS decision on marriage, I have been in conversations and prayer as to where the church can go from here.  While driving through the God blessed beauty of the Arcadia Valley, I realized what is at issue.  Relevance.

 

Now, before you say, “Yes, we know the church must be relevant so people will come”, I want you to know that this is not what I mean.  For years, the church has tried to be relevant to the world.  It has gone out of its way to be user friendly, to accommodate the needs of visitors and even to make sure only the “nice” parts of gospel are preached.  This has led to churches becoming less and less about the bible and more and more about the subject.  Topical sermon series have trumped biblical exegesis, and we have tried to blend in with the cultural.

 

We have even fooled ourselves into thinking that we were the culture.  The problem is thus; the church, this bride of Christ, was never meant to be a cultural conformist.  We are supposed to be about counter culture.  So when I speak of Relevance, I mean Relevance to God, not to the world.

 

You see, this misapprehension of cultural conformity has led many to be surprised and upset by the SCOTUS decision on marriage.  It is now laying down an air of fear and worry amongst “conservatives’ and “evangelicals”.  For those of us who really paid attention, we know the church has always been at odds with the world, as it should be.

 

The point of my questions is to help people realize that we have been working in the wrong direction.  Instead of being relevant to the world, the church should be working on being relevant to God.  We have become the Church of Laodicea (Revelation of John 3:15-16).  We are neither hot nor cold, and are due to be spit out.

 

In my mind, relevance is an issue of relationship.  Our relationship to God through Christ should be one as a bride to the bride groom.  Everything we do should bring glory and honor to God.  God should be first and foremost on our lips, hearts and minds.  Programs, sermons, music, worship and study should be focused on bringing pleasure to God, not bringing fulfillment to the masses.

 

We need to stop trying to be relevant to the world, and hold fast to our relationship with God, through Christ.  We need to reclaim our status as bride of Christ and be the church that Christ has called us to be. 

 

 

 

What will this look like?

 

Relevance to God will mean setting the bar higher than we have ever had it.  It will mean the ordained will need to go beyond anything they may have learned in Seminary. It will mean the Seminaries will have to raise the bar on their Orthodoxy.   It will mean transforming towards the image of God, not conforming to the world view.

 

As Clergy, it will mean holding ourselves more accountable.  It will mean once again becoming the spiritual leaders of our communities and holding up the office of Priest as more than just a vocation. It will mean taking seriously that what we bind on earth will be bound in heaven and what we loose on earth will be loosed in heaven (Matthew 16:19). It will mean stepping down from our high altitude pulpits and getting into the world.  It will mean living a life that can and should be emulated.  It also means to live to such a high standard, that if we are accused of anything, the accusation will have to be a lie.  (Christ’s accusers used lies and half-truths to convict him, why should we be left out.)  It will mean an end to the popularity contests that have enveloped the mega-church preachers of our day, and come back to being the humble servant-leaders we have all been called to be. 

 

Relevance for clergy may even mean our dress code must change with our practices.  It will mean making sure people can know God in the holy places and making sure those holy places are available to all.  It will mean keeping the congregation and the church discipline and adhering to the Whole gospel, not just the parts we like.  Theology, Dogma and Doctrine will need to be rediscovered and followed.  It may even mean removal of long cherished ministers and methods.   For some clergy, it may mean a re-think of vocation.

 

For the church, it will mean a complete re-think of what church is about.  It will mean a switch in focus on why we worship, and maybe even a removal of the entertainment aspect of worship services.   It will mean a purposeful focus on God, not the peripheral glance at the holy.

 

In essence, we need to reclaim the counter cultural church we should have been all along.  Our seminary studies should be more focused on the holy and less focused on the worldly.  Worship, Missions and Disciple making should be focused on God and bring glory to God.  Every aspect of church should be filtered through this question; “Will this bring Glory to God?”

 

In short, we need to be more worried about relating to God and less worried about how we relate to the world. 

 

The beauty of all this is that if we reclaim a focus on God, more people will come to know God than we can imagine.  If we become relevant to God, the church will be strengthened and will grow. 

 

The Scotus decision of June 27, 2015 should have awakened the church to the reality that we are pilgrims in an evil land.  The sooner we can come to grips with that concept, the sooner we can be the hope for the world.  We need to claim the counter cultural as our own, and we need to make sure that everything we do as a church is relevant to God.  Anything less falls short of the Glory of God.

 

All Praise and Thanksgiving be to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

 

Amen