Relevant, something every Christian is supposed to be. The dictionary defines relevance as 'having to do with the matter in question'.So, for us as Christians, what is the matter in question, what or who are we supposed to be relevant towards?
The bible tells as us that we are supposed to be salt and light to the world (Matthew 5:13), that we are in fact supposed to make disciples of every person in this world (Matthew 28:19) and that we are ambassadors of Christ in this world (2 Cor 5:20). It is thus quite obvious from a scriptural perspective, that our relevance should be towards the people of this world. Any, idiot Christian, with half a brain can figure that out, or has at least read it on a bumper sticker.
The problem does not so much lie in the who, but rather in the how. You see, the church has adopted the attitude of being relevant as becoming what the world is, in order to reach the world. We see this play out in many churches in the Western culture, where churches pander to the desires of the church goers; giving them the music they want to sing, the sermons they want to hear and the coffee they want to drink.
The difficulty in becoming this kind of 'relevant' is that you in fact become exactly like the culture you want to reach. Eventually no difference can be found between the church and the culture it's trying to reach. The salt has lost it's saltiness.
Instead of becoming like the world, the church should instead model what the culture is yearning to become. You see, the kids at your high school do the dumb things they do because they are crying out for something that they don't have. The teenage girl sleeping around is looking for acceptance; the grown man drinking himself to death is looking for peace and the young women doing drugs is trying to numb the pain. How can we reach out to a culture if we become like them?
To be relevant we must have answers to the questions that the culture is screaming out to us: "Why is my dad beating me?", "Why do I feel the way I feel?", "What is my purpose in life?", "Who am I?", "Where am I going?". To be relevant we must have effective answers to these questions, answers that are based on truth, that have the power to pull people out of their hopeless situations.
As Christians, we owe it to the world to be relevant. If we just hang around with other Christians all day talking Christianese and attending Chris Tomlin concerts, we miss the fact that there is a world crying out for help, a world going to hell.
Jesus was relevant. He answered the questions that the culture of His day was asking. Jesus was so relevant, in fact, that those answers are still relevant to the questions every culture on earth is asking today. You see, the human condition stays the same. As much as we think we are different to people who lived two thousand years ago, we're not. We still want to know where we go when we die, why we do what we do and if the moon is made out of cheese. Friends, if we want to be relevant, if we want to answer the questions our unsaved friends are asking, we must present to them Jesus. Jesus plus nothing.
The apostle Paul was adamant about one thing in Acts 20:24 that he would continue on, no matter how bad things got, whether he was imprisoned, beaten or stoned, he would not stop professing the 'gospel of the grace of God'. Jesus is grace, Jesus is good news, Jesus is the gospel, Jesus is the hope to the hopeless, Jesus is our reason for living and breathing. It is all about Jesus.He is our Life, our Truth, our Light, our Saviour, our Healer, our Provider, our Peace, our Righteousness, and our Victory.
We can have as many self-help seminars, as many 10-step programs in our churches, as many outreaches, soup kitchens or summer camps as we want, but we will never be relevant if we don't point people to Jesus. If we don't point people to the Answer to all their problems, these problems will never be answered. A major problem in the body of Christ today is, that many Christians and Christians leaders don't truly believe that Jesus is enough. They may believe certain elements of what Jesus represented, but don't fully believe and teach that what Jesus accomplished on the cross was enough and that we just have to put faith in this finished work.
Jesus is the answer to the questions the world is asking. You are relevant if you have Jesus, you become effective when you preach Jesus, plus nothing. Believe it it's true.
1 comments:
Awesome. :)
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