UPDATE: Somehow a few people discovered this six-month old post and made a few comments. I was going to just respond in the comment section, but I thought I would respond in the post, because this comes at a time when I’m re-thinking the whole relevance idea.

It’s interesting they’ve made these comments because I just came out of a church planting class where the consultant (Jim Griffith) made the comment that churches are EITHER relevant or irrelevant. Especially in a musical worship context, genuine missionaries want relevance, they indigenously come to their people where they are at in their language. And what’s more: excellence is no substitute for relevance. A church can have a Julliard trained organist and pianist and be wholly unrelevant for a particular people group.

So six months later I think I now see how it is a both/and situation: in order to be missional you must be relevant. Period. I guess my original angst over this word was in response to something I read consistently by anti-emergent authors/talking heads. My ears start burning when I hear fundie detractors claim the gospel is some how compromised by being…”relevant.” As if any of us can remove ourselves from our culture anyway… And here’s the thing: those detractors think that their way of doing church from the 1950’s is everything that is holy and pure about the Bride of Christ! As if an organ and piano wasn’t relevant back in the day…geesh!

I guess we do need missional, relevant churches that are reaching TODAYS culture with the good news of wholeness and shalom through Jesus. But I guess where I begin to break out in hives is when we think we need to dress up the Bride in fancy doodads to make her ATTRACTIVE. But where is the balance, then, between being relevant/missional and inauthentically attractive?

Any ideas? Because I’m sorta wondering myself as I’m shifting in my understanding of this whole idea of the church being relevant…

-jeremy

In light of my post a few days ago on being missional by doing life with your iPod, I thought I would re-post some thoughts on the difference between relevant and missional. Relevance is not the point or mission of the church, missionality is. Do you understand the distinction? Do you think there is one? To which does the church usually default?

I see this mistake made often by traditional church folk who are critical of us younger evangelicals, and I want to briefly address this very significant distinction. D. A. Carson in his book “Becoming Conversant With the Emerging Church” makes the same critical error, so I’ll try and hold myself back! Look at some of these quotes from his book:

By contrast, although the emerging church movement challenges, on biblical grounds, some of the beliefs and practices of evangelicalism, by and large it insists it is preserving traditional confessionalism but changing emphases because the culture has changed, and so inevitably those who are culturally sensitive see things in a fresh perspective.

Is there at least some danger that what is being advocated is not so much a new kind of Christian in a new emerging church, but a church that is so submerging itself in the culture that is risks hopless compromise? (emphasis added)

Relevant is Michael Jackson changing his look each new album. Relevant is the modern, seeker-church who changes it’s name, decor, music style, and dresscode to show former church-goers that it isn’t as stoogy as it was back in the day. Relevant is the DC-metro mega-church who thinks it needs Starbucks to make it approachable.

Relevance is not what the postmodern emerging church is about.

Technorati Tags: christianity, da carson, emerging church, missional

Being missional is what New Tribes Missions does when it approaches the hundreds and thousands of people groups in the Phillipine Archipelago. Being missional is what Paul did when he taught the Church to be all things to all people so that by all possible means we may liberate some in Christ. Being missional is about observing and understanding a given cultures values, language, customs, fears, and doubts, and translating the truths of Jesus to that culture. A missional community of faith listens, looks, learns, and links to its community–and demands that Jesus’ vision for the Kingdom of God become the vision of the Church.

Hopefully, you can see the distinctions, because they are significant, especially if you desire to understand the emerging church. Scot McKnight, a wonderful academician at North Park University in Illinois who has blogged quite a bit on the emerging church, puts it this way:

Missional means grasping a total picture of each society as God wants it, and it asks how it is possible for each Christian to participate in what God wants and is doing in this world. It breaks down the barrier between secular and sacred, between the spiritual and the secular, and between the holy and the profane.

be missional,
-jeremy