Relevant

I love the way church is evolving to be a much "cooler" place! Trendy interior designs, abstract graphic designs, retro clothes, modern music and even out-of-the-box locations! I think it's all great!! But in the middle of all these changes, I think it must be said that changing the worship style, the location or the dress does not mean we're necessarily becoming more relevant to our world. These are just tweaks of the things we usually do. We're just updating our style.

Being "relevant" is more about a disposition of knowing, of understanding, of being on the same level as another than it is about representing our decade in style.

I believe the church at large understands these days that we need to be more relevant to our world. Praise God for this awareness!!

But it seems as though (at large) the only way we're doing this is by changing the outward aspect of our church behaviors. We wear jeans. We flash strobe lights during worship. We meet in coffee shops. Some churches even go so far as to promote that we not use churchy words like "blessing" (etc.). Awesome!!!! I love all these movements toward being less "stuffy" and more "natural"!!!!!!! It's definitely a start...

But we need to recognize that just because we wear jeans now instead of suits does not mean we're now automatically attracting the world to Jesus. It doesn't mean we're automatically now being more Christ-like in our approach.

...if you think about it, all these tweaks are very likely to only affect church-members (Christians now get to enjoy church more and get to feel more comfortable there)...but is the world really affected any differently??

A church can meet in a bar, play rock music and have its members only wear jeans...but still make anyone not like them feel uncomfortable; they can still stick their noses in the air to people who don't quite act like them. Church members can have tattoos all over their arms...but still make non-Christians feel as though God doesn't love them where they're at. Just because the church starts to look more natural to the world doesn't mean that the church actually now understands what the non-religious world perceives, feels or needs. And it doesn't mean that Christians are now treating non-Christians any differently than before.

We need to realize that going from suits to jeans is only a change in style. Adding strobe lights is only tweaking the worship. They alone don't transform the church to true relevancy.

A church that is considered super boring with only white walls, slow music and old fashioned suits can be more "relevant" than a state-of-the-art church with all its whistles and bells. A little, under-funded, old church can reach more unchurched because it takes the time to really perceive where the non-religious are coming from to know how to relate, than an ultra cool church with millions of dollars to fund its activities.

Relevancy goes so much deeper than just these outward expressions! Making a church relevant means changing the atmosphere between people. It means understanding the perceptions of the world we live in. It means changing our perspective to one that can think on the same level as others...so that when the unchurched is around us, they perceive that they are...

...understood and comfortable.
...allowed to be who they are.
...loved and respected, even when our differences are obvious.
...treated as equals, instead of being talked down on.
...empowered.
....valuable in and of themselves, (and I dare say) even without their changing to be who we would like them to be.

...free to find The Way, Truth and Life in their own way and in their own time (like we found The Way, Truth and Life in our own way and at our own time).

THIS is relevancy! (And becoming this way doesn't occur by creating a greater sense of "community" in church or by promoting the need to love others more, or etc. That's different. This list above is less about being "nice" and more about changing the way we view & think about the non-religious person. We can smile and sit beside a non-religious person every week at church but if we have a silent bias about who that person is, it will undoubtedly be perceived by the person. THIS is what I'm talking about...)

Being relevant is more about the abstract, internal character of the people in the church and how this affects the non-religious than it is about the external characteristics of the church services. Becoming relevant is changing our thought-processes. It's changing our disposition. Not just updating what we already do. If that's all we're doing - updating - then we should take the word "relevant" out and call it what it is: modernizing our style. Because being relevant to the world goes deeper...