Well, I normally don’t post two posts in one day but I think this post at churchrelevance.com needed to be looked at with a careful and prayerful eye.
The broad answer to a pretty narrow (not narrow-minded, just narrow in scope) question was this:
Do whatever it takes to get the best result. The result is more important that the methods. In other words, what you achieve is far more important than how you achieve it. The only exception is that prayer should be part of the equation.
This seems like a very scary answer to me. Now, I’m all for the church being a place that is relevant to today’s culture. To me, there are few worse things than a church that doesn’t understand culture and what’s hapepning in the culture. Without understanding it, or at least having a general idea of what’s happening, it’s hard to battle it. And let’s face it, while some of today’s culture is good, most of it is worth opposing.
When we start to sacrifice essentials by saying that certain methods don’t matter to become more relevant, we’ve got a problem. People say, “We need to make the Bible more relevant,” so perhaps they might water down the message a bit. What they need to be saying is, “We need to show the people how relevant the Bible already is,” and make ourselves humble enough to have open, loving, understanding and honest conversations with people and live our lives in a way that shows the Bible is relevant.
So, relevance is important to some degree, but we really need to be careful about its downfalls. Mark Batterson says that one of the core values of National Community Church is “irrelevance is irreverance.” To a point, that’s true. If Jesus did not understand the Jewish culture, He would have had a hard time reaching those within it, which is what He did. But, interestingly enough, He was counter-culutural the entire time. He was giving enough reverance to His Father by entering and understanding the culture, but His mission was to change the culture completely, which He did. If He hadn’t, and just fully embraced the culture He was in, we’d all still be trying to get saved by the Law, and Jesus wouldn’t have been reverant to His Father’s will at all.
So, this quote from churchrelevance.com is almost essentially saying (and forgive me if I’m wrong here), “Because we’re in today’s culture, we can grab a hold of the fact that the end justifies the means. What you achieve is far more important than how you achieve it.” Now, by no means do I think that the person who answered this question means to give freedom for unbiblical actions, but it almost does give freedom for exactly that. So what’s the danger of the method not mattering?
- You want to build up a music ministry in your church and have several volunteers who are interested in being involved. However, you want perfection, so your method to build up your ministry is to push to the church council (leadership, executive team, whatever) that you need to hire professional musicians. You persuade the leadership that you’re right and they agree. You’ve now burned all your volunteers, possibly hired musicians who aren’t followers of Jesus, and might not have the budget to pay all of these musicians. You achieved the result you wanted: perfection in the music ministry, but the method hurt a lot of people along the way.
- You want to have a great sound mix every week, but you’re the only one who knows how to mix the sound. Your method to have a great sound mix is to be exactly that, the only one that knows how to mix the sound. You take control and posession of that area and never train anyone else to do it. Soon, you’re burnt out and people are afraid to even ask if they can be involved in that area of ministry. You achieved the result you wanted: great mix every week, but now you’re burnt out and no one will talk to you.
- You desire to have everyone in your church tithe. You realize after teaching on tithing that not everyone is doing it. You decide that the method you will use to get more people tithing is that you will confront all of those who aren’t tithing. You basically tell the ones who aren’t tithing that they shouldn’t be a part of the ministry if they aren’t supporting it. Those people leave and you’re left with no money at all, and no ministry. In this method, the result of getting more people to tithe isn’t even close to achieved.
These are maybe extreme examples, but I’m sure they’ve happened. And what about the people that take this question and follow it without following Biblical principles? I can’t imagine what that might lead to.
So, being relevant is good. The Bible is already relevant, we just need to teach and show how. However, I believe we need to carefully select our methods to achieve great results. Sure, if the method doesn’t work and the result is continually bad because of that method, by all means, find a new way. But let’s be careful about just doing whatever produces the best result.
