Truth and Relevance

Christianity must be relevant. I hear this so often nowadays. Our church won’t grow until it becomes relevant. People in our community won’t join us until we show them that Christianity is relevant to their lives. Do you hear this? Do you agree with it?

I agree with it. I believe that we need show that the church is relevant. We need to provide people with ways into the church ways to discover it‘s relevance. These things might be parenting courses or toddler groups or things of this sort. However, we need to be careful. Are we, in trying to make the church relevant, providing people with their pudding without providing them with their main course? In today’s society people believe that truth is found in the fact that something works for them, makes them feel good. If something makes you feel good it must be right. You go to yoga and you feel more relaxed and therefore you agree that the systems behind it holds some truth for you. You go to your doctor with a headache and he gives you some medicine and it works you therefore have trust in that medicine and in the doctor (even if all he gave you was a tic-tac). What if the church is doing this? We are providing things for people that make everything feel ok. We’ve looked after their children, we’ve taught them to be better parents and how to drug-proof their kids. We’ve made them feel relaxed and comfortable. They feel good about themselves, they feel there is truth for them in what they’ve been experiencing. The question is though, what have they been experiencing? It isn’t Christianity. It might be the love of Christians, it might be some life skills initiative, but where is the challenge of the gospel? Where is the connection between what Christians can offer and what they really believe.

The church has something that is relevant. Our job is to show people just how relevant it is to them. At present aren’t we acting like a company who finds a cure for HIV, Cancer and all other known diseases and markets it as a cure for a headache? People buy it thinking that it is relevant to them as they get headaches. It’s only years later that, in a bored moment, they read the little leaflet and find in the small print that it also cures everything else. Yet they’ve only been taking it twice a year to cure a headache. These people may have died because they were only shown a superficial aspect of the drug and therefore not put it’s saving powers to work.

If, as we believe, Christianity is true and the claims of the Bible and Jesus are true then Christianity is relevant. We need to celebrate it’s truth and relevance. Are we not moving towards putting the trimmings of Christianity on display and not showcasing it’s truth, relevance and main draw. We are trying to sell Christianity through offering parenting skills, children’s groups, youth entertainment and so on when Christianity has to offer the complete forgiveness of sins, eternal life, a relationship with our creator, help on earth and a hope for the future, being a part of the body of Christ and so much more. If that is not relevant to people’s lives I don’t know what is.


Footnote: Please don’t get me wrong I believe that such initiatives that reach out into the community such as parenting courses and toddler groups (I run one myself) are brilliant and I’d love to see more of them. However, I do believe that we need to look at the whole picture and see how these initiatives are used to move people from the fringes of faith to a full belief in the saving power of Jesus Christ. We have a huge responsibility to the people on the fringes of our church not to let them stay there.