Being Relevant

That's the new byword in church talk today--relevance.  Here's a good definition: Being relevant to a community means sharing a meaningful connection with a community beyond traditional audiences.

I like that. I want to be relevant, especially culturally relevant, so I can connect. In fact, we are all about that. Our church,Vida Abundante, started out being a Hispanic church, but now we see it becoming relevant to a whole lot of other cultures.

Not all Hispanics are Mexican. There are 21 different Spanish speaking countries in the world and they are all culturally different. In fact, their Spanish is often different among themselves.

Not only do we have Spanish language representation from several countries, but we also have people from China, Japan, and just last night some wonderful people originally from Romania joined us for phenomenal worship.

So with all that, we want and need to connect culturally with these different groups.  We want to be relevant. We want anyone to feel free to come, no matter how different they are, and worship freely with us.

In establishing a culture of relevance, we have to also work with our people to accept differences, to open their minds to different ways of approaching life.  Culture is set through tradition as a series of values, language, and approaches to life that are all passed generationally.  It's how you were raised at home.

Cultural relevance can be tricky. Sometimes people swing on a pendulum too far.  Sometimes people have a tendency of  taking truth too far to where it becomes obscured into something else. Sometimes they get sensitive about it and it becomes a pet doctrine or even a religion to them.

Some people have carried themselves too far on the relevance pendulum and they missed the jumping off point. In order to become more relevant, they started looking and acting like the ones to whom they were trying to be culturally relevant.

Sometimes I wear my Mexican boots to church. The folks love it. I'm not trying to become Mexican in order to reach them, I'm just relating by showing my appreciation for their culture. I can't fool anyone, there's no way I can become Mexican, Chinese, or any other nationality. But, I can share in some of their cultural symbols and create a tone of acceptance.

I can do that as long as I remain true to my values and the compass that guides me.

I've seen those who didn't jump off the pendulum in time do some crazy things in order to show they were accepting of different cultures.

For me, I want a pastor who is ahead of me. I'm not looking for my spiritual leader to be just like me. I want him or her to be my role model, to set the bar high, and to challenge me to reach lofty goals. I'm afraid if that leader were just like me, I wouldn't be inspired to go further or deeper. I'd plop right down and become stagnant.

Paul said a couple of seemingly contradictory things:

For though I am free from all  men,  I have made myself a slave to all, so that I may win more. To the Jews I became as a Jew, so that I might win Jews; to those who are under the Law, as under the Law though not being myself under the Law, so that I might win those who are under the Law; to those who are without law, as without law, though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ, so that I might win those who are without law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some. I do all things for the sake of the gospel, so that I may become a fellow partaker of it. (1 Corinthians 9:19-23 NASB)

Then he says:

Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ. (1 Corinthians 11:1 NASB)

And then he steps it up a huge notch when he says:

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; (Ephesians 5:1 NASB)

I wouldn't dare tell anyone where they would draw the line in this tension between being all things to all men and imitating God. It's a tension and a line that everyone needs to find in the heart and in the secret place of God.

We just have to be sure that we are not leading ourselves in an area of weakness that hasn't been developed where attention and the need for emotional acceptance overwhelms and obscures the pure path God has chosen for us.

Cultural relevance should result in pointing people to Jesus where they see Him clearly, and not to ourselves where we obscure that view of Jesus.

dmcb