“If the aim of the church is to grow, the way to do it is to make people feel good. And when people discover that there are other ways to feel good, they leave the church they no longer need. The relevant church is sowing the seeds of its own irrelevance, and losing its identity to boot.”
-Carl Braaten
This is a timely reminder to those of us who tend to live on the “relevant” side of the evangelical spectrum. It is important not simply to try to give our culture the answers to the questions that they want while slapping Jesus on for good measure. Instead, we need to seek to always be preaching a gospel which teaches people not to “feel good” but to glorify God. This is not a popular gospel, or a particularly appealing one to many people. But that’s okay. Its not supposed to be.
I guess in summary what I’m thinking is this: We need to use relevant language. We need to answer relevant questions. We need to love people and interact with them in a gracious Christian manner. But we must not cease to be communicating true Christianity in the midst of all this. If we lose this message, we won’t be “relevant”; we will be indistinguishable from the culture we are trying to redeem.
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This entry was posted 2 years, 5 months ago on Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 at 7:24 pm and is filed under jesus where we live today. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
thanks Eric for always striving to be true the the Word, for always acknowledging that we all fall short, and for encouraging this mom’s heart each time I read your writings…I have always told Jake, desire nothing about Christ…and I see that desire in your words…I thank God for you, for what He has so graciously done in your young life, for giving you a helper, and for being my sons friend…every good gift is from above…I am grateful