Please, no more doing church for them:
Relevant churches are rarely even closely relevant. Most Christians don't even like them. They might be better than Mom and Dad's morning service, but they usually are quite irrelevant to the outsider. The church person cannot guess what the seeker wants, undoubtedly getting it wrong. What Christians need to do is create meaningful worship through bringing their very own lives to God.
I came across this a while back, but since I wasn't blogging at the time I thought I would post it anyways because it's relevant (no pun intended). Since we moved to Memphis, Jana and I have been attending a church that could in some ways be categorized as a "relevant church." It has solid theological roots and sound teaching (for the most part), but it's approach to "doing church" is always with the "unchurched" in mind.
Now 10 or 15 years ago, when this approach was relatively new, it seemed like a good way of reaching those who would normally be unreachable by traditional Christianity. The idea was that there was a new generation (of whom I am a member) that had grown up constantly being bombarded by media and advertising. So, it logically followed that the best way to reach them was to co-opt that same approach and entice them in with "relevant" messages and contemporary stylings. It was essentially an "if you can't beat them, join them" approach.
But over the past couple of years, I've started to cringe anytime I've encountered churches that take this approach. At first, I wasn't sure what my problem was - I chalked it up to snarkiness on my part. It wasn't such a grand, new idea any longer. So, I thought maybe I was just jaded. But that wasn't quite it. After I thought about it some more, I finally realized what it was.
The thing that bothers me about "relevant" churches is that the approach views man coming to Christ as something that we initiate. The "relevant" church thinks that if you package Jesus in a friendlier way, you can entice people through the front door who might not have given Jesus or church a second thought. Once you've got them in the building, all that's left is for you to keep them there long enough and eventually you'll make a believer out of them.
Why go out to the ends of the earth when you have advertising and a sound marketing plan? Do your market research, provide Starbucks at the front door and you've essentially got yourself a veritable believer factory. It's a cleaner, less messy approach to evangelism ... but the only thing that makes it is lazy, not good.
Maybe I am jaded. But it's not because I have concerns about the motivations of the men and women behind such efforts. I believe that most of them have the best of intentions and truly desire to draw people to Christ. The problem I see, however, is that it's too easy to trust in your own efforts to achieve that goal, rather than relying on God to draw people to Him.
God draws men to him. Not the other way around. Not market research or targeted mailing campaigns or shiny promotional materials with glib stock photos and a catchy slogan.
Ephesians 1:3-6:
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved."
