Theory of relevance

Many young Christians consider it profoundly important to be ‘relevant’. This is possibly a reaction to the fact that, for years now, the Western church has been deemed archaic and, essentially, irrelevant by mainstream culture. Given that we, as Christians, are charged with bringing the good news about Jesus Christ to this culture, it seems important to reverse this trend. After all, if we are considered irrelevant, who is going to listen to us?

So we should at least try not to seem irrelevant. We need to demonstrate that the church is not just an old building that constantly needs repairs, or an over-50s club for conservatives. It is good that we wish to break down such misconceptions, and many Christians have done a brilliant job of doing so. However, I believe that some of us have often misunderstood what relevance actually means in a cultural sense.

For example, I think that Christians are the only people I have ever heard talk about the need to ‘be relevant’. To illustrate this point, I typed the word ‘relevant’ into Google™. The number one result was a Christian magazine. A little further down was a Christian radio station. Although the magazine seemed really good, and the radio station is probably fine, I believe this may highlight the fact that as Christians we are eager to ‘be relevant’ in a way that many others are not. Arguably, then, our very use of the word ‘relevant’ may be an indicator of subculture status.

Usually, the word ‘relevant’ is followed by a preposition: we say that something is relevant to something else. I am not just trying to be pedantic (although I am probably being a little pedantic); the point is this: relevance is contextual. In most cases, we cannot say that something is relevant without considering its object. Is a cake recipe relevant? It is if you are trying to bake a cake; it isn’t if you are trying to put out a fire. I like the Merriam-Webster definition of ‘relevant’ as, ‘having significant and demonstrable bearing on the matter at hand’ (see http://www.merriam-webster.com/). Whilst I think most Christians do understand this, we often fall into the trap of removing the idea of relevance from a specific context, and that makes it hard to define what really is and isn’t relevant.

Following the example above, a cake recipe provides something that is needed in a particular situation; i.e. instructions on how to make a cake. As Christians, we aim to offer something that those in our culture desperately need: salvation from sin and death. The Apostle Paul said that, ‘the gospel… is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes’ (see Romans 1:16). If this is true, then the gospel is by its very nature relevant to all people. Those in our culture are trapped in sin and the gospel offers to save them from it – the gospel has a demonstrable bearing on their condition. So our task is not to become relevant, or to make the gospel relevant, but to demonstrate to those around us how the gospel already is relevant to them.

The issue, often, is that some aspects of church culture appear so stifled or archaic that those in mainstream culture assume that our message is also archaic before they even consider it. For this reason, I can understand the desire to make ourselves seem ‘relevant’. However, I would argue that the solution is not to pursue relevance, but to pursue excellence. What do I mean? Well, a couple of things really. Firstly, pursuing relevance implies that you do not already have it, and we do. The gospel, as I have said, is the most radical and relevant answer to the problem of evil and suffering in the world, and even the most boring church service cannot change that. Secondly, in practice, aiming to be relevant has often meant aiming to mimic the prevailing culture in the West. One partial result of this is that the church ends up moving about ten years behind everyone else in music (rather than further behind). When I was growing up in the nineties, the songs we sang in church sounded mostly as though they had been written in the seventies or eighties (and, in fact, many of them had). There is nothing wrong with using old songs, but my conviction is that Christians should be using their skills to move at least at the same pace as others in the arts, sciences, and business, for example. Thirdly, then, pursuing excellence instead of relevance frees us from the need to fit a certain cultural model and, hopefully, liberates the creative and gifted among us to use their talents in connection with the church. Those who are creating culture in the world are not working with a totally blank canvas, but neither are they painting by numbers, trying to recreate a picture that someone else has drawn. If we want to be up-to-date, we need to be working alongside the trend-setters, shaping culture, rather than following on behind them.

So, as Christians, we should be involved in our cultures, not as copycats but as culture-shapers. We must do this without compromising on the truth of the gospel, which is the thing we have that really is relevant to this world’s needs. This is how we can help prevent ourselves from being pigeonholed as an outdated subculture. In doing so, we do not make ourselves or our message relevant, but we do open up avenues of communication and influence, so that we can demonstrate the bearing that the gospel has on individuals and societies today. Watching good television, listening to exciting new music and reading good books can all help with inspiration and communication, but one key ingredient is to become actively involved in forming culture. Even as I am writing this, I feel challenged to think about how I can engage more with the society around me, as so often I end up being an introspective, disengaged Christian in a world that is moving at an incredible pace. In a sense, I think that we have done well to close the gap between where we are and where the culture-shapers are. I think now, though, the challenge is to increasingly become culture-shapers ourselves.