What does it mean for the church to be relevant?
It’s the wrong question.
Wrong because that’s never really the question to begin with; it’s always loaded with arsenal of other ulterior inquiries like “how is this going to make us more money?” or “how is this going to attract a demographic of people that have left our organization?

Wrong because it’s always playing a cyclical game of catch up.

Don’t believe me?
In the 60’s it was “how can we mirror the success of what’s already happening with television.”
In the 70’s it was “how can we mirror the success of what’s already happening with the hippy folk rock movement.
In the 80’s it was “how can we mirror the success….” Ok, there was nothing great about the 80’s. Let’s just try and forget that decade all together.
In the 90’s it was how can we mirror the success of mega corporations.

Today, we've simply created  an awkward conglomerate, trying to model all things hip from Coldplay covers in worship services to scarf-wearing metro-pastorals in front of lights and backdrops that make Broadway look a little less flamboyant.

We need to go all the way back to the 50’s to find this reality flipped upside down. The movie, Ray, the bio-epic about the life of Ray Charles, does an excellent job of describing this culture clash. Charles was one of many innovative artists who decided to take music birthed inside the church and import it into the dimly light night clubs and smoky bars where people, whether they found themselves in pews on Sunday mornings or not, spent their Friday nights (I know none of us can relate to this today but use your imagination).  Check out this clip:

ray culture clash clip from CJ Casciotta on Vimeo.

While the church completely missed the boat on this one, drawing an imaginary line in the sand between sacred and secular, the fascinating reality is that mainstream artists were stealing from the church.  Go back farther in history to the Renaissance or the age of the great composers, where people paid money to see new, ground-breaking creations revealed for the first time in cathedrals and sanctuaries. This is where people got their entertainment. This is where people got their inspiration…spaces that literally shaped culture and ignited the imagination of ordinary souls to explode with extraordinary dreams, inventions, and ideas, moving them to recognize their purpose to reflect the Great Creator.

When did we turn this around? When did the church go through such a major identity crisis that we wound up where we are today: stealing from the very culture we shunned decades ago?

I’d challenge us to quit using the word “relevant” all together when trying to define church.  What would it look like to be a post-relevant culture? To stop playing catch up, to create rather than copy with the confidence that we have a direct connection with the greatest creator of all? What would it look like to share it with the rest of the world, to invite it into  clubs, bars, arenas, streets…the spaces of 2009? What would it look like to realize how many times Paul referred to “the unbeliever among you” as a calling to live among unbelievers…

 

... affirming their gifts and talents as passions that they were uniquely created for, passions that point to something greater, not passions that, if cleaned up just a ittle, sounded a little less risky, were a little more streamlined, dressed in finer clothes, would make a great addition to a Sunday morning church service. It would look risky, unconventional, unique, misunderstood.. it would look like a Friday night.