Theology Blog

In his book, In the Name of Jesus, Henri Nouwen talks about the temptation to be relevant. It’s a very real temptation in our churches, culture and amongst leaders today. As we seek to do ministry, we often feel the need to be relevant to those we serve both in and outside of our churches. While this may be well intentioned, it is not what is right. Context certainly matters and Jesus did ministry within his context, but relevance is not required to do ministry in context. Nouwen states “I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. That is the way Jesus came to reveal God’s love.” The question we face in this temptation is one of ‘do you love me?’ and that is what should matter. Nouwen suggests that contemplative prayer as a means to resting in the presence of God is necessary.

Sadly our churches have been taken over by relevance. Our consumer approach to worship and to the ministries of the church has yielded little fruit numerically and even less spiritually. Christ gets lost in the mix as we take crosses out of our church and spend more time on our appearance for worship services than we do in prayer. We tell ourselves that if we only become more like the world, people will come to our church and will come to know Jesus. While we should consider the needs of those outside the church, we often take relevance to an unhealthy level. Even if these efforts are successful, we have failed. What we win people with is what we win them too. If we win people to the relevant, entertaining, consumer Jesus we have not won them to the Christ who hung on the cross.

Embracing the temptation to be relevant demonstrates a lack of trust in God to draw people into relationship with Him and to draw others into a deeper relationship with Him. Embracing this temptation is to put success over faithfulness and its not something that bears fruit. All ministry leaders face the temptation to be relevant, and we must name these temptations and bring them to God in prayer.