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The Relevance of the Church (No. 2)
Eugene W. Clevenger
"MAKING THE CHURCH RELEVANT"
It is interesting to look at what the denominational world is doing "to make the church relevant." All of us would commend the Catholic Church in their effort to make their services more meaningful by changing the mass from Latin to the vernacular. The need to understand what is going on is self-evident, and the Catholic Church is to be congratulated for taking their services out of an unknown tongue and making them capable of being understood by its worshipers. (This is especially significant to me in view of the fact that some of our brethren are in the process of going in the opposite direction-from known to unknown tongues.) Catholics are making the church more relevant because they are meeting a real need that has been overlooked for centuries. Similarly, if the Lord's church can do anything within the bounds of Scripture to make its services more meaningful, it must be willing to do so.
However, other attempts at relevance are frightening. Rock music is being introduced into the worship services of some Catholic and Protestant churches. The argument is, this is what "grabs" our young people, this is the "in thing," so let's bring it in and make the services more appealing to them. (Incidentally, though the word "relevant" was not the word used, this kind of reasoning very closely parallels the thinking of those who at the first introduced instrumental music into the services of the Lord's church last century. They had to make the worship more relevant and meaningful!) Again, it is being said that the needs of homosexuals have been overlooked by the church through the years, and so what do we have today? A few weeks ago a minister of a church performed a marriage ceremony for two homosexuals, and homosexual churches are in existence in California and some of the eastern states. This is being done in the name of relevance, but if this is what it takes to make the church relevant, may God's church forever be irrelevant! Compromising with hippies and their sensual music and homosexuals and their sodomy is going much too far to make Christianity relevant, don't you think?
Let's come a little closer home. The word that is on everybody's lips today is "ecology," and the most pressing need of modern man is a clean environment, they tell us. All right, let's join the battle and make this a real issue in our preaching. To make the church relevant to our times, the social gospel, with the main emphasis on physical needs, must be proclaimed. Brethren, this is not the relevance with which we should be primarily concerned. In an article in Christianity Today (July 31, 1970), L. Nelson Bell attacked what he called "A Counterfeit Religion." In essence, this denominational preacher said that the church today is tempted more than at any time in its history to heed the call to a special relevance. Accused of irrelevance, the church reacts by preaching what the world wants to hear-food for the hungry, population control, peace at any price, economic security, political realignments, an end to pollution, etc., all of which is concerned only with man's physical welfare. He challenged the church to face up to the reason Christ came into the world and argued that if the primary mission was to make the world a better place in which to live, then the church should design its mission and activities according to the humanistic concept. However, if Christ came primarily to solve the sin problem, to reconcile man to man and to God, to regenerate the sinner and to save him from everlasting punishment, then the most relevant thing the church can do is to preach Christ, crucified and risen, the one hope for inner peace and for heaven hereafter. Bell affirmed that to the church and it only has God committed the message of salvation in Christ. Chambers of commerce, social organizations, and local, state, and national governments have their functions within the framework of an orderly social system, but only the church has the message that deals with the eternal verities that reach beyond the horizon into eternity. His conclusion is so true: "Unless the church is faithful to its divine calling and mission, 'relevance' becomes a mockery." If the editor of a denominational journal can see clearly the mission of the church, it amazes me that many gospel preachers and elders are so confused as to what the church's business really is.
Again, it seems that for the church of Christ to be relevant to current biblical scholarship, our teachers and preachers need to espouse, in a conservative sort of way, the methods and conclusions of form criticism in "rightly dividing the Word." It is alarming to some gospel preachers and Bible teachers that articles endorsing the form critical method are appearing here and there in some of our more scholarly journals." If this is an effort to be relevant, I am afraid our relevance is going in the wrong direction. It is my sincere conviction that we must never seek to be relevant to the scholarly thinking of our age when such relevance demands forsaking basic principles of truth. What I am saying is simply that for the church to make its message, its worship, and its mission meaningful, significant, and relevant, is not to compromise the truth of God. If that is the price that must be paid for relevance, the price is too high. And yet, are there some who are willing to pay that price for relevance? Furthermore, for the church to be relevant does not necessarily mean that all of its expedients are exactly the way one might prefer them. I personally do not like all of the songs in any of our hymnals. Some
I love, some I like, and some I barely put up with. I get tired of the same order of worship-three songs, Scripture reading, prayer, etc. Some preaching (and preachers) I like better than others. But, if it is Christian worship in spirit and truth, regardless of my likes or dislikes, that worship has a relevance to me.
The visitor from Manhattan may not enjoy and appreciate the services at Shep or Noodle like he does in New York, but this should not mean that worship in a small, rural church has no relevance for him. If worship can be improved, improve it; but worship can be relevant even if its forms are less than our desires and preferences.
However, if to make the church relevant means a real effort to rid the church of its inconsistencies, its wrong emphases, and its hypocrisies, then more power to relevance! No one will deny that there are inconsistencies between what the church should be and what it is. The church is composed of you and me and the brethren-weak, imperfect human beings. Therefore, perfection will always be something to be sought. Yet, our young people are crying "irrelevance" when they see few, if any, efforts being made toward removing our faults and correcting our inconsistencies. When one sees all of the money being spent on lavish cathedrals in which we worship God on Sunday and so little money being used to take the gospel to the lost of the world, they may have a right to cry "irrelevant." When our young people see the good salaries which, at least, some preachers are getting, and yet they see so little done by the preachers to earn such salaries-so little evidence of good preaching, not much study, not much spirit of sacrifice, etc.-they have good reason to shout that the establishment is irrelevant. When Sunday piety and Monday corruption on the part of brethren are so obvious, many confess they want no part of it. They want something better from the Lord's church and they have a right to expect it! If this is what is meant by making the church relevant, I am in perfect agreement with the dissenters.
CONCLUSION
The Lord's church is relevant to the needs of men for it is a divine institution. This relevance is being denied, and too often it is not clearly seen, by those without and many within. In a real sense, the church is relevant (significant, important) whether one sees it and admits it or not. However, it is the task of Christians, and especially preachers of the gospel, to show to the people of our age how the church is relevant to them. I believe that this can best be done:
(1) by refusing to criticize the church without implementing the criticism with positive and scriptural ways of correcting its faults; (2) by emphasizing in our preaching the importance, necessity, and the glory of the church; (3) by trying to show our youth who are saying, "The church-no; Jesus-yes" that there is no scriptural choice of either-or, but it is both-and; (4) by praying for a greater love for the church and for the great brotherhood of believers. The bumper stickers on our automobiles say of America, "Love it or leave it," and these are the only decent, honorable alternatives with regard to the church. Love the church-love it enough to see its faults and try to correct them; love it enough to "sell" others on it; love it enough to spend and be spent in promoting its welfare.