The Irrelevance of our Relevant Teaching

I don’t miss Sunday services.  I have passed the half-century mark in years and I can count on one hand (and I mean the hand with the amputated finger) the number of times I have not been in church on Sunday morning when I was not sick.  If I am not in a house of worship on Sunday morning, I have either been sick or have just had a finger cut off.

However, last Sunday the church we have been attending moved worship to Sunday afternoon for a special occasion.  So, this past Sunday, I took the opportunity to see how the 4/5ths live.  At 10 o’clock, I drove around town.  I noticed that the streets and shops were as busy as a Saturday morning.  I noticed that most churches had cars in their parking lots, but only two had more cars than the local grocery store.  At 10 AM, the mall was pretty quiet, but that would be true any other day of the week  at that hour.  Hardware stores and the big box lumber stores were doing a booming business.  The soccer field was pretty full, but it looked like pic up games, not league play.  Parks were busy and there were plenty of runners and joggers on the sidewalks.  Yard sales were available and life cruised along undisturbed and, by and large, apparently unaware of what was happening within the walls of the churches in our town. 

One of the catch phrases that has been popular in the church for the last couple of decades is “relevant teaching” or simply “relevance”.  It has reflected a shift toward preaching and teaching that focuses on the practical application of Christian faith for daily living, rather than theological preaching.  (As a side note, good theology always has a practical application, but that is a topic for another time.)  Churches and preachers have spent a great deal of time and hard work on how families should operate, how to be good parents, spouses, citizens, the benefits of financial freedom and the list goes on.  It would be impossible to compose an exhaustive list of all the relevant and practical sermons, teachings, and lessons that churches have presented.  I am not denying the value of these lessons.  I am not attempting to condemn those very practical lessons or those who present them.

However, the church is more irrelevant now than ever.  Exact numbers are not possible, but the indications are that church attendance is near an all time low.  Or put in a somewhat more crass way, when it comes to the hearts and minds of people the church is loosing market share.  We are relevant to those in our buildings, but that is a shrinking demographic.    The quality of our presentation is higher than ever, but the percentage of people who hear it, or even want to hear it, is getting smaller.

 We seem to be stuck in our own ghetto.  We have an entire Christian subculture complete with music, bookstores, heroes, fiction, movies, concerts, self-help books, sports leagues, Political action committees, even a Christian dating reality show.  The list is endless.  It is possible to be completely immersed in a Christian bubble so that we can go days, or even weeks without any meaningful interaction with non-believers.  To my shame, I must admit that for most of my 27 years of ministry, I did just that.  Church ‘members’ would bring a ‘sinner’ to church and I could build a relationship with them, share the gospel with them, and, hopefully, lead them to Christ.  Then we would immerse them in our Christian subculture bubble. 

I was pretty good at this system.  Every church I ministered with grew.  Most doubled in Sunday morning attendance; all had to add building space.  When we had struggles, is was generally over “all these new people” and the messes they made and how they didn’t “fit in”.  I am not in any way trying to disparage the people who so faithfully serve the church.  But the fact was, and remains, that for most of the people in our communities the church is utterly and absolutely irrelevant no matter how relevant the teaching is on the insides of our buildings.

I wish I had a simple solution.  I wish there was an enlightened plan that would help those outside the walls realize the good that is being offered inside the church buildings.  But I don’t have one answer.  I don’t believe there is one enlightened plan. However, when we look at the Apostle Paul we see he had the practice of going to a cultural crossroads where there was no Christian witness.  There he engaged his world.  

Here are two simple first steps; simple things I believe that we can do.  First, we need to stop inviting people to come to church!  As long as we think that “church” happens in the building, we are terribly mistaken.  As long as we believe that ministry, evangelism, teaching, and community occurs in a secluded place, we will be content to let the 80% drive by.  Second, I think every leadership team ought to make a conscience decision to not go to the church building on a specific Sunday morning.  Instead, they need to tour their community, looking for ways to engage that vast majority who aren’t coming to a church building.  This will help them move away from the paradigm that having a collection of saints in a church building is some how enough.   We need to get out of the ghetto and see how the other 80% lives.