"relevant church"

Today, I have been having a lot of great conversations about "relevant church." As we plan this new church, all of the "relevance" questions are the first ones we get asked: "what kind of music will you have?" "what kind of clothes will people wear?" "what kind of video equipment?" "what kind of sound gear?"

The thing that bugs me is that I really dig all that stuff... I am sure that we will have rockin' music... I don't ever want to wear dress clothes again... I want to launch with live video from day one... and i have only one word related to sound gear - - SUBWOOFERS!

But, here's the thing: While I really dig relevant churches, I think that we spend too much time trying to be relevant and then figuring out which part of "TRUTH" our culture would respond to.

I think we have it backwards!

Recently, I have been struggling with this whole idea and realizing that what a church believes about the redemptive Truth of God's Son (Christology) should inform a church's understanding of its calling or mission (Missiology) and THAT should inform our methodology (ecclesiology).

The thing is, that way to often I think churches begin with methods (what to wear, how to package a series, how to understand the culture) and then move backwards to mission (calling).

Kem Myers (Granger Community Church) said today that "culture is a moving target." I agree! The thing is that I don't think that we should spend all of our time trying to shoot at a moving target. We need to understand Truth and look for a relevant vehicle with which to communicate it.

I think that we need to engage culture... I will take that one step further - - we need to be about the business of seeing God REDEEM culture... I just think we need to avoid the temptation to become enamored with culture.