The Irrelevance of Relevance

Southern Baptist leaders have identified a correlation between their use of culturally relevant worship forms and the numerical growth of their congregations--though not, perhaps, the correlation you'd expect.  The Christian Post reports:

Many church leaders have been calling for change to respond to what many identify as a shift from modern to postmodern culture. And the latest statistics showing shrinking numbers has made that call even more urgent. But cultural relevance has led many churches to lose the holiness of God and a thirst to be like God, Patterson noted.

A prominent conservative Southern Baptist, Patterson said he is the first to admit that "dullness and 'Baptist tradition' were too often the rule in our churches." But the suggestion that churches must chase after culture in order to be effective in evangelistic efforts is "misguided," he said.

"The more attune to culture Southern Baptists have become and the more we have incorporated the world into our worship, the more our baptisms have dropped!" Patterson noted. (emphasis added)

This should hardly be surprising.  One obvious feature of "relevant" worship is that it actually narrows the appeal of the service.  To be increasingly relevant to one particular slice of demography is, of course, to be less relevant to another.  But more than that, it's difficult to afford much respect to an institution unsure of (or uncommitted to) its identity.  Worship that abandons historic forms in a self-conscious attempt to "speak the language" of culture can often come across as inauthentic or patronizing.  Perhaps that's why some evangelicals, observes Mark Galli in a recent CT article, are experiencing a renewed attraction to (gasp!) the liturgy:

This is one reason I thank God for the liturgy. The liturgy does not target any age or cultural subgroup. It does not even target this century. (It does not imagine, as we moderns and postmoderns are tempted to do, that this is the best of all possible ages, the most significant era of history.) Instead, the liturgy draws us into worship that transcends our time and place. Its earliest forms took shape in ancient Israel, and its subsequent development occurred in a variety of cultures and subcultures—Greco-Roman, North African, German, Frankish, Anglo-Saxon, and so on. It has been prayed meaningfully by bakers, housewives, tailors, teachers, philosophers, priests, monks, kings, and slaves. As such, it has not been shaped to meet a particular group's needs. It seeks only to enable people—people in general—to see God.

Nothing could be more relevant.

Comments

[Jackson]

While I am not a big fan of much modern worship music and attempts to be "relevant" I think this is an example of correlation not equaling causation. Any number of factors could have contributed to the decline in baptisms other than musical style.

I attend a SBC church where I would do many things differently (including the "relevant" worship songs whose lyrics I frequently find vapid) but we baptize new Christians regularly. I think the music is one part of a church, but people can overlook the music (whether the music is "relevant" or "traditional") for the heart of the church, the people, and what that congregation is about. It is entirely possible to play "worldly" music but have a good heart and it is also possible to play "traditional" music and still be missing the gospel point.

Churches shouldn't "chase after" culture, they should be who they are. For some congregations, that means music others would consider "relevant" or "worldly."

All this from someone who would prefer hymns and thinks the move away from much of the modern worship music would be a positive thing.

[Heath Griner]

I wonder if worship attendance would improve if preachers taught the eternal Word of God instead of trying to make everyone in the congregation happy. That's the problem I see in churches around me. If you challenge members of your church with Truth, some people may be offended and decide to leave. Truth tends to confront people with their own sinful condition. But the alternative is to sing a little louder and play faux pop songs in the hope that music choice alone will make Christians of lost people looking to fill the God-sized holes in their hearts.

[Louis Kuhelj]

It seems to me a foolish thing to be worried about the curtains when the window is broken.

[Heath Griner]

The Church, as a body of Christian believers, should always be a lighthouse in stormy cultural seas.
Instead, the Church in the postmodern world is trying to attract nonbelievers by making everything as "comfortable" as possible. We've made ourselves so comfortable that we've become just one more option on Sunday morning.
The original church was a small but dedicated band who would not compromise their belief in the Gospel of Christ. We seem to have this idea today that unless there are large numbers overflowing in mega churches around the nation, then we can't relevance. That shows remarkably little faith in the Holy Spirit, doesn't it?

[Louis Kuhelj]

Heath,
can you shed some light as to what scriptures direct us to have faith in the Holy Spirit?

[Jeremy]

Interesting article, but hardly relevant. Jesus didn't measure the strength of the church by the volume of baptisms, rise or decline in membership percentages year over year, or even in what things most appealed to people to get them to follow Him. He simply told them they had to believe in Him and follow Him if they wanted to receive their inheritance in eternal life.

I work with statistics a lot in my daily job, and I just don't see the point in church denominations measuring these sorts of things. How is this a wise use of what precious little time we devote to "doing church" in all its various forms? Each local church should be reaching out to those they come into contact with to form relationships and share Christ on a daily/weekly/yearly basis. This seems to me to be the pretty simple stuff of the Gospel message and how the early Christian Church went about "doing church."

The numbers in that article are merely reflecting the pulse of the culture around us, not the Church. Christ is unchanging, and the desire we all should have is to be like Him: unchanging in our core beliefs, core behaviors, and core love towards one another. (I say "core" because we're imperfect beings and WILL differ in some of our edge-case beliefs, behaviors, and means by which we love one another.) Everything else is merely the culture, or "the times", that we find ourselves trying to live life in.

[Mo]

I think Jackson stated things very well.

I am not sure what they mean by 'culturally relevant'. It can't mean simply modern type music. We've had guitars, drums and 'band' type music in our church for the 20 years I've been there. But the key is that the message has *always* been Scripturally sound, the leadership strong and the people sincere in wanting to faithfully follow Christ. God has grown the church from a handful in a teeny church to multiple locations all over our city.

I think as long as the basics are covered, the style of worship or of a service isn't as important as people think it is.

[Francis Beckwith]

"I think as long as the basics are covered, the style of worship or of a service isn't as important as people think it is."

Do you think the same way about the furnishings of your home?

The architecture and aesthetic aspects of a church must be important, since God gave us eyes, ears, and noses with the power to see, hear, and smell beauty. We are incarnational beings, not merely Cartesian minds wrapped in meat.

[Gabriel]

I agree that the aesthetic matters. The Bible and the Church have consistently equated being Beautiful (objectively) with being good and being true.

Beauty is an important aspect in our worship of God. We should strive to find what is truly beautiful... that is what most closely reflects God's beauty, which is the standard.

[Mo]

I apologize if my church isn't perfect in every way. Just because some people don't care for modern worship music doesn't mean it's wrong. It's not a personal preference of mine either. But that is not a good enough reason to leave a solid, Bible-teaching church that strives to love God and people as best it can.

[Gabriel]

Mo,
This post does not necessarily mean music at all. We can just as easily water down the gospel to make it culturally relevant. Plus we did not say you should leave a solid, Bible-teaching church because of its music. We said aesthetics are important... and we should always strive to find out what God thinks about these things.

We need to remember true woship is a lifestyle devoted to God... not just a "worship" time...

[alan.powers]

Patterson has the answer in his own quote, but he paints with a broad brush and fails to get it. "The more attune to culture Southern Baptists have become and the more we have incorporated the world into our worship, the more our baptisms have dropped!" Being attuned to culture does not necessarily mean incorporating the world into worship. Those are two distinct issues which many other churches have managed to keep separate. The first thing (cultural relevance) can be effective as long as the second thing (incorporating the world) is avoided. It is not a question of doing both or doing nothing. If some SBC churches chose to do both they evidenced little discernment, and have only themselves to blame. I doubt SBC church planting efforts in Third World countries attempt to operate without cultural relevance.

[Brad B]

The worship of God ought to be according to what pleases Him. Seeking to please the attendees as a first principle puts God second and man worshiping a higher god--himself. Somehow, it seems that if the local church seeks to worship God in truth, the congregants will be pleased by the Spirit of God if indeed they have the spirit.

Worship services are not to be evangelistic as a priority. It should be assumed that everyone who is attending has been evangelized already, and if the church is faithful to worship God as He requires, they will have been good witnesses.

Brad B

[Kris]

I think that relevance is important especially if we want to reach this generation. Why would we play only classical music in worship service when most young people are classically illiterate? It makes sense to speak to them in a medium that works but the message is the same. Jesus Christ died, was buried and raised from the dead. Being relevant does not mean that we compromise sound Biblical teaching, Bible study, prayer, repentance, service to others, evangelism and basic Christian living. Quite honestly what makes us most relevant is showing those on the outside that we are genuine loving people who care and aren't "spiritually weird" as Greg likes to put it.

[Santiago]

I would observe that people start coming to church because they are looking for something different, not more of the same. When I've sat down to learn more about someone I just met, I'm most interested in what they think about most than what their favorite color or music style is. A congregation unified by a clear idea of who they are in Christ will repeat this verbally and bear it out practically. This is what will attract people - not their style of music.

[Les Prouty]

David Wells has said well, tracing back to the 1970s,

"the confessional and theological character of evangelicalism began to fade, leaving the churches wide open to the intrusions of raw pragmatism. As theology moved from the center to the periphery of evangelical faith, technique moved from the periphery to the center."

That is where we have come to, unfortunately.

[Wanda Zippler]

One thing I have learned with all the different churches I have attended is just because a Church bears a denominational name doesn't mean the bear much else that the main branch holds sacred.
For example I once attended a Southern Baptist Church, and the preacher was constantly ragging on me for reading the Bible to much. I was only one of two in the Church that had read the entire Bible, even though a huge portion of the congregation was over 65 and had been going to a SBC their entire lives.
This wasn't an emergent church, they hated dancing, loved traditional hymns, and the preacher preached traditional sermons

[Brendan B.]

As someone who has led worship in a modern band at an AG church, I find all this talk about "relevance" interesting.

When I picked a set, relevance was not at the forefront of my thinking. Sure, I'd consider the audience and we'd usually do a traditional hymn (which begs the question, is the objection here with the instruments or with the content of the music?) to stay grounded, but I'd mainly just be in prayer to see what the Lord wanted us to be doing that Sunday.

What is a traditional hymn anyways? We look at a song like Amazing Grace, but that's still in the last fifth of church history! Even "All Creatures" goes back to St. Francis, which is only halfway into our story! People went for 1000 years without our hymn book; that tells me that changing the style of music isn't the biggest problem that the church has.

[Ben Mordecai]

Here is how to make Christianity relevant:

Introduce the radical notion that sinners have the wrath of God hanging over their head, and that Jesus removes that wrath.

Now when this fact is thoroughly understood, worship becomes very very relevant. Relevant worship can be modern "rocking" music, or organ driven singing.