Category: Christianity (Page 9 of 23)

Why relevant isn’t relevant.

RelevantFor the last 15 years or so, the main idea for how the church should approach the culture has rested on one word; Relevant. At some point, a lot of somebodies decided that The Church just wasn’t connected to what was going on in our world, so they started changing things. Little by little it became more difficult to see the line between church and culture. Relevance became so important that it became a church catch-phrase, “We want to be a church that’s relevant to where people are in life.” In fact, we started naming churches “Relevant” and in 2003, Relevant Magazine hit the scene and boasts 70,000 paper subscribers, in addition to 500,000 monthly website visitors.

I’m not overly concerned with how the need to be “relevant” has changed the way we “do” church. The model of church matters very little. If you’re following God’s call, preaching Christ and Him crucified, loving and caring for people and making disciples that make disciples, then I don’t care if you use elephants and camels in your sermon. It doesn’t matter how you do church. What does matter is the mindset that “being relevant” has created in the people who proclaim to follow Jesus. Trying to be relevant and love people the same way that Jesus taught, doesn’t work very well together. As the years have passed and the need to be relevant has invaded our church, we’ve began to allow a mentality of relevance to permeate every part of following Jesus. So much so that we’ve arrived at a place where we seek to provide a love that’s relevant to where people are. On the surface that seems like a smart way to go, but it isn’t. As a Christian principle, it’s actually pretty reckless and when applied to the area of loving God and loving others, it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous because it’s unstable. And an unstable love ultimately disappoints and causes hurt. That’s not the love that God is or gives.

The thing about being relevant is that the culture is constantly changing. Relevant as a principle is the idea that your action or response should be closely connected or appropriate to the matter at hand. If that’s true, then as “the matter at hand” changes so does the way we live out our faith and the way that we respond to those around us. That also means that the way that we love God and others changes as the culture shifts. All of a sudden it becomes easier to bow to the culture, in the name of love, rather than be a light to it. If that happens over a long enough period of time, eventually following Jesus gives way to a universalism type mentality that pretends to meet the needs of all people, but actually does nothing for their deepest needs. Jesus didn’t do that.

The things that Jesus taught weren’t even relevant to the culture that He taught them in. In fact, they were so irrelevant to the culture that they got Him arrested, beat and crucified. Jesus wasn’t relevant. He didn’t bend His response to the matter at hand. But, that doesn’t mean that He didn’t meet needs. He did. In deeper way than we can understand. Regardless of the circumstance, He responded in the same way. He healed the blind Jew just the same as He healed the Roman officer’s servant. He didn’t offer a relevant love, he offered a radical love. It was the type of love that changed people and circumstances. It was the type of love that impacted the circumstance instead of being impacted by it. It was that type of love that allowed him to reach across culture and make a difference.

If we’re looking for a principle to describe our love for people, relevant is the wrong word; the word we’re looking for should be radical. So that we’re clear, when I say Radical, I’m pointing to a love that affects the fundamental nature of the culture. It’s far-reaching and thorough in how it fills in the gaps that culture invariably creates. Not only does it fill in those gaps, it covers and changes everything it touches. The culture, and the people in it, are changed on a heart, soul and mind level. If James 1:17 is true, that with God there is no variation or shadow due to change, then God can’t be relevant to any culture and must be the change agent in every culture. We should want to be a church that is unselfishly concerned with the good of others, causing us to abandon the idea of relevance and embrace the action of a freely given, radical love, regardless of circumstance or culture.

Relevant love responds to change. Radical love causes change.

TWEET THIS!

If you found this post helpful, please use one of the below social media buttons to share it.

Not “More than you can handle”, but “More than you deserve”

Ephesians 3One of the most contrived ideas inside of Christianity is the one that says, “God will never give you more than you can handle.” That’s garbage. I’ve said it before, and a ton of people have written about it, but nowhere in the bible is there scripture that supports the idea that God will never give you more than you can handle. On the contrary, we can read situation after situation, in the bible, in which a person is given a task they obviously weren’t capable of accomplishing and were forced to go to God. Some have used 1 Corinthians 10:13 to support the idea, but that verse is speaking specifically to God not allowing us to be tempted beyond what we can bear in the area of idolatry and sexual immorality. It speaks directly to God’s good grace and mercy to provide an escape in those situations.

While it may not be true that He won’t give you more than you can handle, what is true is that He gives far more than you deserve. If you’re Christian you know that what we deserve is death. If you’re not Christian, Romans 3:23 tells us that ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Because of that, in Romans 6:23 we’re told that the wages of that sin is death. That’s what we deserve; death. But God, in His infinite grace and mercy, desires better for us. He desires communion with us. And because He desires that we share eternity with Him, we’re promised that He is able to “do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think.” We deserve death, but He promises life. And it’s not only life, but an abundant life and a life everlasting.  Through Jesus’ death and resurrection we’re given the opportunity to receive the promise of life eternal spent in His presence. He willingly gives far more than we deserve.

That means He gives immeasurable grace, infinite mercy, boundless forgiveness, incalculable faith, unlimited hope and a love that knows no breadth, or depth, or width or height. And He offers that to all of us; no matter your past, regardless of your present and despite how you perceive your future. There’s nothing that can be considered “too much” for Him to undo. There’s no distance that is “too far” for Him to reach across. And you’re not the one person that’s done something “too bad” for Him to forgive. Life will hand you more than you can handle, but God will hand you more than you deserve.

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this post, please share it by clicking one of the buttons below.

How to Guarantee Success

SuccessThis past weekend I had the opportunity to hear Pastor TL Rogers, from The Triumphant Church in Washington D.C., preach on the importance of being a single, whole person before getting married. It was a great message in and of itself (you can watch it HERE) and there’s a ton more that could be said about the importance of wholeness, but there’s one thing that he said that I’d like to key in on. He said, “Success is predictable.” He was talking about success in marriage, but the idea spans the whole of following Jesus and Christendom.

He pointed to Joshua 1:8 as evidence. In that verse God is commissioning Joshua to lead the Israelites after Moses death. God tells Joshua, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” There it is. Follow the law then you’ll be prosperous and have good success. To be sure, God wasn’t simply talking about material success. He was telling Joshua what it would take to have success as His people and that started with following the law as He gave it to them.

If that’s true, we can extrapolate that out and apply it to the New Covenant in Jesus and use that verse as our guideline for success and prosperity. By the time Jesus hit the scene the Jews had over 600 laws that were required for “righteousness.” An impossible task, if ever there was one. When asked which is the most important, Jesus said, “And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” If all the other laws depend on those two commands, then the promise of success found in Joshua 1:8 requires our continued obedience to them. 

What that mean in a practical sense is that as followers of Jesus our success, in everything, is dependent on not letting love depart from our lips, meditating on it day and night and being careful to do all that Jesus commanded surrounding love. That means being His witness to an unbelieving world by caring for widows and orphans, being agents of healing, loving each other well, displaying grace and forgiveness and not seeking to condemn others. Success looks like the love of Christ acted out by His followers. 

Let’s be successful.

If you enjoyed this post, please share it by clicking one of the buttons below.

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2024 BrucePagano.com

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑