Radical or Relevant?

Every new fad or movement always brings with it new "buzz words", words that always seem to define and/or to express the central motivation of the fad or movement. In recent years, the movement called the Emergent/Emerging church has brought in "relevant" as a buzz word. "The gospel should be relevant to the culture and it's not," they say. "The way we do church has to be relevant." Another buzz word that often follows closely on the heels of "relevant" is "rethink": "We need to rethink how we do church"; or "We need to rethink the gospel." Now, let me say that these are legitimate words and they come from sincere Christian hearts. But I'm not so sure that the applications and results are legitimate.


The problem that I see is this: in the attempt to "rethink" church and to be more "relevant" to the culture they wish to reach, they actually end up with something that doesn't resemble church at all. And "relevant" gets reduced down to a vague "conversation" (another buzz word) where boundaries and definitions often become sketchy. 


Now, in all fairness, the goal of the Emergent/Emerging crowd is to lose the belligerent and arrogant manner that has accompanied evangelical frontmen and their discussions in recent decades. However, they haven't gone to the other extreme. And, in a sense, that's the problem: they have stopped somewhere in between. In an attempt to not offend people with hot-headed "exclusivity" (another buzz word), they have gone to a luke-warm and nebulous middle, which is comfortable to everyone, believers and unbelievers. No one is offended, no one is belligerent; "we're having conversations about real world issues and we're seeking answers together. See, we can all get along."


In Exodus 8-11, The Lord says that he is making a distinction between his people and the Egyptians. In Ezekiel 22:26, the Lord says that his priests have profaned his name in this: they did not make a distinction between the holy and the common and they didn't teach the difference between the clean and the unclean. Holiness - distinctiveness, set apartness - seems to be important to the Lord. He wants his people to be different; but not just different for the sake of difference alone. He wants a distinctive difference; i.e., he wants a difference that marks us as His own, so that when the world looks at one or all of us, they know right away which King we belong to and which kingdom we live in. This distinction isn't called "relevant" - although it makes us relevant. It's called "radical". 


"Radical" comes from a word that literally means "root". And the main idea of the word doesn't refer to being "rooted" in something. It means "to live from the root" to the point that you resemble the root. The word itself calls us back to our roots; better, to the root, Jesus Christ. 


The question for us is this: What is of first importance to Jesus: radical or relevant? While we ponder this question, we must also remember that He is Lord; it's his decision - and his doing - that makes us both. Apart from him, we can't do either one.