Some call the pursuit of faithfulness vs. the pursuit of relevance a false dichotomy. The truth is, pastors tend to pursue one or the other. In case you missed the Together for the Gospel weblog, here’s Mark Dever, J. Ligon Duncan, R. Albert Mohler, and C. J. Mahaney weighing in on the question of how pastors should think about pursuing relevance versus pursuing faithfulness.

ASSUMPTIONS AND PURSUITS

By Mark Dever

Having attended a number of meetings of pastors in the last few months, and having read everything from Rob Bell’s Velvet Jesus to John MacArthur’s Fool’s Gold, I have been able to give a lot thought to the colloquiums, conferences, alliances, and denominations that bring pastors and churches together. What is bringing pastors together? What are they grouping around?

I think the most basic practical division among evangelical pastors today does not occur between the Calvinists and the Arminians; it occurs between those who pursue faithfulness and assume relevance and those who pursue relevance and assume faithfulness. Surely, both camps will claim to value both faithfulness and relevance. But attend the conferences and read the books of the "pursuers of faithfulness," and you will hear a lot about "faithfulness in preaching the gospel" or "building your church on the Word." Attend the conferences and read the books of the "pursuers of relevance," and you will hear about "understanding today’s generation" and "communicating to today’s culture."

Imagine a spectrum with "faithfulness" at one end and "relevance" at the other end. Most of us would recognize that locating ourselves at either extreme is wrong. At the far end of the faithfulness side of the spectrum we have a Greek Orthodox-like church that uses untranslated Greek in the church’s gatherings, as if physical proximity to the inspired language changes people like some sort of magical force. The power of the words is unrelated to people’s comprehension of them. As long as the content is correct, the church can set aside all worries about relevance!

At the other end of the spectrum is a church that wants so badly to relate to the world that it begins to value what the culture values, scorn what the culture scorns, even think in the philosophical categories the culture insists we think within. They quickly point to Paul’s example in 1 Cor. 9:19-23—"…I have become all things to all people…"—as their explanation for what, in the end, amounts to the erasing of all distinctiveness between them and the culture.

Of course, all of us intend to be at the middle of the spectrum, striking just the right balance between an utter faithfulness to the gospel and a piercing relevance in its presentation. I also suspect that most of us believe that we do strike this balance, or else we would alter our location.

What has struck me amidst all these conferences and colloquiums is that a church leader’s or a writer’s position on this particular spectrum has become more meaningful to his associations than where he sits on the Calvinist-Arminian theology spectrum. Suppose, for example, that we have four individuals:

Jake (Arminian and seeker-sensitive),

Wes (Arminian and faithful),

Phil (Calvinistic and seeker-sensitive),

and John (Calvinistic and faithful).

When it comes to the actual practice of doing ministry, it may be that John has more in common with Wes than he does with Phil, his fellow Calvinist. And it may be that Jake actually has more in common with Phil than he does with Wes, his fellow Arminian.

So Calvinistic Phil believes in the gospel and in Reformed soteriology. But he assumes that everyone understands what he means when he refers to the "gospel," and so he spends all his time and energy attempting to be creatively relevant. On the other hand, Arminian Wes, who is self-consciously anti-Calvinistic, does not assume that everyone truly understands what the gospel actually is. Therefore, he spends most of his time in the pulpit emphasizing salvation through Christ alone, penal substitutionary atonement, the need for repentance in response to the gospel, as well as things like Scripture’s inerrancy and God’s exhaustive knowledge of the future. Wes is even willing to admit that the gospel is offensive to the carnal man, and so he doesn’t try to make excuses for it. Instead, he builds his church on this gospel by preaching it week after week.

While I would have some challenges working with either Phil or Wes, my guess is that I could more easily work with Arminian Wes, even though we disagree about the relation of the death of Christ to the non-elect.

I once took a walk with Don Carson on which he remarked, to paraphrase, that "the first generation has the gospel, the second generation assumes the gospel, and the third generation loses the Gospel."

I am concerned that too many people who understand the gospel well are lazy with it. They are compassionless. And they are not sufficiently motivated to spread it. I fear that this indictment lands on me. So pray for me and Capitol Hill Baptist Church in this regard. 

On the other hand, I am concerned about those who, in the name of evangelism, alter everything in their churches’ services to make the non-Christian feel more at home, all the while, ironically, assuming that everybody sufficiently understands the gospel. In other words, they don’t preach the whole counsel of God, and they do not speak week after week about God’s holy character, his holy wrath, his love made all the more astounding in light of his holiness, and his remarkable act of substitution on the cross. Like I already said, read their books and attend their conferences and you learn that they apparently think that knowing how to "be relevant" is the church’s major challenge. Holding onto the gospel, it would seem, is comparatively easy.

Consider what might actually be happening to the gospel message when all our effort goes into changing the "presentation" until we successfully yield a response from carnal man. Might we not actually be at risk of changing the message itself?

Pursue faithfulness and relevance. Know that the gospel is always relevant. Never assume the gospel is safely protected or understood.

RELEVANCE CUSTOMER NEEDS, AND FAITHFULNESS

Mark, thanks for the thought-provoking post on relevance and faithfulness.

I was immediately reminded of David Wells’ No Place for Truth when I read your thoughts. Remember how he starts off the preface? "those who are most relevant to this world are those who are judged most irrelevant." This instructs us that faithfulness is always relevant, even if our contemporaries don’t think so.

But, as you note, all the problems don’t lie with those who discount faithfulness for the sake of relevance. Among those who emphasize the importance of faithfulness, one problem is that we sometimes confuse faithfulness with adherence to some tradition or practice from the past that holds great meaning for us, but is not inherent to the faithfulness the Bible requires for gospel ministry. Thus, we judge holding fast to this tradition or practice which has not been commanded by Scripture as faithfulness in our day. Our relevance then sinks.

The problem in this case is not our desire to be faithful, but our confusion over what faithfulness entails. True faithfulness is never a hindrance to real relevance, only to false relevance.

When we aim for relevance, on the other hand, there is the danger of thinking that being relevant requires us to upgrade God’s prescribed message and methods for the work of the gospel. One problem with this tendency is that we confuse is and ought; we confuse what people want and what people need; we confuse the opinions of our contemporaries with what God tells us in his word. The seeker-approach, for instance, will always be vulnerable to the problems entailed in the prevalent consumer mindset of our culture. The phrase "the customer is always right" points to one such instance. (From the standpoint of a Christians appropriation of that idea for evangelistic purposes, there are problems with both the subject and predicate: "sinners" does not equal "customers," and they’re certainly not always right, whatever we might learn from them).

That’s where a famous German grocer can help us. Karl Hans Albrecht (born in 1920 in Essen, Germany) founded a discount supermarket chain and is among the richest men in the world. Albrecht says: "Customer needs have an unsettling way of not staying satisfied for very long." It is the combination of "give them what they want" and "they’ve changed their minds about what they want" that poses the threat of irrelevance to those most doggedly determined to be relevant. Faux relevance is trying to hit a moving target (and will generally trail the bull’s-eye by about twenty years).

(originally posted June 29, 2006)

THE CUTTING EDGE HAS NO EDGE

By R. Albert Mohler

Looking back farther than I would like to remember, I recall as a seminary student reading an article by Richard John Neuhaus (he was still a Lutheran then) on the issue of relevance in ministry. In essence, Neuhaus argued that the churches determined to be relevant at all costs were destined to be the least relevant of all. Making an idol of relevance is a form of self delusion. Authentic relevance is represented by the transforming gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the faithful witness of the church throughout time.

Mark, I really appreciated your words concerning "assumptions and pursuits." I think you are absolutely right in suggesting that the big division among evangelical pastors today is between those who pursue faithfulness (assuming that faithfulness will produce relevance) and those who pursue relevance (hoping that faithfulness will emerge out of that quest). You have provided a wonderful description of how this is realized in the ministry of the local church.

So many of the issues we deal with today seem to focus on those who, in their own way, argue that we should pursue relevance by taking our churches to the "cutting edge" of ministry. If going to the cutting edge of ministry means taking every opportunity to extend a faithful witness and ministry in the name of Christ, then count me in.

Regrettably, ministering on the edge often becomes a rationale for doing something very different. Repeating that slogan, many pastors and churches, along with an array of parachurch ministries, push themselves into modes of ministry that are based more on cultural analysis and pragmatism than on a clear biblical and theological understanding of the nature and purpose of the church—and the integrity of the gospel.

The other problem with the "cutting edge" is that it really has no edge. The culture is moving at warp speed in so many different directions that absolute relevance is a mirage. Faithfulness to the gospel produces the only relevance that matters. Of course, we use forms of language and mechanisms of communication that others can understand, but the basic structure of our ministry and the substance of our beliefs are unchanged and unchanging—and still ever relevant.

Those who push themselves ever onward toward the cutting edge will find themselves falling off the edge.

(originally posted on June 30, 2006)

CROSS-CENTERED RELEVANCE

Mark, Lig, and Al, your biblical insight on this topic of faithfulness and relevance is critically needed in the church today. Thank you for serving us.

The most effective way that I can serve is to post excerpts from my favorite article on this issue: "The Power of the Gospel in the Church Today" by our friend Ray Ortlund, Jr. Check out Ray’s theologically informed discernment on what it means to be relevant in ministry, written with remarkable foresight nine years ago:

We might get the wrong impression from Paul, when he writes in 1 Corinthians 9:22 that he has become ‘all things to all men,’ that he might by all means save some. Paul was not unbending in meeting people as they were, where they were. He was widely adaptable. But we might get the wrong impression from this passage, if we read it in isolation from Paul’s other statements about ministry, as if 1 Corinthians 9 were the whole of his mind. The fact is that Paul was not infinitely flexible in his outreach strategies. He had limits, and in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 he explains one of his boundaries:

"When I came to you, brethren, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God, in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in much fear and trembling; and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (RSV)’

Paul deliberately chooses (‘I decided’) not to meet the culturally conditioned expectations of his hearers....The most embarrassing aspect of the gospel—a crucified Savior, a loser Messiah—was the very thing Paul concentrated on. Paul is here exposing to view the controlling center of his ministry strategy. ‘Jesus Christ and him crucified’ was for Paul, the ultimate criterion for what we today call ‘relevance.’ And with his typically refreshing outlook, the apostle defined relevance not as we tend to do. For him, relevance had to be defined not in terms of meeting audience expectations but in relation to the centrality of the Cross. His preaching agenda was set by that theological center, not by his audience....

Now, what lessons may we preachers today learn from this amazing passage of Scripture?

First, a biblical preacher critiques his methods, his forms of contextualization, his adaptations to culture, his style, not primarily by the standard of culture but by the superior standard of the gospel itself....The message of the Cross must discipline and control us—indeed, limit us—even though that puts us at a disadvantage in winning an audience.

What one observes in evangelicalism today is that, while many preachers can declare allegiance to all the right doctrines, their theology makes little difference in their preaching beyond drawing the widest, most amorphous and seldom alluded-to boundaries. Their formal credentials may be in order, but the theology they affirm sits very lightly on their actual practice of ministry. It is invisible to their people. Such ministers demonstrate little doctrinal specificity or even discernment—intentionally so?—in their message and style. The biblical gospel may be formally obligatory, but it is personally uninteresting and strategically incidental. Such ministers may be exacting in their methodology, but they are vague in their theology—a curious arrangement of priorities! For Paul, such thinking would have been completely alien to his soul. For him theology reigned supreme in every aspect of his ministry. Theology for him, energized him, cheered him, emboldened him. It was his ministerial fountain of youth. One wonders how far we may drift from Pauline ministry and still retain a plausible claim to biblical authenticity in our work (Trinity Journal 18, NS, no. 2, Spring 1997).

I could go on and on with more great stuff from this article. I recommend every pastor obtain and read it for yourself, and apply it to the leadership and preaching of your church. Assign the article to your pastoral team or eldership and together evaluate your church in relation to the content of this article. We must do more than nod our heads as we read, we must make application to our pastoral ministry in very specific ways.

How about your pastoral reading list—is it more focused on the latest pragmatic pastoral fad than the cross of Jesus Christ? Are there more books on your desk from the business section of Barnes & Noble than there are the great works of Calvin, Edwards, Owen, and Spurgeon? Let us not be numbered among those for whom "theology...sits lightly on their practice of ministry" or pastors who are "exacting in their methodology, but vague in their theology."

May it never be said of our pastoral ministry that the gospel was "formally obligatory...but personal uninteresting and strategically incidental." Instead, by following the example of Paul, let "theology reign supreme" with the message of "Jesus Christ and him crucified." May this be the "the controlling center" of our preaching content, the structures and practices of our church and our evangelistic strategy. Then, and only then, will the church be truly relevant to our culture.