Making the Gospel Relevant for Today

By Thomas M. Parsons

"Geared to the times, but anchored to the Rock." This was the catch phrase of the Christian young peoples' group which presented the Gospel to me when I was a senior in high school. Through the testimony of this group, I came to know Jesus Christ as my Savior. For that, of course, I am eternally grateful to the group.

But today, more than 40 years later, I am still trying to figure out, along with the rest of the church of Jesus Christ, how to be geared to the times and still stay anchored to the Rock. It is not that easy to do.

"Geared to the times," I suppose, means to be culturally relevant, to relate to people where they are in any given period of time and in any given culture. And, of course, this is necessary for the church to do.

"Anchored to the Rock," of course, means to be true to the Rock Who is Jesus Christ, and to His Word, the Holy Scriptures. It is also necessary for the church to do this.

Herein is the conflict. How far can Christians go to be "culturally relevant?" When do they cross the line that takes them away from being anchored to the Rock? Can believers really be both anchored and geared? Is the truth of this statement in reality as ambiguous as the mixed metaphor of my old youth organizations' motto?

Which side of this equation is more important? Should we lean more in the direction of cultural relevancy? Or should we stay closer to the Rock?

These are not easy questions for believers to answer. They have always been hard issues for the church. They are especially challenging in the culture in which we live because we live in what Dr. Francis Schaeffer called the post-Christian era. He meant that Christianity is not viewed as relevant by our culture anymore. The world simply thinks that Christianity is old, out-dated, worn-out and irrelevant to today's needs.

There was a time when our culture did view Christianity as relevant. That did not mean most people were saved, but it did mean that most people viewed the church as a relevant institution with a meaningful message and ministry. Those days are long gone. Today, many people simply view the church as irrelevant in modern life.

The contemporary evangelical church in America has taken the approach of seeking to become more culturally relevant to counter this idea. The church has labored and struggled to make the Gospel message relevant to today by seeking to put the Gospel into modern forms and structures. Music styles, drama, film and discussion groups have been garnered into place to seek to close the gap between being anchored to the Rock, yet geared to the times. The goal is to make the Gospel relevant to a culture that views it as irrelevant.

This approach has met with limited success in the evangelical church of today. Despite the use of popular styles and structures to convey the Gospel, people are not flocking to the Lord for salvation. We are not seeing people saved in any greater numbers in our culturally relevant churches of today than we were in our stodgy traditional churches of yesterday. In fact, we are seeing fewer people come to Christ.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Hebrews 13:8

In Paul's ministry there was a question raised about cultural relevancy. Some said that a man had to be circumcised in order to be saved (Acts 20:15). That was cultural. That was Jewish. It was an attempt to accommodate Jewish people and make the Gospel relevant to them through embracing something that was very much a part of their culture. How did the early church respond? The church decided that embracing a matter of Jewish cultural identity was not the best way to reach people with the Gospel. In this case, being geared to the times would have meant embracing circumcision. But that would have taken the early church too far away from the Rock.

Perhaps what is needed far more than relevancy is revival. The Gospel is relevant all by itself. After all, it deals with the sin nature which is universal and it provides the only answer there is to the questions every person has about eternity. If you put the Gospel in an old-fashioned tent meeting with an accordion and out-of-tune piano and "hell-fire and brimstone" preaching, the Gospel is still relevant to the needs of all. Of course, we are not advocating that the church do that.

The Gospel is also relevant when it is presented in a contemporary music style or when it appears in a contemporary venue. The Gospel is always relevant, no matter how it is presented.

The church must do what it has always had to do - find ways to be culturally relevant while still remaining firmly connected to Biblical truth. That is never easy to do. The church faces two dangers in this. Either we will spread into the culture and be absorbed by it, or we will retreat to the Rock and become irrelevant in meeting the real spiritual needs of people because we have no cultural avenue with which to reach them. The church must avoid both extremes.

I quote Dr. Francis Schaeffer in Death in the City: "Our attitude must be that of Jeremiah . . . weeping over Jerusalem, yet in the midst of his tears speaking without mitigating his message of judgment to a people who had had so much yet turned away."

In other words, we must remain firmly anchored to the Rock and be those who speak "without mitigating the message," yet at the same time weep over those who have turned away. Perhaps even more than technologies, we need tears.