by Drew Witt

MAKING THE CHURCH RELEVANT AGAIN

I’m a tech-savvy young pastor, musician, and artist. My dad was the sound man at our church for twenty-one years, essentially growing up in the church sound booth. I am most at home around audio, visual, and lighting equipment. It’s what I know. 

I love the Church and have always been a bit frustrated with how, well, how do I put this nicely, how lame we tend to come across. 

From an early age, I would talk to my dad about church problems and ask why more people weren’t coming. Sometimes, we would debrief about how bad the sound was at church, or how we were tired of the failing RadioShack discount microphones. I made a subtle promise to myself in those days: when grown-up, I wanted to use my talents and interests to make church relevant so more people could know Jesus.

Fast forward twenty years, and I was the Worship Pastor at a rapidly growing church plant with a vision to be contemporary and “not your grandmother’s church.” 

Dream come true.

In an effort to make our worship services more contemporary, artistic, and frankly, more appealing, I routinely sought after the wisdom of cooler, more relevant, and heavily funded megachurches who were the trendsetters. 

Thanks to social media, I ended up following a church that I greatly admired from afar. Later, I was pleased to find that their production department, DEPARTMENT, had a blog where they shared all their tips and lessons learned. Their blog covered everything from how to lead worship, how to tune drums, how to compress the pastor’s Countryman for maximum authority, how to mix worship, and how to light the auditorium. 

Not the Sanctuary. Auditorium. 

Eventually, they wrote a blog that argued for a $5,000 haze machine. 

At first, I thought that I had stumbled on The Babylon Bee or The Onion. Was this a joke? 

But it wasn’t. They were serious. Complete with pictures. 

Let this sink in: a full time paid staff member from their production staff was paid to write an article explaining why churches should purchase at least one haze machine. To not spring for the $5,000 model would introduce risk to their worship environment and HVAC systems.

Full disclosure, I love technology. I’m not anti-technology, anti-mega church, or anti-cool. I worked for a theatrical lighting company in high school. I love ETC Source4s, Shure Beta 87s, Sennheiser wireless systems, and the sound of a good kick drum. 

The Holy Spirit always moves when you can feel the kick drum.

However, the infamous $5k Haze Article serves as a useful data point on the subtle lie churches and pastors (and many times the congregation) believe: that the church just needs to look and act more relevant to reach people far from God.

On some level, we believe that the world and culture’s rejection of the Church is style and presentation, not substance. 

But didn’t Jesus predict there would be rejection and persecution?

THE DANGER OF BUZZWORDS

There are several important words we use in the church world. Words like grace, mercy, forgiveness, the Gospel, the Kingdom, etc. We use them a lot. We should. They’re important. But one of the downsides to using important words so much is they quickly become familiar. And with familiarity comes a blurred sense of definition. 

When these important and foundational words become vague, they cease to communicate crucial and weighty spiritual ideas and begin to become like junk drawers and catch-alls. Have you ever heard someone (probably Evangelical and heavily reformed) throw out the Gospel seven times in four sentences, and both of you weren’t really sure what they meant by the catch-all word? Are they confused or just hashtagging in real life? No one knows.

I did this with the kingdom years ago. I was talking with my Senior Pastor, and I kept dropping the phrase the kingdom frequently and carelessly. The same way hipsters celebrity name drop after their Coachella road trip. At one point in the conversation, my pastor stopped me and gently asked me to define the Kingdom of Heaven for him. 

I. Was. Stumped. 

 “Umm….um….the Kingdom of Heaven….um….we’re supposed to seek it first….it’s uh…..ummmmm…..the church?”

I had done it. I’m not sure which was worse. Not knowing a clear definition of the Kingdom of Heaven, or confusing the Kingdom of Heaven with The Church. 

And I had been a licensed pastor for eight years!

He was gracious, suggesting that I do some studying on the word, the phrase, the concept, and the reality that Jesus spoke of more than anything.

With my head slightly down, I went off to search for a real and tangible meaning of the Kingdom of Heaven. Below are a few of the treasures that I found.

SANDALS

What is The Kingdom of Heaven? Not to be cliche or silly, but simply put: Jesus. 

Jesus is the Kingdom of Heaven, walking around in sandals. Wherever Jesus went, so did the Kingdom of Heaven.

John the Baptizer’s message was, “Behold, the Kingdom of Heaven is near.” Jesus’ message was, “Behold, the Kingdom of Heaven is here.”

If you want to know what the Kingdom of Heaven looks like, just look at Jesus. Look at the words, the works, and the way of Jesus.

That is the best definition of the Kingdom.

The answer of “Jesus” is more than a default Sunday school answer. But if you want a deeper or more academic definition, then here it is. The Kingdom of Heaven is the rule and reign of God. 

The Kingdom of Heaven is what you get when Father, Son, and Spirit are in charge.

“Your Kingdom come, Your will be done…”

As a bonus, The Gospel is “the announcement of the availability of the Kingdom of Heaven.” Thank you, Dallas Willard.

So, with those two terms in hand, we know The Kingdom, and we know The Gospel. 

What about The Church? 

That’s the dangerous part. We often confuse The Kingdom of Heaven with The Church.

A brief history lesson illustrates it best.

MARCO POLO’S ERRAND

The story goes something like this: Marco Polo was traveling and spent some time with Kublai Khan, Genghis Khan’s grandson. Khan was intrigued by Christ and asked Marco Polo to relay a message and request he had to the Pope.  

The message from Khan said, “The way of Christ seems best. Please send one hundred teachers schooled in The Way to teach us.”

Polo, seeing the urgent nature of the request, made a b-line to Rome to deliver the request. 

When Marco Polo is your private courier....

Days, weeks, months go by.

Two years later, the Pope responded. How’s that for ghosting? Suddenly someone ignoring my text message doesn’t seem so bad.

Instead of sending one hundred teachers, he sent two, along with the message, “Ecclesiastically attach yourself to Rome and her politics.”

Offended, and quite hot, Khan rejected Christianity and picked up a bloody form of Islam, and continued to spread hate and fire throughout all of Asia.

Khan asked for the Person of the Kingdom. The Pope gave him the Program of the Church.

Person > Program.

THE RELEVANT CHURCH

The Church is not the Kingdom of Heaven. 

Ever missed a Bible study or a church service, and someone told you to “seek first the Kingdom of God”?

What if you were on your way to said church service or Bible study and stopped to help someone hurt on the side of the road? That would be seeking first the Kingdom of Heaven, but not the Church…

Confession: I’ve quoted Matthew 6:33 to people who missed my Bible study. I’m sorry. 

We would do well to understand that the Church is an agent of the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Church is a witness to the Kingdom of Heaven.

But the Church is not the same thing as the Kingdom of Heaven.

For starters, Hebrews says that we’re receiving a kingdom that is unshakable.

Have you ever changed the color of the carpet in a church? Or moved the piano? Or preached too long? Shakable. 

Obviously, our experience shows us that the two aren’t synonymous.

If the Church has become irrelevant, it’s not because her liturgy is boring, outdated, and missing the $5,000 haze machine with matching intelligent lights.

If the Church is irrelevant, it’s because she has ceased to share the most relevant thing in the universe: the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Church is an agent of the Kingdom of Heaven, and her message is that the Kingdom of Heaven is available through the finished work of Christ on the cross (The Gospel). 

The Kingdom of Heaven - the Person, purity, and power of Jesus Christ are available to you!

Do you give people the Kingdom walking around in sandals? Or are you content with merely giving people your program?

The Person is greater than our programs.

Resources

We’ve created a free downloadable PDF to explore the article deeper. It contains discussion questions about the topic in general terms that will give you a jumping-off point for beginning a conversation.

The second page contains a way to see the topic from a biblical perspective.

And finally, to go deeper into the subject, we have chosen a few curated resources to explore from other authors’ and thinkers’ research or perspectives.

Read. Engage. Enjoy!

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Depending on how a gem is held, light refracts differently. At B+PC we engage in Pop Culture topics to see ideas from a new angle, to bring us to a deeper understanding. And like Pastor Shane Willard notes, we want “…Jesus to get bigger, the cross to get clearer, the Resurrection to be central…” Instead of approaching a topic from “I don’t want to be wrong,“ we strive for the alternative “I want to expand my perspective.” 

So, we invite you to engage with us here. What piqued your curiosity to dig deeper? What line inspired you to action? What idea made you ask, “Hmmm?” Let’s join with our community to wrestle with our thoughts in love in the Comment Section! See you there!