In search for cultural relevancy, many churches have fundamentally abandoned the gospel. In hopes of getting the culture to like them for the purpose of “reaching” them with the “gospel,” many Christians have sold their soul. Debates over contextualization, as a result, have taken preeminence over fidelity to sound doctrine. Issues like music, dress codes (or lack there-of), language in the pulpit, youth ministry budgets for ski trips and pizza parties, shorter sermons, and chairs instead of pews have taken a front seat in debate. In an attempt to be faithful to the gospel, many have stripped the gospel of its offense and replaced it with a message of self-help and self-fulfillment.And as a result, liberal churches and denominations are dead.
Relevancy kills and thus makes churches irrelevant.
In an attempt to accommodate, mainstream Christianity alienates. Throughout the history of Christianity, many have tried to model their understanding of the gospel and the local church after trends in the culture. Each and every attempt has failed. Ecumenical liberalism empties chairs and turns a thriving church into an anemic congregation.
The past decade has only added to the already compiled evidence that liberalism kills. According to reports, denominations like Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Methodist, and other liberal-leaning denominations made up of 40% of American Protestantism in the 1960s. As of June 2006, however, the percentage has dropped to just 12% (17 million out of 135 million). Since 1965, Episcopalians have gone from 3.4 million adherents to just 2.3 million. Presbyterians during that same time period, dropped from 4.3 million to just 2.5 million members. And the numbers continue to fall.*
Liberal Christianity gets a lot of press, but has very little real influence in the lives of everyday people. As one author put it, liberal Christians “have assumed a kind of reverse mission: instead of being the church’s missionaries to the world, they have become the world’s missionaries to the church.”** In search of relevancy, mainstream congregations drop the biblical mandate to reach the lost with the exclusive gospel and have replaced it with a message of, “see, we’re just like you.” And so rather than being a beckon of hope, they are just another social club and humanitarian organization.
There are a number of reasons why such a message simply does not work. First, to base one’s foundation on an ever-changing message inherently implies that in a matter of time it will become irrelevant again. This is true no matter how often a church or denomination updates its message or chases the winds of the culture. To always be changing based on opinion polls and the fickle wishes of society is to never be grounded in something more solid. Fickle theology never gives congregants the assurance and certainty needed especially in times of trouble and uncertainty. To always be changing one’s beliefs based on current trends is to actually have no beliefs in the first place.
Secondly, by seeking to be relevant (by surrendering fidelity to Scripture and forever changing one’s beliefs) one becomes irrelevant. Relevancy is not defined by how up to date one is or how popular their new tattoo is, but on how time-tested one’s convictions are. Transcendence is more relevant than accommodation. A transcendent theology is a time-tested theology that understands the issues before they arise. A couple struggling in their marriage need time-tested, transcendent answers that work, not marritable tips that may change the next day. A mother who loses her young son in a car accident needs a time-tested, transcendent message that brings comfort and hope, not words that sound like they came out of a parenting magazine. The drug addict, the legalistic father, and the abandoned orphan need a message that is grounded in something much deeper than cultural trends and the waves of society. What they need is a message of reconciliation and hope, not a message of tells them to be like the rest of the fallen world.
Many have fooled themselves into thinking that hairstyle and music makes them relevant when in fact it only makes them trendy. When Christians, especially pastors and youth ministers, participate in this game, it shows that they spend more time watching MTV for fashion tips and Dr. Phil for counseling advice than they do studying God’s Word and proclaiming the gospel. This does not mean one cannot be engaged in the culture, but to let the culture define one’s ministry and beliefs is to confuse relevancy with trendiness.
Thirdly, when secularism is the dominate cultural worldview and the church accommodates it, birth rates become a serious issue. Secularism undermines marriage and the family. With secularism comes a decrease in couples getting married and the lack of desire for children. Thus, where there is secularism, birth rates will drop.
This affects denominations and churches in that much of congregational growth is based on birth rates. When couples in a congregation (let alone an entire denomination) cease having children, the numbers will invariably drop. Religions, especially Christianity, have always grown based on reproduction rates and proselytizing. Christians are called to be ambassadors of the gospel to both the world and our children. By mimicking the deportation of children in the home, liberal Christianity is signing its own death warrant.
Furthermore, an updated gospel foolishly believes that man is the answer to our problems, rather than God. It is therefore a-theistic. The gospel begins with and ends with God. Justification by faith alone affirms God’s exclusive work in salvation. To insert man and his opinions (driven by his depravity) is take God out of the equation. Liberalism’s gospel fails in both its transcendence and its anthropological assumptions. Scripture is clear that apart from the intervening from God, man will forever rebel and sink deeper into the lust of their own depravity. By allowing the culture to shape one’s faith and call it Christianity is a contradiction to the gospel itself. The gospel calls on men everywhere to repent and to be saved out of the generation, not to it.
Finally, a culturally-driven message is an attack on the doctrine of God. If the message changes, then the One who first gave the message changes with it. An ever change message implies that God keeps changing His mind. To update the gospel is about more than styles of music or holes and rust stains in the youth pastors jeans, it is primarily about God. If God changes with the culture, then He is no longer God. A right understanding of God implies transcendence. God is not limited to the wiles and fickleness of man. Rather man is under the sovereignty and providential authority of God. Liberal Christianity, by changing and undermining the gospel, are guilty of dethroning God and placing the culture in His place.
Rather than cave to the wishes of culture, the Church must stand apart from it (Acts 2:40). What separates liberal Christianity and orthodox Christianity is not doctrine, but transcendence. The “Old Old Story,” does not need an update because it is not limited to time, geography, or opinion polls. Orthodoxy was shaped, not by a culture, but by God Himself before the foundation of the world. The gospel is transcendent and reaches everyone everywhere regardless of their present circumstance, language, race, nationality, or culture. The promise of redemption to those enslaved to sin is not limited to the will of the people, but is of the will of God.
The gospel is transcendent first because it begins with God. If God is immutable, then so are His decrees. An immutable God reveals an immutable message and in Scripture that immutable message is repeatedly declared. Persons are reconciled with God, not by chasing fads, but by humbly repenting of their rebellion against Him. To attack the transcendence of the gospel is first of all a direct attack against God.
Secondly, the gospel is transcendent because the need for it is. Genesis 3 records the fall of man which affects everyone. By inheriting the same sinful nature, the solution to overcoming and being redeemed from sin is also the same. Through one man (Adam) sin entered the world. Likewise, through one man (Jesus Christ) sin can be defeated (Romans 5:12-21).
Christian liberals are all too often more willing to place the blame of man’s plight on something other than human depravity. They do so by blaming systemic sin, environmental catastrophe, political corruption, socio-economic upbringing, or poverty than to identify sin as the source of man’s problem. Scripture is clear that all have sinned, all are guilty, and all have inherited this sinful nature. Sin, therefore, is transcendent and is apparent in all nations, peoples, tribes, languages, families, and individuals. Since sin is transcendent, then so is salvation through Jesus Christ.
And salvation always came through substitutionary atonement. Immediately following the fall in Genesis 3 and the curses God placed on humanity, God revealed the gospel through the shedding of innocent blood. Adam and Eve tried to cover their shame by putting together fig leaves (Genesis 3:7). Fig leaves were a temporary solution to a permanent problem. God, however, covered their shame by giving them animal skin to wear (Genesis 3:21). Animal skin involves the death of an innocent animal and is a more permanent solution to their shame.
It is this theme of sacrifice and atonement that runs through the Bible and climaxes at the cross. The day of atonement (Leviticus 16) was the day that the sin of Israel was forgiven based on the sacrifice of an innocent animal. That sacrifice, however, had to be repeated every year by the priests. It was all a foretaste of what Christ would accomplish on the cross. There, Christ served as the innocent sacrifice in place of guilty mankind.
The point of all of this is simply to show that atonement has always been the universal solution to the universal problem of sin. Immediately after sin entered the world, atonement for sin was made by God. That has never changed. If sin is transcendent, then so is substitutionary atonement. When sin entered the world, so did the gospel foundationally seen in substitutionary atonement.
Furthermore, the gospel is transcendent, and thus in no need for an update, because the universal call for repentance is transcendent. Both John the Baptist (Matthew 3:2) and Jesus (Matthew 4:17) called on people to repent. Following the ministries of John the Baptist and Christ, the apostles picked up the mantle of repentance. They took the gospel to various cultures, languages, and socio-economic situations throughout the Roman Empire. At every stop and in every culture the apostles proclaimed the same message of repentance (see Acts 2:38; 3:19; 11:18; 19:4; and 20:21 for example). Though every new city was a challenge, the apostles never changed the message because the message was in no need of change.
Finally, the gospel is transcendent because the fruits of repentance are transcendent. Is it not interesting that everyone speaks highly of love? It does not matter what culture or nation one finds themself in, love is considered the highest of virtues. Love, then, is transcendent. A brief look at some of the fruits of repentance found in Scripture are just as transcendent and universal such as joy, peace, patience, goodness, humility, gentleness, and self-control. This would only make sense if the gospel itself, grounded in repentance on the basis of the substitutionary work of Christ, was transcendent. If the gospel was not transcendent, then what it means to walk in the gospel would look different. Rather than live by transcendent values like love and patience, one would be forced to come up with various values based on their current location.
Perhaps no other issue is under greater assault today than the transcendence of the gospel. When one complains about the exclusive claims of Christ and fights for a more inclusive gospel, it is really the transcendence of the gospel that is at stake. The foul of exclusively is rooted in postmodernity and our obsession with tolerance. Transcendence is under attack. When one doubts the necessity or the historicity of the resurrection based on the impossibility of miracles, it is really the transcendence of the gospel that is at stake. A fundamental rejection of miracles is rooted in a scientific worldview developed over the past few centuries. Transcendence is under attack. When one claims that homosexuals can be just as good Christians are monogamous heterosexual Christians, it is really the transcendence of the gospel that is at stake. The rejection of homosexuality as a sin is grounded in a postmodern, sexually confused society. Transcendence is under attack.
Transcendence, then, is true relevancy. A fickle gospel helps no one and is thus irrelevant. So long as churches are chasing fads and updating what they believe to fit with the ever-changing times, it will remain irrelevant and empty. Let the declining numbers of American mainstream Christianity be a message to all who are tempted to “keep up” with the culture. The search for relevancy enhances irrelevancy. Remaining grounded in Scripture, faithful to the gospel, and unconcerned for the trends of the culture, however, will breed the sort of relevancy and power every church seeks. The power of the gospel is that it saves and turns wretched souls into holy saints. The gospel does not need an update.
*These numbers are based on an article from the Los Angeles Times. Charlotte Allen, “Liberal Christianity is Paying for its Sins.” The numbers were taken from the Hartford Institute for Religious Research. Dinesh D’Souza records similar numbers in Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great About Christianity?, 4. His numbers comes from the Institute on Religion and Democracy in 2005. He adds that the United Church of Christ went from 2.2 million members to just 1.3 million members. Both sources site the growth of the Southern Baptist Convention during this time period from 8.7 million to now 16.4 million.
**D'Souza, What's So Great About Christianity?, 3.
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