If we as a local body of believers did not exist, would it matter?I can honestly say that a lot of times it would not matter. To the question of the irrelevance mentioned above:
(1) I believe that most congregations really don't know that they have lost touch with the world around them. Their idea of the Christian walk is to attend "church" on Sundays and Wednesdays, and discuss the fact that those in church ought to do good, and how big a shame it is for those outside the church to do bad! Perhaps they believe that some will just walk into the door begging to be changed. I am not denying that this has happened at times, and it is unexplainable except for the drawing grace of God; but this is definitely not the norm. I believe that most congregations really don't know that the world doesn't know about them! Unless they have the biggest building on the square, the general population probably doesn't even know where the church building meets. The phrases on the sign mean nothing to the general populous, and they don't know all of the in's and out's of what is going on in your building. The city is not talking about who your pastor is, and they don't want to listen to your music. This is sad, but the world doesn't give a rip about most local congregations and the congregations are, I believe, totally unaware of this fact. They want their city to be saved, but they don't realize that the city doesn't know them, so how can the city know Jesus?
(2) I believe that there are some local congregations who don't care that they are irrelevant. Notice that I changed the number to "some." (if that is actually a number... kind of like the meeting I was in yesterday when the lawyer on the board said we all needed to determine how many a "majority" was. Wow!) I really believe that this is the fringe and we probably need to be content to let them handle snakes or whatever else they do. I will discuss them no further.
The issue is that whether we know that the Church has become irrelevant or not, we need to be relevant. I believe that we need to go further than that, however. I believe that we need to be "culture changing." This is not a matter of marching in the streets or protesting some cause, but to truly follow the example of Christ in the real world. Christ did not spend much time simply protesting all of the bad in the world (except for the religious people, but I digress), but he spent time showing the better way. In Biblical vernacular, He did not curse the darkness, but He shined His light and the darkness was gone. You know, it has actually been said that there is not such thing as "darkness," but that the dark was simply an absence of light. With this being said, I believe that the Church needs to be proactive in society rather than just reactive. We're great as taking those who have fallen and leading them to repentance, but when is the last time we actively worked to keep those same from falling in the first place? Being proactive means that society will start looking to the Church of ideas. We are great as taking what is going on in the world and adapting it for our needs (music, teaching methods, etc.), but when is the last time the world looked to the Church? Where is the new style of music that has never been heard before until it comes from the church? Where is the book that has never been written? Where is the method that the Church comes up with that businesses and MTV has to try to mimic?
The idea of MTV and something that came to my mind will be the work of the next continuation...
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