Cultural Relevance

I just read a great blog by Walt Mueller entitled Shaved Heads, Goatees, and Other Misdirected Attempts at Reaching the World... The title basically says it all. These two paragraphs are especially great:

Because I study youth culture for the sake of effective cross-cultural work with kids, many people are surprised to find out that I oftentimes try to squelch our (the church) growing love affair and obsession with relevance. I think we need to stand back and take a long, hard objective look at ourselves and our ministries to see just what this pursuit of relevance might not only be doing to us, but doing to actually hinder the advance of the Gospel message...the noble desire and calling that has made us pursue relevance so passionately in the first place. A misdirected passion for relevance has fostered the increased use of the word "reinvent" when it comes to ourselves and our ministries. We run the risk of unintentionally allowing an obsession with style to eclipse what should be a passionate obsession with substance. Sadly, when we fall into it, we don't even know that this is what's happened. Eventually, our lives and ministries become a series of extreme makeovers, with the short time between each filled not with more and more reflection on the substance of the message, but with trying to keep up with the styles so that we're ready to jump when the next change is needed...something which is happening with increased frequency as time marches on.

It's for this reason that I've been speaking more and more about the seemingly subtle yet significant differences between pursuing lives and ministries marked by being culturally relevant and lives and ministries marked by being culturally informed. Being culturally informed--regardless of my age, shape, size, or hairstyle--means that I have taken the time to listen to another and their context. It means that I know them. It means that when I open my mouth to speak--regardless of whether or not that mouth is framed by a goatee--the person I am speaking to will kinow that I have listened and cared for them. Then they will be more prone to listen to what I have to say. We call this "relationship."

Check out the entire article and his blog at learningmylines.blogspot.com