The Relevant Christians

Greetings friends,

There is a magazine (actually now I think it's best to call it a collection of magazines) that I have been deeply invested in lately. They are called Relevant magazine, and if you're not subscribed to them in some way (for starters I highly recommend the podcast, as it is free), you need to be.

The magazine is all about what it means to be a Christian in the world around us. Sometimes we as Christians try to find our way to a cloistered environment, getting away from the culture at large so that we can stay pure and holy. This is all well and good, but the truth of the matter is that Christ called us to reach the lost, and the lost find themselves outside of our neat and tidy Christian communities. So how do we reach them without becoming heathens?

Relevant does a great job of navigating this in a big way. The short story is that it's possible, and we as leaders in the church should be doing everything we can to make sure we're getting out to people where they are, not asking them to come inside our world and get their passports before we'll speak to them.

The word Relevant itself gets into a bit of trouble. Some people hear it and cringe, because they think (correctly) that Jesus is way bigger than simply being relevant. Jesus doesn't need to be made relevant to reach people, and in fact, any attempt to make him more relevant will likely lead to robbing him of power. All of that is incredibly true. My question would be are we as Christ-Followers, are WE relevant? The message is and always will be relevant to the cultures of the world, and Jesus can reach everyone from America to Brazil to Iraq, but I wonder if we're doing a good job being relevant to the people we serve?

All that said, I'm going to go sit in a coffee house to be among the people! Or something like that!

Godspeed,

J


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