BECOMING A RELEVANT CHURCH IN OUR GENERATION

BECOMING A RELEVANT CHURCH IN OUR GENERATION

For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.
( 2Corinthians 3:17-18 NLT )

I see a change in the new generation that is coming up who have been entertained to death in the world and also in the Church. One of our most active things in my church is our mid week prayer meeting. We have had all these teenagers coming who are passionate about seeking God, and about prayer. This new generation wants to know God and are not satisfied with playing church, or conforming to some religious code. They desire to be transformed into and changed into his glorious image.

Some say that the biggest mistake the church has made is bringing entertainment into the church. I feel that this isn't the problem at all. Many church have not been relevant to our world that we live in. Face it; we will never be able to compete with the entertainment that is in the world. The problem has nothing to do with the style of music we do in our church; or whether we have drums, or electric guitars, or organs. It has nothing to do with loud music, or elevator music.

If we travel around the world we will notice that every culture has different styles of music in their churches, some of which we may like, and some we will not prefer . They also conduct their worship services in a variety of ways.

Personal preference is not the determinative factor in how we should run a church service, or have what we call; “church.” For some of us the old hymns are the only thing we should use in a church service, but when these hymns we love so much are examined as to how they ended up in our churches we will discover that many of them were set to bar room music of their time, just like the Christian music styles of today.

The local church must be relevant for the times we are living in, or it will implode upon itself and die. We all have to redefine ourselves throughout the course of our lives. We are students, then we are young adults, then we are business men or women, we are fathers, or mothers, grandparents, etc.

I was born again in the mid 1970's. It was the time of folk songs and sitting around camp fires singing. You know how many churches rejected these folk singing hippies who were truly being born again?
But the churches who put aside there personal preferences and embraced these young people, loving them, and discipling them, have seen God transform them.

Many churches have said if you want to be one of us, then you must conform to become like us, cut your hair, take a bath, and dress up with a tie, then you can be in our church. I was born again into a church like this,

I started dressing right, and I even cut my hair, but my pastor told me he would finish the job because it was a Donny Osmond cut. I sang the right songs, and read the right translation of the Bible that was exceptionable, and I conformed.

I thought I was now a good Christian because I had conformed to what the church said I should look and act like; but there was a problem, inside I was a mess still because I had never learned to deal with the true issues.
I just dealt with the surface stuff which I was taught was all I had to do, I mowed the weeds instead of pulling them up. I went through a tough time in my life because of this false form of Christianity that dealt with the exterior instead of the heart issues.

Is this what we want to happen in our churches? Do we want a church full of as my kids would say; “posers?” Are we training people to be hypocrites which means to wear a mask, who are fake? Have our churches become no more than little clubs where only those who are willing to conform can be a part of it?

Jesus came into a world where this kind of religion was the norm. Religion is all about the exterior, Jesus is all about the interior. God can work with broken wounded hearts, but the proud and legalistic heart is another thing. Religion is very protective of itself and will rise up and appose those who come along telling them that there is something much better than what they are presenting. God is about relationship, not religion, and not about forms.

I want to see people transformed from the inside out, and I want to see them filled and controlled by the the Holy Spirit. This is where becoming a relevant Church in our generation begins. It is what we must become as we draw near to the return of Christ and to the end of this age.