supply & demand [thoughts on being relevant]

“And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power."

We face the same challenging decision that Paul did when he entered the city of Corinth. To be simple: so that ‘your faith might not rest on human wisdom but on God’s power’. Or, to be wise: ‘with eloquence and human wisdom’.

The culture of this world demands of us that we be ‘in the know’. It’s not socially acceptable or fashionable to be simple or to even admit personal ignorance. In turn, this creates a barrier for real friendship and real vulnerability – real community. It forces you and I to NOT be ourselves.

Our innate understanding of ‘supply and demand’ has us, as the body of Christ, naturally feeling an urgency to meet this cultural demand by supplying not necessarily answers but socially acceptable and fashionable messages that meet this cultural demand. In turn, this enables us to control whether or not people are ‘getting it’ or ‘receiving Christ’. We call this relevant, but is it really? Have we fooled ourselves into thinking that relevancy will meet the deep spiritual longing of our present culture?

By definition, to be relevant is to be closely connected or appropriate to the matter at hand. How can we be closely connected or even appropriate with anyone without the Spirit of God? His Spirit is the only thing that can truly connect not just your spirit and my spirit, but more importantly, His spirit to my spirit and His Spirit to your spirit. This creates a closely connected spiritual community; a truly appropriate and relevant people.

Paul came ‘in weakness with fear and trembling’ with the simple intent to demonstrate the power of God through God’s spirit, not his own. Have we confused what is true relevancy by without know that we have infused it with a cultural doctrine of supply and demand?

Relevancy is connecting people to the matter at hand, which is Jesus – Christ crucified and His Spirit thereof. Relevancy meets the needs of the present by infusing it with the future, God’s Kingdom-at-hand; lest our faith – and the church – ‘rest on human wisdom’. Better said, what WE think relevancy is.

Father, help us to understand what it truly means to be relevant.