If you want relevancy, watch Oprah, your leading source of information on love and life (at least according to her website). Can anyone show me where in the Bible it says make me relevant to each and every person until Jesus returns. I know I am going to get in trouble here. And, for sure, by some, be dismissed. And worse, probably be deemed as irrelevant, and by some absolutely wrong. But I don’t care. There is no doubt our neurosis with our own sense of meaninglessness and our obsession to make the Christian faith relevant to non-believers has caused much famine of the word of the Lord in the church. As Walter Kaiser observed in his Toward an Exegetical Theology 
“It is no secret that Christ’s church is not at all in good health in many places of the world. She has been languishing because she has been fed, as the current line has it, “junk food.”…As a result, theological and biblical malnutrition has affected [us]…[A] worldwide spiritual famine resulting from the absence of any genuine [diet] of the Word of God continues to run wild and almost unabated in most quarters of the church.”
Too often and typically, a sermon or teaching is judged by its use of illustrations and Hallmark Card “relevant” platitudes, rather than whether the result, that is the message, is a faithful exposition and careful exegesis of the text. In fact, I rarely hear expository messages—I mean real ones, not topical and contextual renderings of pastoral ideas. In fact I bet you a year’s salary that most congregants know more about their pastor the preacher and more about how he or she feels about the bible than they do about the Christian faith as proclaimed by the New Testament writers. We hear more on how the preacher relates to the world, about his (or her) stories of life, and how the preacher feels about the church, the world, and Christianity, than what the texts of Scripture say. And stringing verses with common words and themes together as a conclusion or a start to what the preacher is sharing doesn’t count. That’s not preaching, neither is it exposition of Scripture. We rob our congregations of the knowledge of God’s word. Certainly make the Word relevant. But it must be the Word that is being made relevant. As preachers and communicators of the Word, it’s not about us. It is not our story that we so desperately want to share. It is His story. His Word. His text. If you want relevancy, stick to the popular couch shows like Oprah. But know this is not want the soul actually needs. Nor, does it actually have the power to redeem and cause the church to preserve.
Posted by Chip Anderson at 04:40 AM. Filed under: In the Margins • Exegesis, Hermeneutics & the Word •
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