God Doesn't Need Your Guitar On Sunday Morning (Or Your Keytar)

relevant |ˈreləvənt| |ˌrɛləvənt| |ˌrɛlɪv(ə)nt|
adjective
closely connected or appropriate to the matter at hand : the candidate's experience is relevant to the job.

When I was a younger worship pastor, one of the frequent words that always seemed to come up was the word “relevance”. Probably coming out of the seeker sensitive movement, the idea is that if we can just show unbelievers that we are “relevant” (meaning not boring) then that will give us a platform to then preach the gospel to them.

But what does relevance mean? Relevant to whom? Does this not assume that there is some universal relevance factor that we can tap into and thus reach those outside the walls of the church? I think most churches subtly assume (though not verbally) that drums, guitars, cool lighting, and a pastor in jeans is somehow the universal relevance factor. Granted, this may lean a bit more relevant than a pastor in a long flowing robe and worship with a pipe organ, but my contention is that a pastor in a long flowing robe in a church that has not had a paint job in the last 50 years, but knows how to connect people to love God and to love each other, is much more “relevant” than any perfect Willow Creeker with a million dollar technology budget (that’s not to say that a Willow Creeker can’t lead people to love God and love people…they clearly can).

The problem with all the relevance talk is that a universal expression of relevance in terms of form does not exist. In the past, trends used to change by the decade. Now with the rise of the Internet, trends literally change by the day. To try and keep up with what is "hip" and "relevant" for the sake of bridge building for the gospel is virtually impossible. Here is a novel idea: Why not just try and be yourself? How about the all people in your church just try and be themselves together? Use what God has given you and do that! Don't try and be "relevant", unless what you are good at seems to flow with the next 24-hour period of culture tendency. Just do what you do and do it the best that you can for the sake of God’s glory.

The question is not what forms you use, but who you are. Thus the focus has to be on relationships and not on forms. Is this not the tenure of the Bible? Does not the Bible exhort us to be much more focused on relationships (with him first, others second) than on forms? Through the course of scripture we see that worship forms take lots of different shapes, but what stays central is a call to love God and love others from cover to cover.

I think when I was younger I was much more attracted to the myth of relevance because what that meant for me was that I got to play my guitar in worship. Relevance? Sure! Bring it on! Over the years I have come to see that a valuing of forms holds no weight if there is no substance of God informed passion especially in our preaching and also in our worship leading.

Why am I writing all this? Maybe by now most churches already know this, but I believe that there is way too much emphasis upon forms in our corporate gatherings. What we need is a resurgence of humble, passionate, excellence minded pastors who have a huge view of God and his Word. Where our leaders lead, our people will follow. What our teachers teach, our people will believe. When our pastors preach huge passion for God and his Word, all these other issues will take care of themselves.

By the way, I still love to play my electric guitar when I lead worship. I just don't assume that I need to do this to be "relevant".

P.S. - In this Q and A with Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, and John Piper the issue of "relevance" comes up. I really appreciated their responses. Check it out. The discussion starts around 31:10 in the audio.