- Henri Nouwen
If such a thing is possible, I simultaneously love this quote with all my heart and despise it with all my being. I love it because it reminds me that God has not called me to be an answer guy who always has the correct verse or the correct theological solution to whatever situation the people with whom I come in contact might be facing. Rather, God calls me to just be me and to show up and to love people.
If Nouwen is right - and it will come to no surprise to you that I believe he is - I am free from the necessity to make my ministry "relevant" by having catchy sermon titles and cool video graphics and the latest techno-junk that everyone else has. Instead, I am to stand up in front of people and lay bare my soul and say, "Here is Jesus." And I absolutely LOVE that!
Unfortunately, not everyone in the church around the world believes this to be true. And THAT is why I despise Nouwen's words as much as I love them. There are still so many people who expect the pastor to pontificate piously from the pedestal upon which they have placed him or her. They don't want a vulnerable, weak pastor - they want the "Bible Answer Guy" (apologies to Hank Hanegraaf). They're not so much interested in the Jesus of Good Friday as they are in the Jesus of Resurrection Morning and in the Jesus of Cleansing Temples.
There are still so many pastors and churches that believe that relevance is the only way for a church to grow and that no one will be attracted to the gospel unless we bend it and mold it to shape the culture. That is why there are hundreds of conferences out there that teach pastors how to be "culturally relevant" and preach from the newspaper or from primetime television with a smattering of Scripture verses thrown in. That is why there are so many churches that look like shopping malls...or warehouses...or department stores...or anything but churches.
Here's the problem. For so many people - in fact, I would say for MOST people - irrelevance is not something to be embraced, it is something to be feared. If I am relevant, people notice me and affirm my value. If I am relevant, they compliment my sermons or Sunday School lessons. If I am relevant, the world knows that I, Joseph Eugene Boggs, exist and am significant and make an impact on the people around me.
The same cannot be said of irrelevance. If I am irrelevant, no one notices me and few people affirm my value. If I am irrelevant, people may or may not compliment my teaching or preaching, and they may even not like what I have to say. If I am irrelevant, I still exist, but the purpose of my life isn't to prove my significance or importance or even to make an impact on the people around me. When I, Joseph Eugene Boggs, embrace the kind of holy irrelevance Nouwen describes, the world no longer sees me or knows me.
Instead, the world comes to know that Jesus, the Christ, the Holy One of God exists and is significant and makes an impact on people's lives.
2 comments:
Joe, what I think I hear Nouwen saying is that we as pastors need to simply get out of the way and let Christ speak through us. We become a glass (although a dim one) that allows the light of Christ to shine through. I would disagree that we ought not to find culturally relevant ways of presenting the gospel. We have this message in jars of clay--the containers will change over time: things such as language, dialect, rhertoric, epistemology, and so on do and must change over time. If the gospel is to be truly heard by people, they must hear it (feel it, see it, experience it) in a language they can apprehend and comprehend. This seems in part to be James' message in Acts 15:19 at the Jerusalem Council and Paul's preaching at Mar's Hill before the Areopagus.
I had a discussion with an older evangelist after a camp meeting service recently about this very issue. Needless to say it didn't go so well. Although being relevant was okay with him as long as we were relevant to certain people--namely those from the 1950s.
Thanks for a good post.
Haha - Eugene...
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