Fight fire with fire?

The sur­vival of the church is depen­dent upon the abil­ity of the church to engage in and relate to the soci­ety and cul­ture it finds itself in, regard­less of the soci­ety and cul­ture it finds itself in. The dan­ger is when church lead­ers pro­pose we become like soci­ety to engage in and become rel­e­vant to and impact­ing of soci­ety. In this we have taken the first step towards com­pro­mise and the unique voice of the church within the world dis­ap­pears. This, of course, being a dif­fer­ent approach than under­stand­ing soci­ety and engag­ing soci­ety where it stands with­out adopt­ing, nec­es­sar­ily, the pre­sup­po­si­tions of soci­ety. In this we under­stand there is a dif­fer­ence between under­stand­ing soci­ety, engag­ing with soci­ety and main­tain­ing the unique voice of the church and under­stand­ing soci­ety, becom­ing like soci­ety and los­ing the unique voice of the church. Para­dox­i­cally, the more rel­e­vant one wishes to become the less rel­e­vant one seems to become. Rel­e­vancy is not depen­dent upon same­ness with that thing which one wishes to become rel­e­vant to.

Related posts:

1. Rel­e­vance, but What of the Message?
2. The Search for Answers and Meaning