Ya Gotta Do Both: Biblical Fidelity AND Cultural Relevance

NOTE: This was written about the SBC; but I think it really applies to all churches.

“Southern Baptists may have decided the battle for biblical faithfulness, but the future will be “bleak” if the organized church does not begin to break cultural barriers and become relevant to its community,” said missiologist, Ed Stetzer
“We have got to be known as the convention that believes in biblical fidelity and engaging people in the culture.”

Stetzer, research team director at the North American Mission Board in Alpharetta, Ga, was the keynote speaker April 7 at the “Missional Ministry in Emerging Culture” conference at Chets Creek Church in Jacksonville, FL.
He grounded his discussion in two scripture passages: Jude 3, which speaks to biblical faithfulness, and 1 Cor. 9:22-23, which addresses cultural relevance or contextualization. “We must contend for the faith and at the same time contextualize for the culture,” he explained.

The church is not the center of God’s plan, Setzer said, “but central to God’s plan.”

Yet, he said, others wonder if the church matters today. He cited statistics that the percentage of Christians in the U.S. population dropped nine percent from 1990 to 2000 and highlighted George Barna’s findings that the number of unchurched persons in the U.S. has almost doubled from 1991 to 2004.

Nor do people see the church making a difference in the lives of the Christian believer, Setzer said. As an example, born-again church members divorce at a higher rate than the unchurched. According to Barna, 10 million persons who characterize themselves as born-again Christians have not been to church in the past six months, other than on Easter and Christmas.

Churches must “break the code” to reverse their declining influence in the culture and among its own people, he said. “Breaking the code means that we have to recognize that there are cultural barriers, in addition to spiritual ones, that hinder blind people from understanding the Gospel. Our task is to find the right way to break through those cultural barriers while addressing the spiritual and theological ones as well.”

Stetzer suggested that the local church adopt a “missional” approach of studying the culture of its community, much like international missionaries do when they enter a new place of service. “Just as missionaries take the Gospel to a new culture, the church must become a missionary in its own community.”
“We have forbidden North American pastors to do what we have trained international missionaries to do,” he said.

Stetzer said that if a church does not regularly examine its culture, it will become a “culture unto itself. He describes such in his soon to be released book Breaking the Missional Code.

“Soon the church is filled with people who pray in the King James English, call the pastor ‘brother’ to show respect and forbid women from wearing pants to church. They are still relating to cultural issues that were relevant one hundred years before. However, that culture and those issues have long since disappeared – everywhere that is except within the church.”

The church instead needs regularly to ask: “Are we faithfully proclaiming the faith in the place where we find ourselves today?” Stetzer said. “A church will be completely faithful only when it is faithful to its God, its Scripture and its mission in the world.”

Music conflicts within churches reflect a lack of cultural sensitivity, Stetzer said. “Every generation condemns the music of the next generation,” he explained. “Generally, styles of music are not used in most churches until two generations after it was popular in the culture.”

Instead he suggested Christians “let go of our own preferences” and begin reaching the culture with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, “It not about us; it’s about the Gospel.”

Stetzer also encouraged churches to find God’s unique vision for their congregation, warning against imitating effective church models. “Churches should function differently from location to location. When it comes to the kingdom of God, uniformity is not a value.”

Tim Patterson, who was recently called as pastor of Hillcrest Baptist Church on Jacksonville’s Westside, brought five staff members to the conference “to hear and understand my heart for taking our church to where it will impact the culture.”

Saying the church as a whole “is satisfied with who they are with a culture that is not reality,” Patterson added, “we must be culturally relevant but absolutely and unequivocally sound in theology. We will not compromise one Biblical conviction, but we will be culturally relevant. We must do what we can do to reach this generation and the next generation for the cause of Christ.”

John Long, associate pastor at First Baptist Church of Belleview, said he attended the conference because he was “burdened by the fact that when Jesus came to our world He had to go around the church to accomplish His kingdom. I don’t want Him to go around me to accomplish what He wants. He was culturally relevant in his day. I want to be culturally relevant in mine.”

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