Who is the center of your universe?

Every preacher hears it: "I want to hear relevant sermons." Many church websites promise it: "our pastor's sermons are relevant." However, the problem with the demand and the promise is the underlying assumption that a preacher's job is to make the Bible relevant to his hearer's lives. It makes the Bible just one more consumer product providing personal improvement or relief. What is needed, according to Darryl Dash, is nothing less than a Copernican Revolution in our attitude toward the Bible.

He writes:

The danger in this way of thinking, though, is that it demands that the Bible spin in orbit around our lives. This view puts us at the center. It's far better to put God and His Word at the center, and to demand that our lives spin in orbit around Him.

Try reading Job 38 or Isaiah 40 and ask yourself whether God needs to become relevant to us, or whether we have things completely backwards.

The Bible is already relevant. We demonstrate its relevance, but we don't make it relevant. If anything needs to be made relevant, it's our lives.

Kim Fabricius writes:

For many people, God is a god who answers my questions, satisfies my desires and supports my interests. A user-friendly god you can access and download at the push of a prayer-key, a god you can file and recall when you need him (which gives “Save As” a whole new meaning!). A utility deity for a can-do culture. Evangelism becomes a form of marketing, and the gospel is reduced to a religious commodity.

The real God is altogether different. He is not a useful, get-it, fix-it god. He is not “relevant”, he is the measure of relevance. Indeed best think of God as good for nothing and totally unnecessary, playful rather than practical - and whose game is hide-and-seek: “such a fast / God,” as the poet R. S. Thomas puts it, “always before us and / leaving as we arrive.” The Bible speaks of God as a desert wind, too hot to handle, too quick to catch. A God who is only ever pinned down - on the cross.

I like that. God is not relevant, he is the measure of relevance.

It's time for a Copernican Revolution of the Word that puts us in our place in orbit around God and His Word in our lives, our churches, and our preaching.

Read the whole post HERE.

Oh, how I wish this was a parody!

This is just one example of how churches have moved away from faithfully preaching God's Word and keeping the Gospel central to its proclamation. What happens in this type of preaching is that "principles" are presented "from the Bible" that anyone can apply and benefit from. It is the mistaken notion that the Bible is a guidebook for living that will give success regardless of one's relationship to Christ. No wonder so many professing Christians cannot explain the Gospel. No wonder so many Christians cannot responsibly read and interpret the Bible. No wonder our churches are producing so many "happy pagans".

Do pastors truly have to "preach" on what men and women find sexy in order be relevant? What has happened to our reverence for God's Word? What has happened to our reverence for God's presence among His people?

Is "relevance" overrated?

Jim at "Old Truth" posted some thoughts that I think are worthy of conversation (http://www.oldtruth.com/blog.cfm/id.2.pid.908).

What do you think?