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Jadaizers and being Culturally Relevant

Just some food for thought..

I was talking to my friend yesterday about the dangers of being too culturally relevant as a church. My husband likened it to the Judaizers of the New Testament. Remembering that the Judaizers were trying to tell the Gentiles that they had to look and act a certain way in order to be truly saved. Sometimes a church can perceive our culture saying to the church that the church needs to be just like the culture in order for people to want to be there and to get saved. Just an interesting comparison.

My thoughts about the need to be or not be culturally relevant is that I come back to the questions, "Who is the one who saves?" Do we save? Or is God the one who saves? By attempting to be more and more culturally relevant, I think it is easy to put our trust in ourselves rather than God and to think that it is our efforts, not God's that bring someone to salvation. But, that isn't true. It isn't Biblical at all. It is by grace through faith that we are saved--it is God's work that saves us--not our own.

Comments

Kim said…
I couldn't agree more. I have recently come to the conclusion that on the issue of salvation there seems to be very little difference between the RCC and most mainstream American evangelical churches. They all want to make salvation dependent upon some action we must take. Also, if you look at some of the more "relevant" churches you often find members starving for the Word. It is a very sad paradox.
February 2, 2009 at 2:56 PM
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