are we irrelevant?

I just completed an eight day stretch of working in the security department for the PA Farmshow complex. While I don’t spend much time working there anymore, for the week of the Farm Show, they needed help and I agreed to help out. For eight days, I was deeply immersed in a largely godless culture. Like usual, I had ample time to observe people.

I fear that the church has become almost completely irrelevant to the world in which we live. Rather than influencing and transforming society, the church has relegated herself to isolation from the real world in which most people find themselves.

The things which are important to most of the church world are not important to our society in which we live. We have made ourselves irrelevant by our power struggles, by our efforts to build our own kingdoms. We say we value people; however it seems to me that we only value people who can benefit us, if they will come to our meetings and fill our buildings. We grasp for position and power, displaying ungodly behaviors if our positions are threatened.

All the while, people want to know how to do life. They have questions about God, about what He wants from them. They wonder if they have significance. They hurt from the self-destructive behaviors in which they engage all the while hoping that somehow they can escape the treadmill of hopelessness.

And what do we offer? Come to our meetings…Help us build our church or help me fulfill my vision…Instead of leading them to interact with the transforming Jesus, we enroll them in a program or a class. We use guilt and manipulation so we can be assured that they will faithfully become part of our program. We invite them to a church fractured by our territorialism. (Quite frankly, the church frequently is more vicious than the world in which they live. Some of the most ungodly behaviors I have observed have been those of church leaders and members)

We have made ourselves irrelevant because we have forgotten about Jesus. We have departed from His mission. Our priorities differ from His. We care not about people unless they can benefit us somehow. We no longer heal the sick, feed the hungry, and clothe the naked. We no longer reconcile people to God and to the image of God in which they were formed. I wonder if our situation in the church has not degenerated to the point that our irrelevancy to God’s work equals that of the religious leaders of Jesus day.