From Tullian Tchividjian’s excellent book Unfashionable:
I have good news for all of us who are becoming weary of this pressure from church leaders to fit in with the world: we don’t have to. The relevance of the church doesn’t depend on its ability to identify the latest cultural trends and imitate them, whatever they might be. “The ultimate factor in the church’s engagement with society,” [Os] Guinness says, “is the church’s engagement with God,” not the church’s engagement with the latest intellectual or corporate fashion. Contrary to what we’ve been hearing, our greatest need as twenty-first-century churches is not that we’re culturally out of touch; it’s that we’re theologically out of tune.
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An how sad is it that Tchividjian can (probably rightly) call this “news”. I just read this
http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/TasteAndSee/ByDate/2009/4023_Why_I_Dont_Have_a_Television_and_Rarely_Go_to_Movies/
and it fits in with the quote from Unfashionable.
This is a good point. Does the book go on to acknowledge, though, that being theologically in tune brings us into the rhythms of God, and that God is active among peoples and cultures? I don’t want to presume that he misses that point, as it could seem like an over correction as a sound-bite.
Peace,
Jamie
Tullian is definitely not into withdrawing from culture. That’s the problem with quoting only a brief paragraph, I guess!
Aren’t we both out of touch and out of tune?
Very sad that this is news because it should be so obvious to us.