Archive: Jan 10, 2013, 12:00 AM
What Price Relevance?
The church is always in crisis. If you don’t believe it, just read any preacher from one of her Golden Ages. All of them, from Augustine to John Kennedy, thought they were living in ‘cloudy and dark days’.
The 21st century is no exception. True or not, the perception is that the church is in deep, deep trouble. On this at least, believers and non-believers are agreed. For the one, it’s time for a ‘ho-ro gheallaidh’; for the other, for lamentation, and with the lamentation comes panic: a panic which is equally pronounced among Anglicans, Catholics, Baptists and Presbyterians. We have put ourselves in a dilemma.
It’s quite simple. We either keep our identity, and become irrelevant; or we become relevant, and lose our identity.