AP has been hoping and praying for the successful launch of this site for months now, and I’m thrilled to take part. I’ve just finished reading the final instructional email from “The Proprietor,” and aside from a nonsensical and inaccurate comment about besting me in ping-pong, it was a thorough directory and inspiring call to prosaic arms. This quote is pulled directly from his email…
“I don’t buy into that “transforming culture by being relevant” talk. As far as I know, Christ never called us to be relevant to our culture. We’re supposed to be relevant to our neighbors. How many Christian artists have been swept up in the notion that they’re to play by the world’s rules by trying to be cool enough to make Jesus seem cool enough to a culture that values coolness above all? The media is a flawed means of communicating the gospel.”
I love that, precisely because of how easy it is to lose perspective with all the technological wizardry we have at our fingertips these days. We are the Church, and we are committed to communicating the Gospel, but we forget that the Gospel is most effectively communicated through relationship. After all, that is how Jesus does it!
Relationship is how we find life and worth and peace and love and power in Christ. And relationship is how we communicate Christ to others. I don’t care if you’ve got on parachute pants or $80 sandals, there is nothing more relevant than a cold cup of water to a thirsty man.
Funny, it suddenly seems ironic to use the internet–the world’s most powerful isolator–to wax eloquently about relationship, but I guess that’s the point. There is a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time for handwritten notes and a time for email, a time for hymnals and a time for Powerpoint, and though all may be appropriate sometimes, none are appropriate all of the time. Only Jesus – and relationship with him – is eternally satisfying, and the closest thing we have to Jesus on earth is one another.