Then I also have culture-specific events that demand that I speak to directly—specific things that I may stop the presses and speak to directly that are happening in our culture. We talked about the recent elections. Oprah’s promotion of Eckhart Tolle, particularly with her online school that made it even more influential. Maybe Tom Cruise and Scientology when that got to be hot. There are certain things that happen within culture that you say, “OK, we’ve got to talk about this.” Sometimes it’s just events, like, how do you have faith in a financial meltdown?
Karl Barth is the one who said the effective communicator is someone who has the Bible in one hand and today’s newspaper in the other. And that’s true. You can’t walk up there and talk and ignore the world that these people have experienced the last six days, 24 hours a day, or else you’re going to be seen as wildly irrelevant—even worse, the gospel will be irrelevant.
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Well, the message of the Bible is not irrelevant. It’s only irrelevant if we make it so. And so I think that one of the tasks of a communicator is bringing that to bear on the culture in which we live and the events of that culture. That’s not it solely, but you’ve got to have that be keenly felt as you are thinking through your menu of things you are seeking and asking the Holy Spirit to help you put together 52 weeks a year.
Preaching: Some pastors have the sense that being culturally relevant means doing a series of sermons based around pop song lyrics or that kind of thing. But it’s really more translating the Scripture into culturally relevant terms.White: The most culturally relevant series you can do is the Ten Commandments. The most culturally relevant series you can do is walking verse-by-verse through the Sermon on the Mount. Cultural relevance is bringing Scripture to bear in all of its fullness on people’s lives.
I think that sometimes we actually trivialize what it means to be culturally relevant—and end up trivializing Scripture to boot—by making cultural relevance nothing more than just finding nice pop angles, playing off of a television series name or lyrics of a song or the hottest movies. I think there’s a place for that; I’ve certainly done some of that. But to make that what it means to be culturally relevant—and you feel like that’s got to be the steady diet—is, to me, an extremely truncated, superficial and almost juvenile understanding of what it means to understand culture and speak into it.
So when I look back at some of the series that have connected most, it might be an eight-week series just exploring the character of God. Or it could be a series on what it means to live with your sin in relation to God, which is perplexing to people. Is there a place for a series on the five hottest summer films and then you chase their spiritual themes, weave Scripture in there, and help people apply it to their lives? Sure. But if you think that’s all that it means, you’re really missing what’s going to bring ultimate life change for these people.
