There’s a post at the Cafe today about the growing irrelevance of the Church.
We’ve talked about this before and will no doubt talk about it again.
The church will always and everywhere be irrelevant if it is not successfully bring the gathered Body of Christ into an ever deeper contact with the Living God.
It’s not about lobbying or being a better social service agency. It’s not about getting people through the doors and in the pews, either.
It’s about changing lives. It’s about remaking our perceptions of the world, reorienting ourselves towards that which is really real–the God who loves us enough to die for us and who demonstrates that love is more powerful than death, hell, and sin–then behaving in a manner consonant with those insights.
If we are not doing this, then we are truly irrelevant.
Amen and amen!
Yesterday at a deanery meeting our bishop asked us if we were more about making disciples or getting members. And honestly, the focus at our parish right at this point in time is on making members. We’re missing the point, I’m afraid.
Of course, it is never a total dichotomy. But the emphasis is crucial.
Psalms. Everything’s in Psalms.
I appreciate that you are trying to promote a spiritual revival based on credal orthodoxy and Mass-and-office practice but this seems fairly standard rhetoric. All churches left and right try to do and be that.
Bingo.
You’re right, YF, it’s about taking actions too.
Let’s see if it goes beyond rhetoric to do something to further the cause, shall we…? ;-)
Added my own thoughts on relevance.
Derek, I wish I were as concise as you with my comments there! But I do agree with you and added some of my reflections to it, which of course might not be what you think… Anyway.
Have a blessed weekend.
I can appreciate your comment. In truth, I thought, how can the Church become irrelevant when it is doing what the Church is supposed to do? But I know how Father steered the Church back on course after the inner strife a few years back–he brought us all back to the business of being Church.
Annie
(Derek, emails to you are bouncing; I just sent you something else, so could you check your inbox?)
bls–just checked nothing there. Are you getting mine?
If the alternate address bounces, temporarily post it to a page in the SBB…
I think it was Evelyn Underhill who defined a mystic as “someone who lives as though God existed.”
As I just noted,
To face irrelevance and embrace it as gift for the church in our time and in our culture is the truly prophetic act. Free from a need to be the center, we will remember our need for Him who is the center. It is from this place that we can build up others regardless of controversy and opposition. It is from this place that we can be the church—life for the world.