Illustration by Jessamyn Rubio

January 25, 2011 | For sheer linguistic genius, you cannot beat advertising firms. I remember a restaurant chain whose posters announced that its chili was now “zestier.” It made me want to march deep into the corporate headquarters, find the ad team who came up with that campaign, and beg to become their unpaid intern.

There are God-fearing Americans who would not be ashamed to say they don’t like chili that is “hot” or “spicy,” but who on earth would object to foods being “zesty”? Some words seem irresistible.

In the Christian world, one such word that has by now had more than its fair run is “relevant.” I love the little church where we are members and would defend it against all outside attacks. Moreover, when people invite me to criticize it, I always remind them that if all my well-thought-through reforms were implemented, the congregation would probably go into a rapid decline from which it would never recover.

Nevertheless, faithful are the wounds of a steady tither. One of our church’s more annoying features is a rather pathetic desperation to be culturally trendy. All I have to do to keep up with the latest celebrity or show or phenomenon is attend corporate worship and sit reverently waiting to hear God’s word expounded.

Our church has a slick, well-publicized list of core values, one of which is “If it’s not relevant, it’s not God.” When potential new members read this value statement, who could possibly object? It is irresistible; who would dare defend irrelevance? Clearly, we must be their kind of church.

There is something in my nature, however, that likes to see how conventional wisdom looks when stood on its head. Maybe a better slogan would be “If you’re worried about whether or not it’s relevant, then your heart is probably still far away from the things of God.” Or maybe “If you’re thinking that something in our corporate life and worship is not relevant, that’s probably a sign that your Christian spiritual formation is still incomplete.”

In other words, the value of “relevance” can easily degenerate into the shedding of the real, solid, indispensable features of the Christian life in a demeaning chase after the latest fads. Such an undesirable outcome is perhaps merely a manifestation of a larger tendency, which has gone on for several decades now, to remake church life in the image of the tastes of 12- to 16-year-olds.

It is just possible that our youth do not find these efforts as inviting and reassuring as we assume they do. Maybe confused 14-year-olds find it unsettling, perhaps even frightening, that church is so pliable on the basis of their fickle whims. One can imagine that it would be hard for them to find the words to articulate such unease. If they ever did, perhaps it would come out in an exasperated protest: “Stop trying so hard to be relevant, for God’s sake!”

It is just possible that many of them go on to leave the church in their 20s because they have become disillusioned that there is not enough “there” there. I suspect that they long to encounter something bigger, deeper, older, wiser, steadier and more grounded than themselves, not a sad parody of their own adolescent distractions. Twenty-somethings are unlikely to respond to a sad parody of the trivial cultural preoccupations of the current crop of junior-high-schoolers.