Reviewing a "Christian leadership" article regarding relevance...

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"If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. -- John 15:18-19 (ESV)

https://careynieuwhof.com/6-characteristics-of-an-irrelevant-leader/

Just as early missionaries didn't reject or receive the pagan holiday of Eostre but rather redeemed it for Jesus, we too seek to redeem the cultural practices we observe in the U.S. without letting them overshadow Jesus and his Resurrection, and without making us completely irrelevant or even antagonistic to culture and those weird Christians on the block, the ones everybody tries to avoid because they believe that being for Jesus also means being against fun. -- Mark Driscoll 2012

Always either begin a sermon series on Easter or the next week -- and make sure it's a series that meets the felt needs of an unchurched person. Yes, they need the Gospel and a relationship with Christ. You and I both know that's their foundational need, but most people will come to your church because they have a need for friendship, want a better marriage, want to be a better parent, want to feel they're living a life of significance or there may be some other need. When you do a series like that, let Easter visitors know in your letter. It'll give them a reason to come back to your church." -- Rick Warren 2014

The purpose driven church model of growth, espoused by Rick Warren in the 1990s has become the blueprint for ambitious pastors who see the cult of personality TV pastors and desire the same. Sure they can convince themselves it is all for Jesus but the truth is they see John Gray give his wife a $200,000 Lamborghini and they want to be able to do the same. They see the fleet of planes owned by Kenneth Copeland or the sold out stadiums of Joel Osteen and the lust for power and money start tugging on their heartstrings as they would any carnally thinking man. This is the culture we live in beloved and it is time we stop pretending that the pastors we follow are any different.

One of the biggest lies of the purpose driven doctrine is that of relevance. Because they flip the Gospel on its head, they think the role of the church is to reach the lost. It is not. The role of the church is to build the church through discipleship. Do we want the lost to come to church? Of course as it is the only likely place they will hear the Gospel, which is the only thing with the power of God unto the salvation of man. The mistake made by Warren and his followers is in assuming the Gospel is not enough. Take a look at the quotes above. The Driscoll quote was from before he fell from grace and embodies the typical Warren adherent. In defending why he had the Easter bunny as part of his Resurrection Sunday festivities we see a glimpse into the depraved and carnal mind of a purpose driven pastor. The sadly ironic thing is when the church seeks relevance to the world it renders itself irrelevant by default. We are supposed to be weird. We are supposed to be that peculiar people. The quote from Warren himself is even more damming as he was giving advice to pastors on how to ensure their Easter visitors returned the following week. That advice was simple -- don't preach the Gospel and while Rick is teaching them how to have a better marriage their life is required of them. These are not games beloved. These are not things that we need to figure out. The bible makes it very plain. Preach the Gospel and get out of God's way. As the key verses teach us the world is supposed to hate us! Not find us relevant or hip. The church is not supposed to be trendy. The Gospel is meant to divide! Yet the purpose driven church marches on in its quest for relevance to people who think the things of God are utter foolishness. Entire industries have arisen to provide all of the carnal leadership schemes to church leaders and at the top of that list of schemers is Carey Nieuwhof. The above linked article has Carey outlining six characteristics of an irrelevant church leader. Let us reason once more and see if this purpose driven slop can even approach the verity of Scripture.

"So how relevant are you as a leader? Any idea how you'd answer that accurately? You can debate how important relevance is all day long (and many do), but the truth is irrelevant leaders eventually make less impact on the team around them, and eventually almost no impact on the next generation, except for perhaps an example of what not to be like. Why is that? Relevance matters for one simple reason: relevance gives you permission to speak into the culture around you. Relevance determines whether people pay attention to you or whether they ignore you. Irrelevant people eventually lose the ability to communicate meaningfully with the people they care about and to contribute to the causes they're passionate about." -- Carey Nieuwhof

In purely carnal terms, Carey may be right but in eternal matters he could not be more off. Did Jesus seek relevance first to those who would hear Him or did He say repent! The Gospel does not need man's permission to speak into their hearts. As the bible teaches us some plant and some water but God alone gives the increase. Nieuwhof's fatal purpose driven error is that the Gospel is not something that can be marketed. It is not a product. If your target audience was soda drinkers and you are speaking to them about the effects of climate change then my guess is your message will not get through. THAT is where relevance is important. The target audience of the Gospel however is the depraved and sinful heart of man and more often than not, the heart will reject it. We preach it however to plant a seed or water one that has already been planted hoping that one day God will grant the increase and that person will finally be ready to step out of their irrelevant and temporal life into the eternal promised by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Nieuwhof seems to believe it is his role to convince the lost to become saved. He seeks God's job but it is filled already. Beloved, people may very well ignore you but they cannot ignore God. They will either answer in this life or the next but they will answer.

"Before you push back, just because the Gospel is always relevant doesn't mean you are. Even growing organizations can lose relevance. Your past success doesn't guarantee your future success. In fact, as we've discussed here more than a few times, the great enemy of your future success is your current success because your success makes you conservative. When you had nothing to lose, change was easy. Now that you have something to lose, change is that much harder. So whether your organization or cause has a bit of momentum left or whether it's losing steam, here are 6 ways to tell your influence as a leader is waning." -- Carey Nieuwhof

Here we see another fatal flaw in purpose driven theology. The Gospel has nothing to do with me or my level of relevance. The purpose driven model has created these deified pastors who have to show their tattoos or get a faux-hawk to go with their skinny jeans just to feel connected on some level. The Gospel however is the only thing that matters and Paul teaches us that it simply needs to be preached. Not with words of eloquent wisdom lest the power of the cross be emptied! Think about what Paul is saying there! The power of the cross is the salvation of man but when the speaker makes it about them -- they empty the cross of that power. If people are looking to the pastor -- no gets saved. The power is in the cross and the Gospel of the cross.

"1. You've become a critic of anything that's growing. Irrelevant leaders are always looking for ways to dismiss other peoples' success. Maybe there was a day when you were the young startup when your launch was the one everyone was looking at. Now, everyone's looking at what's emerging and saying how awesome it is, but all you can see are the flaws. You convince yourself they've sold out, or it won't last, or that they're just trend-jacking, or that "of course it's working because that's what the next generation wants, but it's not right." You've invented 1000 justifications about why you're right and all the things that are more 'successful' than you are wrong. Irrelevance, after all, has it all figured out, and even though it may not be working particularly well, you've convinced yourself (and are trying to convince others) that your way is the best way. Here's the bottom line: critics rarely contribute, and contributors rarely criticize. If you've landed in the camp of the constant critic, the odds of you actually contributing much to the present or future are very low. As a result, you've already become irrelevant." -- Carey Nieuwhof

This is the Kumbaya Christianity that the purpose driven model encourages. No one is criticized because the Industrial Complex and brand must be protected at all costs. This is a billion dollar industry beloved! Growth is not necessarily a positive indicator. Cancer grows too. Disease grows. False doctrine grows. The bible says narrow is the way and few are those who find it. FEW. So when a self-proclaimed man of God gives his wife a $200,000 Lamborghini he should be criticized. When a mega church pastor says don't preach the Gospel on Easter he should be criticized. It has nothing to do with growth. It is not that critics do not contribute but rather that Carey does not like their contribution

"2. You increasingly think most new ideas are bad ideas. Hey, it's easy to resist new ideas. But if you think back, there was a time when you were likely far more open to new ideas. Now you're older and wiser, and you've got a way of doing things. The human mind is great at preserving the status quo. You can think of 10 reasons why a new idea won't work, and you and your team never hesitate to list them. The leadership graveyard is filled with the bodies of leaders who say "We haven't done it that way before," and while you understand that intellectually, you've barely realized you're becoming one of those people because, well, new ways seem increasingly bad to you. Sure"not every new idea is a great idea, but embracing no new ideas is a terrible idea. When was the last time you embraced a radical new idea? If you can't answer that question, you're already in trouble." -- Carey Nieuwhof

There is something to be said for being older and wiser beloved. Let us review some of the newer ideas in churchianity. We have seen pastors integrate popular carnal music into worship. One even played Highway to Hell on Resurrection Sunday. We have seen an increase in pastors partnering with Rome, including Mr. Warren. We saw Silent Night turned into a risque' burlesque show. We saw sermons based on movies and locally this Christmas one church is doing a series on the Grinch. Yes, that Grinch. Gun giveaways, monster truck shows in the sanctuary, and pastors doing motocross before the sermon. These are all new ideas but they are all also stupid ideas. Does anyone seriously think there is an idea Carey Nieuwhof might have that will make Jesus Say, "why didn't I think of that!" Certainly not.

"3. The copyright dates on your go-to resources are aging. Copyright dates tell you a lot about how you lead. You'll find them in the books you read, the music you listen to, the movies you watch and if you're a church leader, the songs your church sings. Many leaders will embrace change to an extent, and then they stop. I'm all for reading classics and for sure, my library and resources have copyright dates going back decades and even centuries. That's not the problem. The problem is when your resource library consists contains virtually no copyright dates from the last few years. The major trap most irrelevant leaders fall into is that their go-to resources are all 5-20 years old. They're still living in the 90s or in 2009. Everyone else has moved on. The danger here is that they think they're being relevant, but they really aren't. To your fifty-year-old friends, you may sound knowledgeable as they nod in agreement. But to an 18-year-old, you appear to be a museum. And in the meantime, the gap between you and culture is growing wider every day. The point is not to avoid any older works (a great life is always built on the contributions of previous generations), but to also understand how to translate that into what's happening today." -- Carey Nieuwhof

What ridiculous carnal logic. Everything new must be good but guess what? It usually is not. I have no problem with contemporary worship music if it is biblically accurate and glorifies God but it rarely does. Most songs are not Revelation Song. Unfortunately most are "Oh How He Loves Us"; which is one of the worst worship songs ever written. It is no wonder that Rick Warren prefers the heretical paraphrase known as "The Message." It is new and hip and relevant -- too bad it is not biblical! Here is the real truth today beloved. The Gospel transcends time and culture. The same Gospel that saved a fifth century farmer saved me in 2002. It saved a beggar in France in 1856 and a beggar in Detroit in 2018. It does not change with the times and does not respect culture.

"4. Your senior team has grown older with you. This isn't so much a problem if you're twenty-two and just starting out. To have a young leadership team of idealistic people is an awesome thing. Sure, some wisdom wouldn't hurt, but still, the world often gets changed by young leaders on a mission. But what happens is that twenty-year-olds eventually turn 30. Fast forward a bit, and one day everyone on your senior leadership team is in their mid-fifties. That's a big issue. Left uncorrected, teams tend to age with their leader. As a leader in my fifties, I've had to be incredibly intentional about surrounding myself with leaders in their 20s and 30s, something that really energizes me. You may not have the chemistry or familiarity with younger leaders that you do with your peers who have been through life with you, but renewing the leadership table with younger leaders is critical. It's easy for older leaders to think that younger leaders are too young to lead. You were too, once. And someone took a chance on you anyway. And you did some of your best work then too, didn't you?" -- Carey Nieuwhof

Listen; there is nothing wrong with engaging leaders of all ages. Paul exhorts Timothy to not let people give him grief because he is young. The issue is in assuming that if you are purposefully engaging young leaders that you are somehow deficient because the bible also exhorts the importance of experience in leadership. Nieuwhof and Warren have a cookie cutter and they wield it with extreme prejudice and precision. Everything new is cutting edge and everything old is religious. The problem is the first thing cut is the Gospel and without that all you are left with is a handful of marketing schemes and cute catch phrases that save no one.

"5. The very thought of change makes you tired. The gap between how quickly you change and how quickly things change is called irrelevance. The bigger the gap, the more irrelevant you become. Change is difficult at the best of times, but if even the sound of change makes you tired, it's a sign that you're becoming irrelevant. It's normal to default to the status quo. We all do. A few years ago, my dentist told me I needed at least five crowns. The thought of that made me feel tired and broke all at once. I got a bit of the work done but then took a break. One afternoon I was eating some cereal and I noticed something that didn't feel like cereal in my mouth. It was half a molar. Guess where I went the next day? Too often, that's exactly how we approach change in the church. We wait until something breaks, and then we'll try to fix it. That may work with a tooth, but it's a terrible strategy for leadership (okay, and for dentistry). In our rapidly changing culture, waiting until something breaks to fix is one of the fastest ways to ensure you become irrelevant. If change makes you tired, I promise you, the slow death of your organization will make you even more tired." -- Carey Nieuwhof

Pastor or those who aspire to such hear me very clear. If your goal is mega church stardom then this may very well be solid worldly advice. The bible teaches us however in Acts 2 that the growth of a church has nothing to do with us. God gives the increase as he sees fit. If he gives you a church of 200 and it stays at that for your tenure but nearly all are saved and discipled then you will hear well done my good and faithful servant. Change for the sake of change is unnecessary and dangerous when it comes to Gospel preaching. Every scheme you come up with by default detracts from the Gospel. It also is how you come to a place of marginalizing the Gospel. Just look at the precipitous fall of Andy Stanley. Once revered he is now a heretical pariah who no longer preaches the sufficiency of the Gospel. The road to carnal relevance only leads to Gospel compromise.

6. You like the world less every year. If social media is any gauge of how many Christian leaders feel about our culture, the church is in trouble. And even if you're not posting on your social media is ALL CAPS, telling the world how bad it is, your attitude still matters. Negativity leaks. Constantly criticizing a culture is no way to reach it. I am constantly reminded that Jesus loved the world. He saw the mess, the brokenness, the godlessness and embraced us anyway. Jesus loved the world enough to die for it. You should care enough about the world to do the same. Don't Let Unimplemented Change Become Regret." -- Carey Nieuwhof

In the spirit of Christmas it is nice to end on a point of agreement. Carey is 100% right that the church is too enamored with pointing a finger at the world and screaming sinner. That is not evangelizing. I am not advocating for a sinless, repent-less Gospel beloved but preaching the Gospel correctly addresses sin in totality. The bible teaches us that we are to judge our brothers and sisters because we are their keepers but that judgement for the world belongs to the Lord. We need to get back to the basics beloved. We need to get back to the Gospel. It does not need to be made to appear relevant, palatable, or desired. How quick we forget that salvation is a supernatural act belonging to God alone. It is accomplished through the conviction of sin by way of the preached Gospel of Jesus Christ. That Gospel has done just fine for over 2000 years and it does not need the help of eloquent words of wisdom from carnally minded men.

Reverend Anthony Wade -- December 24, 2018

Authors Bio:
Credentialed Minister of the Gospel for the Assemblies of God. Owner and founder of 828 ministries. Vice President for Goodwill Industries. Always remember that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.