Relevance does not always equal compromise

Erwin McManus has some great thoughts contained within the book The Church in Emerging Culture. When writing about the need for relevance he gives this illustration...

Have you ever stood on a rock in the middle of a river, hearing, seeing, and feeling the power of water rushing all around you? Imagine deciding to take a bucket and dip it quickly into the river to fill it not with water but with the rapid itself. You would have an endless stream of rushing water from which to draw. Yet every time you would attempt to capture this amazing dynamic, no matter how quickly you dipped or how determined you were, when you looked inside your container, all you would find is still water.

He then goes on to say that the church has a very hard time distinguishing between the water in the bucket and the rapids, and as a result - we are inept at impacting the culture we seek to engage. The purpose of the church is not to be a bucket saving the water from the rapids. Neither is the church intended to be the water that is in the bucket. The church should be an intricate part of the river.

Change occurs whether we like it or not. We must be willing to do some things differently in order to effectively reach an ever-changing culture. If not - we become "stuck" and we confuse the past for the present, and the present for the future.