Watchout For WOLVES: Keys To Discerning Authentic Ministries & Evaluating Doctrinal Trends

Balance verses Relevancy

When it comes to the issue of relevancy and church life there are some serious challenges that every church leader must face. These challenges can be summarize in seven areas.

1. INFLUENCE

Where does faith cease to influence culture and the culture begin to influence the church and its faith (John 17:6-19)? In other words, who is following whom? Os Guinness in his book, Dining with the Devil , states, “Compared to the past, faith today influences culture less. Compared to the past culture today influences faith more” (pg. 16). While the church often lags behind culture, the church is to be a prophetic voice to the culture. We are to be “the head and not the tail ” (Deut. 28:44). We are to change the world; the world is not supposed to change us (Acts 17:6). Some recent polls (at least in America) seem to indicate that what people profess to believe no longer makes much difference as to how they behave. Where does “becoming all things” to culture end and the church’s responsibility to provoke people to “become all things ” in Christ begin (Eph. 4:15; 2 Cor. 12:19)? Paul said this in Ephesians 4:14-15, …that we should no longer b e children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head —Christ…

2. BECOMING ALL THINGS

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