"Relevancy"

Beginning in the late 19th century, in the face of seemingly unanswerable attacks by post-Enlightenment scholarship, many German liberal theologians tried to save what they saw as the valuable cultural institution of Christianity by removing the supernatural portions of our Faith. They perceived their goal as that of saving the Church, but only succeeded in attempting to discard the Faith itself. In so doing they denied the power of the gospel, and were left with only the fading inertia of whatever positive moral influences it still provided in their society, and the lovely exterior covering of tradition and meaning it had accrued over time. (For my computer-literate friends, we might say they wanted to throw out most of the source files yet somehow retain a functioning GUI.)

I suspect decades down the road, American cultural Christianity (from the megachurches down) might be accused of something similar: discarding the hard truths of Scripture not to remain relevant in the face of Rationalism, but to remain relevant in an entertainment-crazed culture in which the only absolute is that the final arbiter of good and evil is society's collective opinion, which must never be contradicted or opposed.
And looking around, we do find that much of the Church in America is preoccupied in chasing the idol of false relevancy. This is sadly ironic in that one thing the Church, commanded to communicate eternal, unchanging Truth to the world, has always been particularly poor at is achieving the sort of relevancy which must constantly change with the times and trends. The church seems bent on playing catch-up with the world, either "Come see, we do that too," or "We made our own, Christian version of that," not realizing that while this attempt to stay on top of secular trends may seem cool to those who remain within the Christian bubble, it is woefully unimpressive to those who do not.

Imagining an elderly couple trying to use communication age acronyms like "lol" and "ikr" to seem relevant to their grandchildren is a good illustration. Will this impress their grandchildren? Most likely not, though they may find it amusing. And outside the family context, as a longtime youth worker I can testify to how embarrassing it is when anyone old enough to have children in school tries to adopt the latest speech styles of students "to relate to them." (Seriously, don't ever do it, we cringe in embarrassment for you.)

Few things make a person seem more actually out of touch than trying to pretend they are relevant in this particular way. Part of the reason for this is that, seemingly contrary to popular opinion, students are quite aware that older adults have useful lessons to offer them. And this is what they want, not inherently doomed attempts on the part of the speaker to pretend they are still young enough to be socially relevant. All people want to hear something which they think will be valuable for them, and the style used to convey it should be whatever can best not interfere with its delivery.

The earlier example is the same; the grandparents don't need to try to be trendy, their grandchildren (hopefully) already love and respect them. And if not, then attempting to adopt their language will only hurt the cause. Grandparents are 100% relevant, however, when they offer what only they can, the unique dynamic of love, wisdom, and affection which leaps across two generations and enriches both.

The Church is no different. We are not Steve Jobs, who walked the earth 2 years ago and is now dead. We are the Body of Christ, who walked the earth 2000 years ago and lives, and is the source of life. We've been given precious, eternal truth, and our clumsy attempts to impress the world by looking like it merely distract. The revelation of the identity of God and atoning work of Christ has overthrown empires, and permanently changed the course of human affairs. The trends of a particular decade are vanishingly flimsy and transient by comparison. (And there is a secret which seems to have eluded even those relevancy-chasing church leaders but is apparent through the example of Islam today: In our relativistic age, that which refuses to compromise is increasingly relevant by its very nature, like a rock in a stream which forces the water to flow around it.)

The Church is only relevant when we deal in what only the Church possesses, the unchanging, eternal truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which can transform a life today just as easily as it did a thousand years ago.
It is not the world's message, it is a message which the world lacks, and is dying to hear.
Life-saving truth is always relevant.