Relevant (rěl’ə-vənt)
The term Relevant has become a catch-word over the past several years. We hear how people, music, clothes, and even preachers (ministries) are relevant, but what does that mean?
People often think they are relevant and they are not; at best they are just trendy. Just because you have trendy clothes, listen to trendy music and have a vocabulary full of trendy words that does not make you relevant. Trendiness can impact your image, but alone it is powerless to impact your community. Being relevant has the possibility to change not only your image, but your community as well.
Dictionary.com defines Relevant as:
1. Having a bearing on or connection with the matter at hand.
2. Pertinent to the matter at hand
Maybe being relevant is not as much about who you are as it is what you are; “Having a bearing on or connection with the matter at hand.” What was relevant to us when we pastored in the inner city of Kansas City will not be relevant to someone pastoring in Western Kansas or Northern California. Not because what we did was better than what they are doing, but because we had a bearing on what our community needed, and their communities may not need what ours did.
Relevant means that you are in touch with what is going on around you and you know what to do about it. I made a comment on my Facebook page about a friend of mine being the most relevant cat I know and another friend ask me what I meant by that. To me, my friend who is relevant has a great bearing on or connection with the matter at hand, whatever that matter may be. He just gets it when it comes to being connected to his local and global surroundings. He is trendy, but more importantly, he is relevant.
Awareness is one of the core values of the Comprehensive Outreach Ministry I direct. To me awareness needs to be more about us (as Christians) being aware of what is going on around us than it is the unchurched being aware of us. We spend so much time trying to get everyone to see what we are doing, but we spend little time to see what is the ”matter at hand.”
What if we as ministers and/or Christians strived to have a bearing or connection? Would we have a better, or more relevant, understanding of what needs there are in our church as well as our communities? Maybe so!
I encourage you to take some time and see what relevant means in your journey of life. Try to develop an awareness of what is going on outside of yourself and see if that helps you be relevant.
Peace!
