I recently saw some CNN video coverage of Mosaic church in Los Angeles. Always faithful to bring both sides of the story to its audience, they had a few people upset over the way Mosaic was handling the Word of God. In an effort to make the Bible culturally acceptable, Mosaic and Erwin McManus were stripping it of its reverence as God’s Holy Word.

Here’s what I think:

Some people discount the need to make the Word of God relevant for a specific audience… yet the gospel has no choice but to be relevant.

Catch this:

Because AUDIENCE PERCEPTION changes with time, interpreting the Word of God involves MAKING CHOICES about what it means today, in their world. The Gospel won’t remain a living form if it fails to acknowledge that audiences themselves are ENGAGED in the INTERPRETATION.

Much of the excitement in crafting a message lies in exploring how it lines up with the audience. After all, the Word of God is a living, breathing object in the world of the hearer in which it is created.

Denying the present culture actually DIMINISHES the Word’s RESONANCE, effectively making it a MUSEUM ARTIFACT.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 10th, 2006 at 5:55 am and is filed under The Church, What's In My Head. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.