Is Today’s Church Relevant?

Tomorrow afternoon (Saturday, November 17, 10:15am) at the East Brunswick Hilton & Towers, East Brunswick, NJ, my father–Bishop Fred Rubin– will be facilitating a workshop entitled, “Is Today’s Church Relevant for Today’s People?“ 

Following the workshop at 1:15pm, Hasani Pettiford will be moderating a panel discussion with the same title.

For those of you in the NY/NJ/PA area, I strongly encourage you to come and participate.  For those of you who can’t make it, let’s get a head start on the conversation.

In your opinion, is the church relevant? In other words, Does the church have ”significant and demonstrable bearing” on the lives of individuals in our society today?

Abstinence Doesn’t Guarantee Success

Yesterday’s comments on Halloween were very interesting.  One thought that jumped out at me was the idea of self-righteousness.  People abstain from certain activities (in this case, celebrating Halloween) as a means of, or a display of their righteousness.

See, I grew up in a culture that defined righteousness by the things you didn’t do.  We don’t smoke.  We don’t drink. We don’t listen to “worldly music”.  And the label for this behavior was HOLINESS—a label we were taught to wear with pride. 

And the unspoken expectation was that if I lived a “holy” life (of abstaining from worldly activities), then as a result, I would live a successful, productive, prosperous life.

Here’s what I’ve learned, though: abstinence may keep me from suffering the consequences of many things, but it doesn’t guarantee that I’ll ever accomplish anything!

In other words, if I don’t smoke, I significantly decrease my likelihood of getting lung cancer.  But not smoking doesn’t make me a better student, worker, citizen…or even a better Christian!

I’ve grown up watching a generation of Holiness folks live their lives taking pride in their abstinence, but never really living the successful lives they somehow expected would be an automatic result of their abstinence.

And to be honest…that hurts.