https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sr_EtMhM3fgSo, I’m attempting to come down from a bit of an unplanned blog hiatus. I didn’t mean to orphan the blog for a few weeks. I just needed some space from the daily grind of producing a post, mostly in order to engage with my family in a more intentional way this summer. I’ve been thinking about the fall and am exited to reengage here in my normal weekly rhythm.
What better way to start back in than with a little Friday Funny, and this clip. My favorite line is “We need an ethnically ambiguous Woo Woo mascot.” There are few things funnier to me than watching people chase relevance with all their might. It’s such a fleeting thing, relevance, and you can never count on it. Inevitably when you find yourself in a relevant position, you realize it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
I remain convinced that one of the most important aspects of good Christian leadership is the resolve and patience not to attempt relevance. In his great leadership reflection In the Name of Jesus, Henri Nouwen argued that relevance is not something toward which a Christian should aspire. He said, “The leaders of the future will be those who dare to claim their irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation…” In Nouwen’s estimation, relevance is not a virtue, but a temptation.I think this commercial demonstrates why that is true.
As Christians we are attempting to embody something deeper, more foundational than the latest thing. It’s not that we need to attempt to be culturally blind, but that we must not be cultural slaves. We serve the culture best by refusing to play the idiosyncratic games of “hot, not hot.”
Have a good Friday everyone!
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