Hi all... I've been away for a couple of days and have been trying to think a bit more while sitting in dull meetings about the question of relevance.
I think that the question is, what do people actually mean when they say that they don't feel that the church (or 'church' in general - any church) is 'relevant' to them/their lives? It's not something I'd ever say, personally, because I am not really looking (and wasn't before I started going to church) for something 'relevant', and I am not even sure what it means... Something that will tell me how to live my life? Well, that might be true in some cases (if someone feels that their life has really gone badly off-track and is looking for an impetus to put it right), but I suspect not the majority. My sense is that most people already have a set of values by which they live. Political guidance? Surely not... So I am guessing that we are talking about something that simply (ha ha... except that it's not simple, is it?) speaks in some way to the individual; something that does not feel totally remote from the other things that they do in their lives.
I suspect that, when some people say 'I don't come to church because it's not relevant to me/my life', what they mean is 'I don't believe in God so please stop bothering me'. Well... fair enough. But if people are actually coming to church - even if only once - and then saying that it doesn't feel relevant to them, then it's really worth trying to get to the bottom of what they mean. One way is to ask them, I suppose. What would they like the church to be doing that would make it more relevant? Is it a question of old-fashioned/unfamiliar music and language? Or is it something deeper? What was it that got them through the door in the first place, before they got put off by the lack of relevance? And how can the church community build on whatever that impulse was?
For me, the impulse was really not easily definable, but it was more in the nature of a spiritual itch which needed scratching (ugh... horrid metaphor, sorry!)... the famous 'God-shaped hole', I suppose. For me, having had a fairly religious upbringing and since I work with theological ideas all the time in my job, it was not difficult to slot into the 'mechanics' (as it were) of a church service, and the hurdle was to do it in a way that involved properly opening myself up to God and not just going through the motions. But for some people the motions themselves are offputting, aren't they? I don't know if it would help to make it clear that it's OK to approach the church (indeed, to approach God) in a spirit of doubt; that you don't have to be a committed (and informed?) believer before you step through the church door; that it's OK not to join in with any part of the service that you feel uncomfortable with (not to go up for communion/blessing; perhaps not to join in with the Creed if you don't feel ready to say categorically 'I believe in one God...'); that no-one will judge you for that, but that they will be willing to explain (there was a good example above - was it from you, bucaneve? - of a sermon explaining the meaning for our everyday lives of passing the Peace). The more I think about it, the more I think that it's this sense that you have to pass some sort of 'faith entry exam' before you can attend church that stops many people coming (back) to church. In this case 'It's not relevant to me' means 'I am not sure if it's relevant to my position as a doubter/agnostic/interested fence-sitter/whatever'.
The more obvious way of asserting the church's relevance to people's lives (but I am sure people have thought of this, precisely because it is obvious) is to look at the issues that matter in people's lives and to ask how the church can feed into those... Here childcare and education loom large, and church playgroups or after-school clubs or Sunday schools or the messy church initiatives that people have written about on here obviously have a role to play. Other things that spring to mind are things like the environment (I know that many churches have links with the free-trade movement, don't they?), like the role of chaplains in hospitals, prisons, universities or wherever, where the church can offer support to people at often difficult times. All this can help - and can also help to counter the unhelpful vision of the church (not just the Anglican church, though I am thinking particularly of that at the moment) that emerges from the media, as being all about the role of women or about sexuality generally... and not much else [sigh]!
Finally (and I do realise that I've written an essay here, for which I apologise - have been thinking about this for a few days now!), I do think that it can help to challenge the perception of a need for relevance. Is watching 'The X Factor' relevant? Is playing football relevant? It's not quite right to classify going to church as a 'leisure activity', but if that's not quite what it is, it is, at least, what it's competing with. If I think about my Sunday mornings before I went to church, what did I do? As a mother, I was certainly not lying in bed all morning [if only!]; I'd be walking the dog, tidying the house, maybe popping to the shops, getting the dds to do their homework... To some extent one of the barriers is to work out a way of fitting 'going to church' into our busy lives. And yet it's hard to argue that we are really 'too busy' to go... it's a question of normalising it (someone above said that that was one of the nice things about this thread - that people were talking about going to church as a normal activity) and making it something that we 'just do', like turning on the TV for an hour after dinner, or walking the dog after the school run, or whatever. In a way, it reminds me a bit of going to the gym... It feels uncomfortable the first time, and tough for the first few times, but eventually it starts to become less painful and more enjoyable, until finally you can't imagine how you got by without it. [Hmm... should probably apply that logic to my own state of flabbiness and go to the gym as well as to church! 
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OK... sorry this is so long and waffly. I apologise for my self-indulgence in writing so much. It might all be [ahem] 'irrelevant' anyway, but those were my thoughts anyway!