how can the church make itself more relevant for today's world?

[falalaala]

Just been to dd's nativity performance which was part of a church service. lots of standing up and singing carols and listening to short readings. i bet that it's one of the only times many of the families there will go to church this year.
do you have a view on how the church can make itself more relevant to families like mine. i felt detatched and was just willing the service to be onto the nativity performance. the vicar was great and the mother's union people were lovely, but the service was fundamentally inaccessible and doesn't connect to me and my life.

The Church is relevant and accessible to Christians purely and simply because of their faith, and if people do not share that faith then there is absolutely nothing that the Church can do to make itself more relevant to them. If God is in your life then the Church is relevant; if he's not then it isn't.

Invites, toddler groups, special services wouldn't make the Church any more attractive to me or to others without a faith - they may encourage more people to use the church building to their own ends, but they won't encourage people to think about Christianity or spiritual issues.

Agree with WWB. The church isn't a social club. It's a group of people who meet together because they share a common belief or the desire to find out more.

Making a church service "relevant" usually ends up with a watered down or compromised message because Christians, even the best intentioned ones, get worried about offending anyone.

If a service naturally happens to be pushing all the right buttons then it's because people are being honest about where they stand and aren't diluting the gospel. When churches try too hard to tack on extra trendy components just for the sake of being contemporary; that's when it gets icky and cringy.

The church needs believers to be seen to be attempting to live a Jesus-like life and being honest about when they fail.

that's a circular argument though isn't it?
I mean people become Christians (or strrengthen their existing faith) by example. IF people are welcomed then the church will grow.
not really about being a social club but about fulfilling human/material needs and thereby drawing people into thinking about more spiritual needs and meeting them.
if yo don't get them in the door, they won't know what they're missing...

I would say getting someone to actually put their bum on a pew is waaaaay down the line though. No-one's going to set foot in a service if Christians can't explain why it's worth going in the first place. Non-Christians need to hear real, honest testimonies from people who've met Jesus and have had a life-changing experience.

I'm not saying we need radical "I was a drug dealer and now I'm saaaaaved!" kind of stories, but Christians need to demonstrate that there is a different way of living, without hypocrisy if possible.

If people see that, then they might think there's more to church than sermons and singing. It's fellowship and sharing thoughts and problems with other people in the same boat. The building itself is irrelevant. Church could be 5 people meeting in a pub. As long as their focus is Jesus Christ then it's a church IMO.

And unfortunately more traditional churches are often populated with pew fodder who've never really questioned their own beliefs and attend church because they have always attended church.

When a person becomes a Christian they can't help but encourage other people to explore the Bible and the person of Jesus, so of course they'll welcome a new person into church and hopefully befriend them if that's appropriate.

THe difficulty for some churches is with the emphasis on gifts - so some Christians complain that making people feel at home in a church service isn't their "gift" and cop out of any interaction with strangers. Even the shyest person could offer someone a cup of tea... I'm talking to myself now too - cos I'm a coward