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It is not an accident that when we think about making church more relevant, we usually mean meaningful for one particular group. In North America, that usually means 20-somethings and young families. For one, 20-somethings are some of the hardest people to attract to church—we evangelicals love the challenge of reaching them. Two, when they start raising families, they begin to return to church—we also love a field ripe for harvest. It's a perfect "target audience" for a new church to aim at.

Unfortunately, churches that perceive themselves as relevant often by their nature limit a full-bodied expression of the church—that is, they "target" 20- and maybe 30-somethings, and usually those of that group who are middle- and upper-middle-class white-collar types rising in income and influence. Few churches that consciously seek relevance want to clear the way to church for the poor, the homeless, welfare moms, drug-addicted men, or those trapped in nursing homes and convalescent hospitals. These "target audiences" are not very relevant to many "casual, contemporary" churches.

This is one reason I thank God for the liturgy. The liturgy does not target any age or cultural subgroup. It does not even target this century. (It does not imagine, as we moderns and postmoderns are tempted to do, that this is the best of all possible ages, the most significant era of history.) Instead, the liturgy draws us into worship that transcends our time and place. Its earliest forms took shape in ancient Israel, and its subsequent development occurred in a variety of cultures and subcultures—Greco-Roman, North African, German, Frankish, Anglo-Saxon, and so on. It has been prayed meaningfully by bakers, housewives, tailors, teachers, philosophers, priests, monks, kings, and slaves. As such, it has not been shaped to meet a particular group's needs. It seeks only to enable people—people in general—to see God.

This may seem obvious—of course church is a place where we want people to see God! But we do get distracted. I was a pastor for ten years, an editor at a pastoral journal for four (at sister publication Leadership), and have been involved in leadership at my local church for 19 years. I can't tell you the number of times I've argued that the church have a "clear vision" or "passion for the lost" or "empowered laity" or "more spirituality" or "creative worship" and so on—all great things! How difficult it is to remember the fundamental need of our churches and the people who attend them: to see God.

Theologian and pastor Eugene Peterson talked about our desire for relevance in a CT interview a couple of years ago: "I don't think people care a whole lot about what kind of music you have or how you shape the service. They want a place where God is taken seriously, where they're taken seriously."

In this regard, the liturgy is more relevant than we can imagine, because it's a place where God is taken seriously, and therefore where we are taken seriously. A liturgical service is by no means the only service that does this, but it is a form of worship that is especially suited to not getting distracted. The Anglican liturgy I participate in begins and ends like this:

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May 2008, Vol. 52, No. 5