Preaching and Relevance

...we have to face the fact that the pursuit of relevance as being constantly timely is a mirage.  When relevance is invoked as self-authenticating concept, it becomes meaningless and dangerous because it begs the questions, Relevance for what?  Relevance to whom? 

Such questions are commonly ignored in today's headlong rush after the unholy trinity of the powerful, the practical, and the profitable.  But if we don't ask them, the constant appeal to relevance becomes an idol, a way of riding slipshod over truth, and a means of coralling opinion deceptively.  Until, that is, we finally deceive ourselves.

The fact is that nothing is finally relevant except in relation to the true and the eternal....Only truth and eternity give relevance to "relevance."  To think or do anything simply "because it is relevant" will always prove to be irrational, dangerous, and a sure road to burnout.  It may tast like unpleasant medicine to our practical modern thinking, but in fact it's a powerful antidote to perpetual folly.....God has broken into our silence.  He has spoken and has come down Himself.  And in His written and living Word we are given truth from outside our situation, truth that throws light on our little lives and our little world.  This word of God is the only true Archimedean point to gain the leverage to raise us above the forces of gravity in our human condition.

Os Guiness
Prophetic Untimeliness
Pages 106-107