From Change Your Church for Good: The Art of Sacred Cow Tipping (W Publishing Group 2007) by Brad Powell:

We must decide to continually give our hearts and energy to shaping the church to communicate God’s truth in culturally relevant ways. Since Christians are the church, this is the responsibility of all believers. For this to happen, we need to establish culturally appealing environments, culturally engaging styles, and culturally connecting languages. And we need to be sure we are connecting God’s truth to people’s needs. When we’re doing these things, the church will be relevant. The church will be the hope of the world because it will be working right.

Compare this with what Paul said to the Christians at Corinth who were pagans when he first met them (1 Corinthians 2:1-5):

When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.

If God could use Paul’s culturally irrelevant language to reach the pagans at Corinth, is the word of God ALONE not powerful enough today to reach the pagans in Plymouth and Southeastern Michigan, or the city where you minister? Is it our appealing environments, engaging styles, and connecting languages that produce faith in the hearts of the lost? Or does faith come by hearing and hearing by the word of God?

Is the church’s character and calling shaped primarily by the word of God or by the prevailing culture?