The Spurgeon Fellowship Journal

Book Review
Prophetic Untimeliness: A Challenge To The Idol Of Relevance
by Os Guinness

“So a disconcerting question arises: How on earth have we Christians become so irrelevant when we have tried so hard to be relevant?” (p. 11).

In Prophetic Untimeliness, Os Guinness seeks to answer this question through a consideration of time-specifically, how a corrupted and worldly view of time has contributed to the present state of spiritual anemia that plagues the church today.

“Let’s be crystal clear at the outset,” writes Guinness, “relevance is not the problem. If relevance is properly understood-the quality of relating to a matter in hand with pertinence and appropriateness-we who define ourselves and our lives by the good news of Jesus Christ should be, of all people, most relevant” (p. 12). However, “By our uncritical pursuit of relevance we have actually courted irrelevance; by our breathless chase after relevance without a matching commitment to faithfulness, we have become not only unfaithful but irrelevant . . . Our crying need is to be faithful as well as relevant” (p. 15). Guinness argues that with the invention of the mechanical clock, Western Civilization’s mindset concerning time itself was radically altered, and that the church has suffered a loss of its inherent timelessness as it, too, has become more concerned with being timely instead of timeless. The book is divided into three parts, each containing two chapter-length sub-sections.

Part One, The Tool That Turned into a Tyrant explores the ways that modern clock-time has shaped the lives and thinking of Western Civilization. The invention of the mechanical clock ushered in three effects: We are now able to be precise and coordinated in our actions, and (as a result) we often experience pressure as we experience the tension of trying to complete an increasing number of tasks in what has become to us a finite amount of time. Guinness argues that we have brought it all on ourselves, by our willingness to allow our language (and therefore, thinking) to be changed by considerations of modern clock-time. For example, the word civilized once described a person or place that was spatially beyond the circle of one’s own society. It no longer describes such a mere spatial relationship. Now, civilized denotes advanced cultural and social development, and uncivilized describes “primitives, reactionaries . . . Neanderthals” (p. 39). Such words that have been hijacked by the tyranny of time also can assume a role of evaluation in the guise of description. They pretend to describe, but in fact they praise or disparage” (p. 39). For example, the word “progress” once meant simply a spatial advance-just moving along in a direction. With the invention of clock time, however, “progress by definition is good, always good, self-evidently good, unquestionably good. Reaction, by definition, is bad. If it’s progressive, by definition, it must be good. If it’s reactionary, obviously it must be bad, and that’s the end of it” (p. 40). In short, time has changed our language, which has changed our thinking, which controls our actions. Part One concludes with the observation that our modern views of time itself have also led us to a presumptiveness that assumes that change is always inherently good, that “progress is change and change is progress, and that’s an end of it” (p. 42).

Part Two argues that the church itself has fallen prey to a view of time that is earthbound and prone to expressing itself in a passion for mere trendiness at the expense of faithfulness to its timeless message. Guinness charges the church of Western Civilization with capitulation to the demands of a time-bound culture, asserting that “the modern world is the most powerful, the most pervasive, and the most pressurizing. And it has done more damage to Christian integrity and effectiveness than all the persecutors of the church in history” (p. 51). He writes that Christianity’s efforts at adaptation to the culture, while begun by admirable impulse, almost always go to an undesirable extreme. For although the church may venture into the world assuming it will find a common, fair marketplace in which it can share its Christian message, the surrounding world will allow no such terms of parley, but will ultimately demand complete surrender to its secular perspectives and demands. Such a naïve approach to the culture results in the headlong rush to a collapse of worldliness that is seen in the church today. Guinness observes that with such compromise the church has, in effect, “transferred authority from Sola Scriptura to Sola Cultura” (p. 65). He charges that its unbridled desires for conformity, popularity, and fashionability are to blame for its tendency to disdain anything old or traditional, while idealizing and adopting anything that is seen as new.

In Part Three, Guinness presents a solution for “restoring the Archimedean point;” a perspective by which an untimely prophet may evaluate, understand, and address the needs of a church that has become irrelevant to the surrounding culture. We must escape the “cultural captivity” in which the church finds itself today. This escape is found in the development of three qualities: the courage to question the commonly held assumptions found in the church at any given time (Guinness calls this “resistance thinking”), the cultivation of an appreciation for the study of history, and the commitment to practice spiritual disciplines which lead to a deepening appreciation for the eternal. In practice, these qualities are strengthened as we take (in the words of C.S. Lewis) “scrupulous care to present the Christian message as something distinct from one’s own ideas,” and pursue the regular reading of history and of “old books” (p. 97). Guinness directs the reader to give “attention to the eternal” through the faithful study and preaching of the Scriptures, and to “puncturing the ceiling” of our world through daily devotions and regular participation in public worship.

In conclusion, Guinness notes that while we cannot arrest time, we can redeem it by being untimely in our perspectives, practicing the type of “resistance thinking” that he has introduced in the book, and by fully submitting ourselves to “the call of the Redeemer of everything.”

The first requisite for the reader of Prophetic Untimeliness is a willingness to consider the author’s assertion that the church of today, particularly the church of Western Civilization, is increasingly insignificant, marginalized, and unsuccessful in reaching our neighbors with the gospel of Jesus Christ. However, if one believes that all is well with the church, and that there is no great crisis of credibility and lack of genuine impact in our culture, than the premise of the book will seem superfluous, if not reactionary.

The strength of this book lies in the credibility and passion of the author. Writing from the perspective of over thirty years of observation of Christianity in the west and having written or edited over twenty-five books, Guinness writes with a relaxed, trustworthy authority. “I do not write as a detached or unsympathetic observer. I am an evangelical, a deeply convinced and unashamed evangelical . . . ” (p. 53). His style is concise, which explains the intensity and power of this book that is less than one-hundred twenty pages. There is an underlying passion and deep respect for the church I found refreshing and compelling. There are no names named, no movements or denominations indicted, and the words seeker-sensitive, post-modern and emergent do not even appear in the book!

The subject matter of the book is vital to all church leaders who routinely serve as the gatekeepers of the multitude of changes (and change salesmen) that wait in line to do business with the church today. For all who have led churches that pursued the siren call of change simply for the sake of change, or who have destroyed tradition simply because it was tradition, or perhaps have wondered if they must deliberately change the church simply because they live in a changing world, this book provides a diagnosis by which to understand the failure of such attempts to make the church truly relevant to our culture. For those who have avoided such painful missteps, this book provides a concise guide to leading the church to genuine faithfulness amidst a corrupted and corrupting culture.

Could it be that the make-overs that many leaders seek to give the Bride of Christ today are, perhaps, insulting to her Groom, who simply sees her as infinitely beautiful and the object of His (and our) sacrifice, as she is, and not how His mere attendants think she ought to be (Eph 5:22ff)?

I suspect that most of us pastors and leaders are quite able to devise ways to achieve an immediate, though transitory, relevance in our churches. The real challenge facing us, however, is to strive for that quality of faithfulness that will always be accompanied by an unchanging relevancy that is nothing short of eternal.

Ken Garrett, M.Div., is a graduate of Western Seminary and is Pastor of Grace Bible Church in Portland, Oregon.


	Book Review *Prophetic Untimeliness: A Challenge To The Idol Of Relevance* by Os Guinness “So a disconcerting question arises: How on earth have we Christians become so irrelevant when we have tried so hard to be relevant?” (p. 11). In Prophetic Untimeliness, Os Guinness seeks to answer this question through a consideration of time-specifically, how a corrupted and worldly view of time has contributed to the present state of spiritual anemia that plagues the church today. “Let’s be crystal clear at the outset,” writes Guinness, “relevance is not the problem. If relevance is properly understood-the quality of relating to a matter in hand with pertinence and appropriateness-we who define ourselves and our lives by the good news of Jesus Christ should be, of all people, most relevant” (p. 12). However, “By our uncritical pursuit of relevance we have actually courted irrelevance; by our breathless chase after relevance without a matching commitment to faithfulness, we have become not only unfaithful but irrelevant . . . Our crying need is to be faithful as well as relevant” (p. 15). Guinness argues that with the invention of the mechanical clock, Western Civilization’s mindset concerning time itself was radically altered, and that the church has suffered a loss of its inherent timelessness as it, too, has become more concerned with being timely instead of timeless. The book is divided into three parts, each containing two chapter-length sub-sections. Part One, The Tool That Turned into a Tyrant explores the ways that modern clock-time has shaped the lives and thinking of Western Civilization. The invention of the mechanical clock ushered in three effects: We are now able to be precise and coordinated in our actions, and (as a result) we often experience pressure as we experience the tension of trying to complete an increasing number of tasks in what has become to us a finite amount of time. Guinness argues that we have brought it all on ourselves, by our willingness to allow our language (and therefore, thinking) to be changed by considerations of modern clock-time. For example, the word civilized once described a person or place that was spatially beyond the circle of one’s own society. It no longer describes such a mere spatial relationship. Now, civilized denotes advanced cultural and social development, and uncivilized describes “primitives, reactionaries . . . Neanderthals” (p. 39). Such words that have been hijacked by the tyranny of time also can assume a role of evaluation in the guise of description. They pretend to describe, but in fact they praise or disparage” (p. 39). For example, the word “progress” once meant simply a spatial advance-just moving along in a direction. With the invention of clock time, however, “progress by definition is good, always good, self-evidently good, unquestionably good. Reaction, by definition, is bad. If it’s progressive, by definition, it must be good. If it’s reactionary, obviously it must be bad, and that’s the end of it” (p. 40). In short, time has changed our language, which has changed our thinking, which controls our actions. Part One concludes with the observation that our modern views of time itself have also led us to a presumptiveness that assumes that change is always inherently good, that “progress is change and change is progress, and that’s an end of it” (p. 42). Part Two argues that the church itself has fallen prey to a view of time that is earthbound and prone to expressing itself in a passion for mere trendiness at the expense of faithfulness to its timeless message. Guinness charges the church of Western Civilization with capitulation to the demands of a time-bound culture, asserting that “the modern world is the most powerful, the most pervasive, and the most pressurizing. And it has done more damage to Christian integrity and effectiveness than all the persecutors of the church in history” (p. 51). He writes that Christianity’s efforts at adaptation to the culture, while begun by admirable impulse, almost always go to an undesirable extreme. For although the church may venture into the world assuming it will find a common, fair marketplace in which it can share its Christian message, the surrounding world will allow no such terms of parley, but will ultimately demand complete surrender to its secular perspectives and demands. Such a naïve approach to the culture results in the headlong rush to a collapse of worldliness that is seen in the church today. Guinness observes that with such compromise the church has, in effect, “transferred authority from Sola Scriptura to Sola Cultura” (p. 65). He charges that its unbridled desires for conformity, popularity, and fashionability are to blame for its tendency to disdain anything old or traditional, while idealizing and adopting anything that is seen as new. In Part Three, Guinness presents a solution for “restoring the Archimedean point;” a perspective by which an untimely prophet may evaluate, understand, and address the needs of a church that has become irrelevant to the surrounding culture. We must escape the “cultural captivity” in which the church finds itself today. This escape is found in the development of three qualities: the courage to question the commonly held assumptions found in the church at any given time (Guinness calls this “resistance thinking”), the cultivation of an appreciation for the study of history, and the commitment to practice spiritual disciplines which lead to a deepening appreciation for the eternal. In practice, these qualities are strengthened as we take (in the words of C.S. Lewis) “scrupulous care to present the Christian message as something distinct from one’s own ideas,” and pursue the regular reading of history and of “old books” (p. 97). Guinness directs the reader to give “attention to the eternal” through the faithful study and preaching of the Scriptures, and to “puncturing the ceiling” of our world through daily devotions and regular participation in public worship. In conclusion, Guinness notes that while we cannot arrest time, we can redeem it by being untimely in our perspectives, practicing the type of “resistance thinking” that he has introduced in the book, and by fully submitting ourselves to “the call of the Redeemer of everything.” The first requisite for the reader of Prophetic Untimeliness is a willingness to consider the author’s assertion that the church of today, particularly the church of Western Civilization, is increasingly insignificant, marginalized, and unsuccessful in reaching our neighbors with the gospel of Jesus Christ. However, if one believes that all is well with the church, and that there is no great crisis of credibility and lack of genuine impact in our culture, than the premise of the book will seem superfluous, if not reactionary. The strength of this book lies in the credibility and passion of the author. Writing from the perspective of over thirty years of observation of Christianity in the west and having written or edited over twenty-five books, Guinness writes with a relaxed, trustworthy authority. “I do not write as a detached or unsympathetic observer. I am an evangelical, a deeply convinced and unashamed evangelical . . . ” (p. 53). His style is concise, which explains the intensity and power of this book that is less than one-hundred twenty pages. There is an underlying passion and deep respect for the church I found refreshing and compelling. There are no names named, no movements or denominations indicted, and the words seeker-sensitive, post-modern and emergent do not even appear in the book! The subject matter of the book is vital to all church leaders who routinely serve as the gatekeepers of the multitude of changes (and change salesmen) that wait in line to do business with the church today. For all who have led churches that pursued the siren call of change simply for the sake of change, or who have destroyed tradition simply because it was tradition, or perhaps have wondered if they must deliberately change the church simply because they live in a changing world, this book provides a diagnosis by which to understand the failure of such attempts to make the church truly relevant to our culture. For those who have avoided such painful missteps, this book provides a concise guide to leading the church to genuine faithfulness amidst a corrupted and corrupting culture. Could it be that the make-overs that many leaders seek to give the Bride of Christ today are, perhaps, insulting to her Groom, who simply sees her as infinitely beautiful and the object of His (and our) sacrifice, as she is, and not how His mere attendants think she ought to be (Eph 5:22ff)? I suspect that most of us pastors and leaders are quite able to devise ways to achieve an immediate, though transitory, relevance in our churches. The real challenge facing us, however, is to strive for that quality of faithfulness that will always be accompanied by an unchanging relevancy that is nothing short of eternal. Ken Garrett, M.Div., is a graduate of Western Seminary and is Pastor of Grace Bible Church in Portland, Oregon.

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