Worldliness in Contemporary Church

One of the things about which the Lord has changed my thinking over the last 12 to 18 months is regarding the entire market oriented approach to ministry. John MacArthur states here that worldliness is the major problem in evangelical Christianity:

We keep hearing from evangelical strategists and
savvy church leaders that Christians need to be more tuned into contemporary
culture.
You have no doubt heard the arguments: We need to take the message
out of the bottle. We can’t minister effectively if don’t speak the language of
contemporary counterculture. If we don’t vernacularize the gospel, contextualize
the church, and reimagine Christanity for each succeeding generation,
how can we possibly reach young people? Above all else, we have got to stay in
step with the times.
Those arguments have been stressed to the point that
many evangelicals now seem to think unstylishness is just about the worst
imaginable threat to the expansion of the gospel and the influence of the
church. They don’t really care if they are worldly. They just don’t want to be
thought uncool.

This very mindset of supposed relevance has led many down the path to triviality. Imagine! We trivialize the Almighty Creator of the universe in our zeal to increasingly swell attendance and call it success. May He forgive us and grant us repentance from our headlong rush into "relevant" irreverence.