Evangelicalism has never chased relevance more determinedly than it does now. And yet, we've never been more irrelevant. That could be purely accidental, and other factors are behind it, but I would argue that we've pursued the wrong type of relevance.

So said Os Guinness in 2003. Christianity Today is linking to it again today in what I take to be an endearing stab at irony. (I have no doubt the editors over at CT have read of my love for irony and thought that if they threw me this bone, I would lay off their sad rag.)

The good news is that the evangelical church was and is irrelevant, and now the word is out. The bad news is that it will continue to be irrelevant as well. It is a little like the 38 year old couch potato who becomes fascinated with NFL football and decides he's going to try out as running back next season.

Good luck with that.

Where Mr. Guinness falls off the beam is in supposing we can go back now and pick up where we left off. Good luck with that too. Indeed, in the intervening four years there is no indication that the church is any more relevant than when this interview took place.

You see, it is not "purely accidental"; when you reject the permanent things you reject the relevant things. The only relevant things are permanent things. So having failed to produce relevance after this long, fruitless chase, now they are going to succeed by giving up the chase?

Good luck with that.

But just between you and me, here's my advice: learn about and teach people what is permanent. I'm going to list five permanent things. You can buy or borrow these and get some sense of what you are up against. I suspect evangelicals won't give it much thought because of the time it would take out of their movie-watching schedule.

But anyway, here are some great works dealing with permanent things and executed by eminently competent artists. Your reaction to these may give you some sense of how adept you will be an achieving "relevance".

Horowitz Live and Unedited, Sony Classical, 2796-93023-2
Goldberg Variations, Daniel Barenboim, Erato, 2292-45468-2
Mendelssohn Symphony #5, John Eliot Gardiner, Deutsche Grammophon, 28945-93652-3
Death and the Maiden, Guarneri String Quartet, Arabesque Recordings, 26724-6687-2
...which was the son of... Paul Hillier, Harmonia Mundi, HMU 907407