You've heard the statement, "dynamite comes in small packages." How true that is when it comes to Os Guinness's Prophetic Untimeliness. With all the movement in the church world regarding the rush to relevance, could it be the church is shooting itself in the foot and hampering its effectiveness? There are a variety of opinions on what it takes to be timely and relevant. Could it be the church is playing into the hands of irrelevance and ineffectiveness?

Os Guinness writes with prophetic like caution, description, and prescription. I would like to challenge every pastor, organizing pastor, church leader and teacher to read this book. To say that it is thought provoking is an understatement. It examines our attempts to be relevant and make the church relevant. Are our attempts to be timely really resulting in untimeliness? This goes in two directions, one positive and one not positive. Viewed positively, there is a sense in which the church is to be untimely and rise above the present moment because it transcends the moment. Conversely, there is also the sense that in the attempt to be so timely, truth is sacrificed for the trendy and trivial.

Guinness reminds us it is critical to be faithful as well as relevant. He writes, "The stakes, of course, are high. The sorry irrelevance of the church in the West is thrown into sharp relief by our world and our historic moment." Hence Guinness challenges us, with his incisive analysis, to say, "It is time to challenge the idol of relevance." He also challenges us to think through this statement, "Never have Christians pursued relevance more strenuously; never have Christians been more irrelevant."

While there is no merit in being irrelevant, the church today must ask how to achieve relevance without sacrificing the very truth that makes the church relevant in all ages? We cannot be blind to the reality that today is the result of the past. We cannot understand today by starting and stopping with today; nor can we have any legitimate thoughts about the future without knowledge of the past.

Kingdom of God disciples are in a sense resistance thinkers, to use C. S. Lewis's term. Or, we need to be "untimely people" if we are to be kingdom people. Sadly, evangelicals and fundamentalists demonstrate an embracing of the world like never before. Therefore, Guinness challenges us to seek to regain the characteristic of "prophetic untimeliness." He even suggests that we wear our idol on our wrist. He posits that the invention of the clock has actually created great stress and pressure to think about now, often at the expense of thinking beyond the present moment. The chapter on the tyranny of time will resonate with readers. To be freed from the pressure of time, the church needs both a reformation and revival, especially in the West.

As we read, we are reminded over and over that we cannot be effective kingdom people while at the same time mimicking modernity and the fascination with the new. The plea in this book is that we deeply long "to be shaped by our faith rather than to the pushes and pulls of the modern world."

This is an important book. It has a vital message for the church if it is really committed to making a kingdom impact on the world. We cannot impact a culture by simply being like it. Kingdom people march to the beat of a different drum and Prophetic Untimeliness will cause us to pause and do some serious thinking about the whole idea of time, relevance, and being like the world.

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