When the Homily is about Immunology

Context

...from Organic Church:

We're a group of church planters / leaders seeking to discover what church might mean within the context of our emerging generation...


Ok, let me just throw this bone out there and see if anyone gnaws on it (I know you will):

Maybe we should be a group seeking to discover what the emerging generation might mean within the context of the Church? Think about it for a minute before your knee jerks.

Why is the context (defined as "The circumstances in which an event occurs; a setting.") by default considered to be the "emerging generation" and not the Church? In a sense, don't we by default subjugate our understanding of the Church to our understanding of our generation (i.e. culture) - thereby assuming that the Church needs reinterpretation but our generation (i.e. culture) does not?

Now I understand given our western experience with the Reformation that we feel it perfectly natural to be ever changing and evolving our concept of the "church", but what if that ought not to be the case? Are there inherent dangers in doing that? Of course some would argue that there are inherent dangers in stagnation...and I would agree, but qualifying that stagnation is a complex judgement and not neccesarily synonymous with not changing, or slow changing.

What if "the context" is in fact the Church...and the emerging generation ought to be considering how it might be reinterpretted in order to have meaning. Well, you say, then people will reject the Church and ignore it and it will become irrelevant to them; a stumbling block and a folly.

Yes...just as our Lord told us it would.