‘Prophetic Untimeliness’ by Os Guiness Review by Nathan Williams

Some books simply need to be read. This is one of those books. It is a couple of years old, but when I read it through for the second time I was amazed again at the impact it had on my thinking. It speaks volumes to our Christian culture and helps us understand the stance we need to take toward our culture. Guiness possesses the amazing ability to analyze our current situation and express it in ways that are memorable and easy to understand. This book is a treasure chest of great quotes so reading it must be done with a highlighter at hand.
Guiness understands the heart of the problem the church faces today. “…an unprecedented Christian pursuit of relevance has led directly to an unprecedented Christian irrelevance” (p. 45). He describes this statement as the central concern of the book. The irony is astounding. The Church today wants nothing more than to be relevant to the culture. Many in the church feel relevance is the only way to reach the culture with the gospel. Guiness says this pursuit of relevance is precisely the reason the Christian church today has never been more irrelevant. It’s an impossibly frustrating cycle to find ourselves caught in. The harder we push to be culturally relevant, the more behind the times we fall.
If you wanted to boil this book down to the most basic level, it would be a book about worldliness. Guiness explains how the church has become like the world in one specific area. Prophetic Untimeliness divides into three sections, with two chapters making up each section.
The first section is entitled, “The Tool That Turned into a Tyrant.” This tool is time and Guiness spends the first two chapters explaining the features of our modern understanding of time that have affected our faith. Most of us are so caught up in the modern understanding of time that we never consider that our culture has affected the way we view time itself. “But it is impossible to stop the world today even if you want to get off — and this manic speed is affecting our faith as much as our blood pressure” (p. 36). One specific result of the modern view of time discussed in these chapters is our bias for change. “Any kind of change is enough to qualify as progress” (p. 42).
The second section of Prophetic Untimeliness is entitled “Shorn of Our Secret Strength” and deals with the relationship of the church to the world. Guiness explains that the church has always possessed the ability to be “against the world, for the world” (p. 49). Taking this phrase from C. S. Lewis he goes on to explain how our ability to maintain this position is harder in the modern world than it has ever been. The modern view of time has infiltrated our way of thinking to the point that we value relevance so much that we are willing to sacrifice faithfulness to obtain it.
The closing section of Prophetic Untimeliness is entitled “Restoring the Archimedean Point.” In this section Guiness explains that we must have some point outside of the world with which to judge the world. To remain faithful and ultimately to gain relevance, we must maintain an eternal perspective.
Early on in this book, Guiness explains that relevance is not the problem. In fact, he claims that relevance is more needed than ever! The problem is that to be truly relevant, we must not float along with the spirit of the age, but we must push against the current that would drag us down. I wanted to finish this review, not by explaining why I think this book would be valuable to read, but by letting Guiness speak for himself. Here are a few memorable quotes from Prophetic Untimeliness.
“Never have Christians pursued relevance more strenuously; never have Christians been more irrelevant” (p. 12).
“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).
Speaking of the Churches’ stance, “against the world, for the world” . . .
“When the church is weak or careless in maintaining this dual stance, it leads directly to cowardice and corruption, decadence and decline. But when the church is faithful, it lies at the core of her power to transform and renew culture” (p. 49).
“Thinking and acting Christianly in the blizzard of modern information and change requires the courage of a prophet, the wisdom of a sage, and the character of a saint — not to speak of the patience of Job and the longevity of Methuselah” (p. 56).
“The fact is that nothing is finally relevant except in relation to the true and the eternal” (p. 106).