Office of Public Relations
Missouri Baptist University
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For Immediate Release
RE: Repainting the Church
Repainting the Church
January 12, 2007
Christ-inspired art galleries. Controversial coffeehouse discussions. Cowboy chapels. Invitation-less services. It’s a far cry from down-home revivals and potluck suppers, but for a growing number of MBU constituents it’s church, plain and simple.
For MBU Sophomore Kelly Weber, the thought of Sunday School merely surfaces nostalgic thoughts of days gone by.
For that matter, Sunday church in general—complete with ushers, offering plates and alter calls—is all but a thing of the past for the nineteen-year-old religion major. Really, she prefers to sleep away the morning America has traditionally set aside for corporate worship. And she doesn’t feel guilty for a second.
“For me, Sunday’s are a day of rest,” she said, who normally hangs out with her small group on Sunday afternoons. “It’s really about relaxing and preparing for the upcoming week.”
For the last year or so, Weber has attended Matthias’ Lot, a church that began in downtown St. Charles, Mo in August of 2005. Matthias’ Lot, holds their weekly corporate worship service on Wednesday nights, foregoing typical staples of midweek church activities like choir practice and prayer meetings for a full-fledged worship experience.
It’s different. And that’s exactly the point.
Like Weber’s place of worship, churches across America are attempting to reverse decades of declining church attendance by taking a raw—and at times, controversial—approach to today’s church. Call it a post-modernist slant to Christianity. Call it emergent. Call it culturally relevant.
Call it what you will, but one thing is for sure: It’s a new way of doing church.
“God is calling churches to rise up in their cultures and we’re just a part of a larger movement,” said Marc Sikma, one of three pastor/elders of Matthias’ Lot. “If we’re going to restore integrity to the church, we have to throw our hands up and say we don’t have it together. Really, we’re just punks in desperate need of God’s grace and we’re going to claim that.”
Sikma, whose church affiliates with a nationwide group of church plants called the Acts 29 Network, believes that immersing his church into today’s culture is a necessary step in such restoration. Members of The Acts 29 Network believe, among other things, in planting churches that are both theologically sound and culturally relevant.
Matthias’ Lot frequently holds “Community Love Events,” to help spur long-term relationships. Last summer, more than 950 community members showed up for a free swimming pool party hosted by the church. There was no time of decision or invitation.
In fact, Christianity was shown simply through love, Sikma said.
“We didn’t bate and switch them,” he explained. “We just love them. There’s no timeshare sell. Everything hangs on love.”
And to explain the reasoning behind the Wednesday night services: “Well, we tell your families to sleep in on Sundays, to hold your kids, to take a Sabbath,” Sikma said. “We want you to be in rhythm come Monday morning, not exhausted because of church.”
Matthew Paul Turner, a recent speaker at MBU’s convocation and best selling Christian author whose works include Coffeehouse Gospel and The Christian Culture has dedicated his life to educating people how to live the Christian faith within the confines of popular culture. He believes erasing traditional Christian culture—in whatever fashion—is an essential step in reaching the unchurched.
“Lots of things Jesus taught conflict with the traditions of ‘America’s Christianity,” Turner said “We’ve got to get away from the ‘branding’ of Jesus and get back into hungering and thirsting for justice. So many of today’s churches are all about me me me. We’ve got to get away from that mentality, begin living with God’s grace in mind, and love people.”
Beau Bekemeier, ’03, knows all about breaking traditions. As multimedia director at Atlantic Shores Baptist Church in Virginia Beach, Va., a congregation of about 3,000, Bekemeier is weekly charged with the task of creating an authentic style of worship, not preserving tradition.
“I think that it is necessary that we break the ‘Church’ traditions. We are fighting over issues in the church that just do not matter,” Bekemeier said. “Traditions are killing the church. We have created boundaries of worship that I feel are destroying the freedom that God designed for us to have in him.”
Under Bekemeier’s direction, his church weekly streams a video simulcast from their church’s worship center to a second venue, allowing the church to bring a more relevant music package while giving the entire congregation the opportunity to hear their pastor’s sermon.
But relevance comes in varying fashions, depending on the culture of the community where the church is located. Windsor Crossing Community Church in Chesterfield, Mo. reaches out to its community’s influx of artists through the medium of popular art.
Renee Scott, ’04, a member of Windsor Crossing’s art community, had a piece of her photography displayed at Windsor Crossing’s Attic Gallery for a recent show titled “Hope and Pain.”
The art show, which complemented a series of sermons called “The Problem with Pain,” allowed Scott, who was reared in a self-described “traditional church,” to praise Christ in an authentic--albeit unconventional--manner.
“For me, photography is a way to genuinely worship Christ,” Scott said. “It really acts as a medium for me to not only have a closer relationship with my Savior but also to minister to people who might not relate with traditional church.”
Located about an hour east of the bustling suburbia of Chesterfield, residents of St. Jacob, Ill., population 892, live a much different flavor of life than that of West County. Church is different there, too.
Just ask David Hendrick, ’88, and his wife, Cortland.
Hundreds of acres of farmland surround the small town. Still, reminders of the growing metropolitan St. Louis—rows of new neighborhood homes and fast food eateries are daily replacing some of the farmland—are increasingly obvious.
The Hendricks are doing church there in a way that fits St. Jacob’s increasingly evident dichotomy. The Hendricks, who were foreign missionaries in The Soviet Union, Iraq and Jordan, are now targeting post-moderns who are moving to the area while still ministering to longtime country-western locals.
“It is often not a lack of interest in spirituality that divides people from Christ’s Body,” David said. “Sometimes it’s just a cultural divide.”
The Hendrick family lives on a nearly 30-acre farm in St. Jacob, which also serves as a full-service equestrian service and home to a non-profit business that allows children with disabilities the opportunity to ride and care for horses.
There, the Hendricks recently began The Crossing, a church geared for post-moderns who live in Eastern Illinois and transient to work in nearby St. Louis. As a ministry of their new church, The Crossing has launched The Cowboy Chapel, an arm of the church that aims to attract the “boots and jean crowd” of the area who come to the farm for business.
“Lots of people out here are working to simplify their lives, so whether they are farmers or urbanites, they are drawn to the country lifestyle and are interested in casual gatherings that are authentic and down to earth,” David said.
And while creating such an avant-garde approach to worship may help to engage those who feel disenfranchised with traditional church worship, showing Christ’s love outside of the confines of a church building is also a real challenge, so says some.
“Christians are so weird about remaining protected. Instead of avoiding people who disagree with us, I think we should engage them,” Turner said. “But this begins with a personal change in us to make an effort to reach out to whomever, regardless of their situation. Every person on the planet has a need for love. I think Christians should be able to love them with no strings attached.”
Six days before Missouri voters decided on Amendment Two, a contentious ballot initiative surrounding embryonic stem cell research, The Journey—a church based near Tower Grove Park in South St. Louis—hosted a bipartisan panel discussion this past November on that ballot issue inside a pub in downtown St. Louis.
There was no hidden agenda or attempt to sway those in attendance to vote one way or another. It was merely a discussion; a time to build relationships through common interests.
The panel discussion was part of The Journey’s Midrash events, a weekly forum that seeks to engage various aspects of popular culture—music, theatre, arts, and politics—in an effort to prompt relevant dialogue with people of all backgrounds and beliefs. The forum takes on controversial subjects, from social justice in St. Louis to school violence.
Jeremy Burrows, a junior religious education major at MBU and worship assistant at The Journey, says it is events like Midrash—forums that allow Christ followers to engage people in substantive conversation—that have the potential to change stigmas associated with today’s church.
“Jesus hung out with pagans, but not at the expense of His message,” Burrows said. “We just want to build relationships with people in our communities that are full of truth and grace, not just truth or just grace.”
If numbers are an indicator, it appears that The Journey’s approach to church is working. Today, nearly four years after it opened its doors, about 1,000 people attend the church’s four weekend services—making it by far the fastest growing church with ties to the St. Louis Metro Baptist Association inside St. Louis’ Highway 270 outer belt.
“It’s not about the number of people who attend,” Burrows said. “It’s about the number of people who’s lives are being changed by the power of the Gospel.”
The Journey has proven to breathe new life into a seemingly once lifeless place of worship. Last year, The Journey purchased the former Holy Innocents Catholic Church building in South St. Louis, a church that closed its doors in 2004.
Towering stained glass windows and massive wooden pews still adorn the sanctuary, reminders of the liturgy that near daily filled the church. That may be the only thing about The Journey that is traditional, however.
On a rainy Saturday night this past October, a group of about 150—primarily 20-somethings and young families--gathered inside the church’s Tower Grove Park facility for its first-ever Saturday night service. Burrows, clad in running jacket and a pair of holey jeans, led worship with a guitar.
No doubt about it, the service was a far cry from the rituals that once filled that space.
And while the The Journey’s way of church is drastically different from many traditional churches in America, Jesus’ message hasn’t been compromised, Burrows believes.
“We don’t want to drag people out of their culture and into ours. We want to take the
gospel of Jesus Christ into their culture, so He can redeem them and their culture. The culture is always changing and will continue to change, but the message of Christ is unchanging.” Burrows said.
And that’s the real point, Turner believes.
“Every church can be relevant; it can start with one person choosing to live out the true teachings of Jesus. It’s about denying our own stories and becoming apart of His,” he said.
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Missouri Baptist University is a premier Christian university in Saint Louis, offering graduate and undergraduate studies in over thirty specialized fields and nine degrees. MBU's education and fine arts programs are nationally known in addition to business, religion, administration of justice, and more. MBU is one of the fastest growing higher education institutions in Missouri with an enrollment of over 4,500 students at five locations in the bi-state region — West County, Lincoln County, Jefferson County, Franklin County and the new Illinois extension at Lewis and Clark Community College.
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