New Ways of Being Church

Conversations on renewal and transformation in mainline congregations

March 15-18, 2009

Yes, there are signs of hope for the Church in the post-modern and post-Christian era! In 2009, Louisville Seminary welcomes a celebrated trio of church leaders/scholars who are spreading the news that the Church of the 21st Century can and does re-think, re-tradition, and re-invent itself.

• Diana Butler Bass, historian and author of the popular book Christianity for the Rest of Us, brings with her inspirational presentation solid research showing that mainline congregations are thriving as communities that practice ancient Christian traditions.
• Marcus Borg, a prominent New Testament scholar, speaks for many who seek a fresh, credible, and progressive understanding of Jesus Christ for this age. His forthcoming book is simply titled Jesus.
• Brian McLaren is a pastor and author who best represents the “Emerging Church” from an evangelical perspective, but his presentations and books, including A Generous Orthodoxy and Everything Must Change, elude simple labels.
• With closing worship led by LPTS Alum Preacher Mike Pentecost (MDiv ‘98), pastor of Brentwood Presbyterian Church in Brentwood, Tenn.

For more information about this event, contact David Sawyer, Director of Lifelong Learning and Advanced Degrees, dsawyer@lpts.edu, or Leah Bradley, Director of Alum & Church Relations, lbradley@lpts.edu, 1-800/264-1839.

The worship I attended was at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC, and it had been billed as an emergent worship. It opened with music from Ryan and Holly Sharp, and Jared Milos of The Cobalt Season. They did a masterful job of setting up a time of contemplation of scripture. It was one of the highlights of the service. For fifteen to twenty minutes Jared played a slow, sliding line on the bass guitar, drawing on the root chords of a sung chorus. Four liturgists, each reading from a different passage, alternated reading portions of the texts aloud. When they finished reading the passage through the first time, we repeated the chorus before they began to repeat selected verses of the text, alternating all the while with one another.

During the music at the beginning of the service as well as during the reading, two video projectors had been set up and were projecting images on top of each other. The first projector was simply playing a slideshow of words in white type (“community,” “peace,” “solitude,” etc.). The second projector was playing the DVD film “Koyaanisquatsi,” which shows scenes from various world cultures. (The sound from the film was muted, but I recommend the soundtrack by Philip Glass on its own merits.) The effect was engaging and intriguing. Intentionally chaotic, the words were not timed to the film, but were in random order. Some words matched well with the overlaid film, some word associations were confusing, or outright contradictory, but the blend of the bass line, the visuals, and the slow scripture reading created a contemplative environment that engaged me in the texts in very different way. It was worship leadership very well done!

Gilda Carbonaro bore witness the way that war has torn at her with the death of her son, 28-year old Marine Sergeant Alessandro “Alex” Carbonaro. Alex died of burn injuries sustained by an IED explosion on May 1, 2006. As a member of Gold Star Families for Peace and Military Families Speak Out, Gilda read aloud numerous emails and letters exchanged between her and her son during his deployments. The vividness of her memories shone in her voice, as did her pain and her resolve to end the war in Iraq. After the service, I was so moved by her words that all I could do was ask her to tell me the birthday of her son: April 19, 1978. He would have turned 30 last Saturday.

Brian McLaren took to the pulpit after Gilda had finished, and though he was setting out on a new book tour for Everything Must Change, and on the verge of a conference in Vienna, VA of the same name, he knew when enough had already been said. I was a bit disappointed – and surprised – that he cut his remarks short, but it was a significant lesson that even a keynote speaker and powerful preacher can sometimes have his well-prepared and refined words pale in the face of powerful scripture and raw experience. It’s better to recognize it and cut it short than to take away from the whole (Note to self: Mother’s Day/Pentecost sermon: keep it concise– May 11.)

As a concluding act of worship, the Lord’s Supper was celebrated by intinction. While for some this was a new experience, it was a fitting way to nourish our spirits as we prepared for further action. (See PCUSA News article)

I hope this review of the worship service gives you some ideas, raises some questions, and challenges you to new ways of thinking about how social justice actions can be grounded in worship. Questions?

Peace, Ivan Herman

Primary Responsibilities will include: oversee the development and production of experiential, participatory, image-rich and theologically sound worship gatherings especially designed to attract the unchurched and others to a vital relationship with Christ and his community of disciples known as Westminster Presbyterian Church. S/he will integrate a wide variety of liturgical, dramatic, technological and musical genres to lead people into a meaningful and Christ-centered worship experience. By these and whatever means necessary, we hope to bring people to a place of heartfelt worship that is uniquely Westminster; give direction to significant outreach ministries designed to reach, welcome and integrate persons into congregational life; leverage modern culture as momentum to compel others to Christ, by remaining both culturally accessible and faithful to Biblical orthodoxy.

If you have additional questions about the position, please contact the Co-Moderator for the Committee, Gil Mitchell by emailing him here.

For more information regarding this position, please contact:

Mark Bassham
432.570.4353
mbassham@sbcglobal.net

Gerry Weisenfels
432.688.1338
gweisenfels@grandecom.net

What is taking place in events, until this summer, are a number of region-specific gatherings. If you’re anywhere in the South, the combination of top quality speakers (Shane Claiborne, Tim Keel, Troy Bronsink) and low registration fee ($25 online), makes A Sustainable Faith in St. Petersburg, Florida, Feb 2-3, a must-attend event.

The main series of events is Brian McLaren’s The Everything Must Change Tour, taking place in eleven cities around the USA (Charlotte NC, Boise ID, Dallas TX, St. Petersburg FL, Washington DC, San Diego CA, Chicago IL, Seattle WA, Kansas City MO, New York City NY, Goshen IN). Currently two of the tour stops, Boise and Washington DC, have presbymergents who volunteered to connect Presbyterians going to these events. To learn more about how the First Presbyterian Church in Bend, OR, is getting ready for the tour, see this post, and email Nate Bettger for connecting with them in Boise. Brian Wallace is planning a gathering in Washington DC, email Brian for more information. If you are willing to volunteer for gathering presbymergents in any of the other tour cities, please email and/or write a post for this site by registering or logging in. I will also update the events page with your contact info and any other details you provide.

Finally, there will be a very special event this April 8-10, “Emerging Church for the Existing Church” designed to bridge gaps between Emergent explorations and established Mainline churches. All of the presentations at this conference will directly relate to what it means to be a presbymergent, a convergence of existing church and emerging church. This is an opportunity for both on-ramp questions of figuring out what Emergent is about and for higher-level practitioner questions of being Emergent in Mainline contexts.

If you’re planning a presbymergent-related event, or are even considering the possibility of an event, feel free to email about getting connected with other presbymergents.

I have decided to write this post in response to last weekend to share some reflections as well as to encourage anyone in the Presbymergent community that it is possible for traditional congregations to transform themselves into the hope of the Great Emergence. Many of the emergent churches out there are new plants which have the potential to try amazing things! Then there are those of us who are in declining Presbyterian churches wondering if there is any hope at all!!! Well, yes, and yes, and yes.

Over the past several months I have read the posts on Presbymergent, visited blogs of many folks, websites of Presbymergent churches and been left with more questions rather than affirmations. When I compared our church with many of the other like-minded churches, we did not fit in! So the question of “who we are” as a congregation has haunted me until this weekend. Well, we do not fit in! And that is a good thing. (As Martha Stewart would say!) What makes us emergent is not that we all look and talk alike, but how we are transforming in, through and with Christ to co-create with the Spirit in this Great Emergence. So I boldly declare that our small community is emergent. And it is fantastic!!!!

Our church is located in a 90% white, quite provincial, community with many folks who are either at or below the poverty level. Westminster had been declining for over 25 years (like many mainline churches) when my husband James and I arrived as co-pastors in 2000. In the past seven and a half years, we have tried many programs to grow the church. Folks who were first crazy about us became the most resistant. We gained a few here and there but we lost many to age and death.

In the midst of all the activities and programs, James and I focused on helping those who were willing to truly learn and grow as disciples of Jesus. We focused on connecting the head to the heart. There was a core group of 30 folks who responded as we prayed, deeply delved into the Scripture, practiced the spiritual disciplines, made retreats…. (Some in the congregation actually accused us of teaching new age and witchcraft…)

Three years ago, we went to a spirituality conference with Phyllis Tickle at Montreat. There were five of us. Everything changed after that conference. We came back convinced that God was leading us in this new direction, and the Spirit would show us how to seek and pray. This was the moment when we truly turned to God, praying on our knees (literally!!!), asking God to show us what we needed to do. We knew we wanted to be a community where we can taste and smell the Kingdom of God. We knew we want to be bold in our Christian discipleship. We knew Jesus is the center.

As we sought more of God, we saw more clearly what needed to be done. So we sold our building in 2007, and moved to a rental facility where we worship, fellowship, nurture, challenge and are growing as a community. There were only 30 of us when we moved. The rest left! Now we have about 50 in our community. God asked Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?” You bet! God’s breath has entered our congregation and now we have come to life.

The majority in our congregation is over 40 years old, and we have several who are above 80! We have many children, as well as young adults, single moms and dads, and those with no kids. There are those who are Postmodern, and those who cannot spell Postmodern. There are Republicans, Democrats, independents, veterans, some who have graduate degrees, and some with only high school diplomas! Some are on Facebook, some have blogs, some don’t even have computers.

Some only go to the early emergent/contemporary/… service and some only go to the traditional Reformed service. Some alternate in between and some go to both every Sunday.

We use the Discipleship Project as our congregational formation tool. Everyone participates. (If you don’t know what it is, please do check it out, it works: www.thediscipleshipproject.com.) We have a Christian formation center, Wellspring, where we teach and nurture the spiritual disciplines. We host High Teas (Tea with a Purpose) as a part of our hospitality ministry. We hold Bible studies at a local coffee shop, have outreach with the local artists through the Arts Council of Jamestown, host concerts for local bands…, and we have just established a ministry for families in crisis, Faithful Hands. [Thanks to the efforts of Tara, our Worship and Outreach Director...]

I have wanted to share this community life with you beacuse this is who we are. We are not trying to do programs, but desire to be available in our life and work to the presence of God in and through us. We believe there are three standards for us as an emergent congregation which centers us: Christ, prayer, and community. And the Scripture holds all these three strands together. We will face many challenges in the near future (financial being one of them) but we go ahead, knowing that God will not abandon us, and we continue to seek us as we follow Christ in a world living in fear and chaos.

So friends, let us have hope, because God is indeed doing a new thing. Can we percieve it? May you experience the wonder of God in this holy season of Advent.

It’s not that simple.

The iron was too hot on that fateful day and I lifted a rather large chunk of the carpet along with the huge wax spill that had occurred the night before during our emergent worship gathering. Try as I might, I could not hide the blemish. It remains there still—a reminder of my inability to properly Martha Stewart my wax issue, and as a warning on where not to place candles that you don’t want tipped on to the floor.
Lately, though, I have come to see the burn in the sanctuary carpet as a symbol for something else: The tenuous, tumultuous relationship between the existing and the emerging church…

For the past two years I have led a small “emergent” worship gathering that meets in an existing church, namely the very same church where I serve as the Associate Pastor. Because I am the only pastor on staff at the moment, I also lead and preach at all of the other worship services my church holds. So, on Sunday morning I begin my day by presiding over a “contemporary/casual” worship service with its own constiuency of coffee drinking, jean wearing, contemporary-music lovers. Then I don my clerical robe and preside over our “traditional” worship service that is dominated by grey haired, formal, Sunday-best-wearing Christian “lifers.” Then on Sunday evenings I prepare for our emergent, experiential worship gathering “Song in the Night” by donning jeans, a “Ramones” t-shirt and my battered Chuck Taylor “All Stars.” We then transform our church’s sanctuary from a 1960’s-era, stuffy Presbyterian worship space into something a bit more use-able. The corners of the space are filled with experiential, hands-on worship/prayer stations. Candles and insence are lit. The crowd is decidedly younger than the morning worship services, but is still dotted by grey hairs here and there. As you walk into the space, you might hear a “prelude” by Jimmy Eat World, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash or Amy Winehouse. Insted of hymns or “contemporary” praise songs, you might sing worship music from Charlie Hall, Robbie Seay, David Crowder or The Cure.

At Song in the Night I preach the same sermon that I preach at the Sunday morning worship services…but the delivery and a great deal of the commentary are decidedly different. The emergent gathering hears a more “missional,” raw, prophetic version of my sermons, and then they are given the opportunity to respond to what they have heard in a variety of ways. During our time of response–entitled “Free Worship”–participants can do hands-on worship, journal, pray, sing, talk to one another, or sit quietly.
At some point wax from one of our many candles invariably gets spilled on the floor.

I hear about the candle wax once in a while from a small, but noisy contingent of older church members, who believe that the wax represents a fundamental disrespect of everything they love about church. I think that on a deeper level, these well-meaning people are struggling with their own relevance in an increasingly changing world, and their lack of understanding about our little emergent gathering touches on their innate fear of becoming anachronistic. Fear of irrelevance is a by-product that is created when we begin to more fully realize our own mortality. But here’s the thing… When one of my little, old ladies begins to complain profusely about how “the kids” don’t respect the sanctuary and the amount of money that went into rennovating it back in 1967, she is almost certainly not in touch with any of the aforementioned psycho-babble. She sees something that makes her feel uncomfortable and angry, and she reacts.

I have to say that this reaction is not entirely typical among our older church members. For the most part (as long as they don’t have to listen to the music or see people attending church in jeans and flip-flops), the “traditionalists” in my church tend to live and let live.

But the conversations about the difference between the communities within the larger community of our church always tends to devolve to a conversation about worship style. I am well aware that even my own words have leaned in that direction over the past few paragraphs.

Sadly, our first dreams and excited meetings about the emergent gathering that we began over two years ago had less to do with worship style and more to do with who we were as a community of faith. We were far more interested in how we were going to impact the world than we were about the sort of music we were going to play, or what experiential worship station we were going to create. It all really changed for us one evening when we were visited by an autistic, African-American teenager, who stood up during our “God-Sightings” (a time of sharing and testimonies at our worship gathering) and told us that all he ever wanted to do was to make a difference in his neighborhood (ours) to give kids hope, keep them away from drugs and introduce them to Jesus. We felt at the time that this was a word from God. That Jesus himself had entered the building, delivered a message and left. The young man never came back, which made seem even more Spirit-led. That moment inspired us to leave our sanctuary and go out into our neighborhood… just loving people, feeding people, caring for the poor, the least of these. Over time, though, we got sucked into living a life less ordinary as a group. Serving others is hard and thankless. It’s easier to just keep things in-house, to begin hoping that the world will come to your doorstep. It’s easier to worry about what sort of music will attract the coolest, hippest Christians. It’s easier to sit around and have really deep conversations about church trends and how the latest theological movement will impact the Busters and the Mosaics, and why that is important…

We’re waking up again, though. And this time the existing church is waking up with us. Come to think of it… that was probably our problem in the first place. The members of our existing church were spectators to our emerging missional activities and we liked it that way, to be honest. All of the reasons why we felt the need to move toward “emergence” and away from “existence” were still there. The existing church was still, well, the existing church. Within the existing church you were always free to exhibit creativity, innovation and whatnot—as long as it didn’t cost too much, change the time of choir practice, or the color of the carpet in the Parlor. Generally speaking, even the missional activities that the existing church deemed worthy of engagement were sort of existing in nature. Many of us had found them to be far too pre-approved, pre-ordained, pre-shrunk to fit budgetary requirements and pre-fabbed… as if the Spirit had been sucked right out of them. Our idea of what was missional was a bit more dangerous. And we liked that.

We have a strange bunch that gathers for Song in the Night—our emergent gathering. The majority of the formerly “un-churched” members of our faith community attend Song in the Night. We have more than our fair share of “church-hurt” participants. Our participants also include ex-alcoholics and drug addicts, homosexuals, agnostics, single moms, single dads, abused kids and a few other categories that I am sure that I am failing to mention. We have ex-Baptists, ex-Catholics, current Unitarians, ex-Episcopals, agnostics, evangelicals, liberals, conservatives, ex-Marines, neo-hippies… you name it. Our oldest members are in their mid-sixties and our youngest are barely crawling across the floor. It is the most diverse of all of our communities within the community.

Like I said, we are waking up again. The visions for neighborhood missions are returning to our Song in the Night participants and they are beginning to remember who they were when they were at their best. The spirit of openness that now exists in our entire community of faith—a spirit that I believe had its origins with the Song in the Night gathering—has sparked a movement to being a Holistic Health Ministry that will reach out to people of ages both within and without our church. There is a group that has found our “emergent” ideas about Creation Preservation to be right in line with their own understanding of what it means to practice Stewardship over all God’s gifts. We are now on the verge of launching a church-wide Environmental Stewardship campaign. I could go on… there’s definitely more. Once a month we offer child care to busy working families to give parents the time to get to know one another again, or for single parents to go on a date or have a night of rest. None of these programs would have had a chance two years ago. They would have been scoffed at in favor of more conservative, “traditional” church programs that did more to add members to the church than they did to further the kingdom of God.

So, I guess this brings me full circle—back to the wax stain on the carpet. Something there is that doesn’t love a wax stain… Yet there is something about this one that helps me remember who I am and who I am called to be. Those of us with an “emergent” spirit, who are called to serve the existing church find ourselves living in two worlds more often than not. This is the space to which we are called, though. To deny it, or rail against it would be to deny or rail agains the will of God who placed us here. I can try desperately to iron up the wax from the carpet, but no matter how skilled I am a bit of the wax will always remain.

It’s time that as leaders in the existing Church we, who feel the burgeoning preseence of the Church that is emerging, begin to stop trying to separate, to cover up, to mask or hide its coming. We must help our congregations (existing or no) embrace the hope that is found in Isaiah 43:19 a hope that is meant for all—”See, I am about to do a NEW thing…”

Presbymergent Polity 101: Worship, Sacraments and (Dis)Order
Many view the Book of Order as a rigid, rule-focused guide for saying more about what one “can’t” do in PC(USA) worship, than what one might be able to do. However, in this workshop we’ll look at some key sections of the Book of Order that promise more freedom and openness than one might think, and we’ll talk about some issues relating to “emergent” expressions of worship in both traditional and non-traditional congregations. While this is not meant to be a “How to…”-workshop, we will spend some time looking at examples of how some PC(USA) congregations might use emerging worship/alternative worship in their worship services.

In the workshop, I’d love to give some examples of ways in which current Presbyterian/Presbymergent churches (both traditional and more progressive in their liturgy-styles) have incorporated emergent expressions of worship into their gatherings. If you have done something that you’d like shared, please let me know in the comments.

I’d also love to know what some of your struggles have been, questions you have, or if there are any seemingly insurmountable obstacles you’ve run across. Feel free to leave all of these in the comments - or if you would prefer, you can email me with your thoughts and perspectives.

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First Presbyterian Church Launches Emergent Worship for Young Adults

By HNN Staff

Huntington, WV (HNN) – On August 5, 2007, First Presbyterian Church of Huntington will launch The Crossing, a cutting edge, Emerging worship gathering designed by and for young adults. The Crossing is a unique worship service in the Huntington area. The style of the worship gathering is Emerging worship, the newest movement in worship, which reflects the postmodern perspective of 18-35 year-olds.

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Get the full article here 

I do find it interesting that as much as people have tried to say “emerging isn’t a style” it has become one - and if we’re being honest when we hear someone say “emerging worship” most of us have a pretty good idea what is being talked about.

I’m worried that I’m going to mess it up. I’m worried that it will get no farther than the proposal. I’ve been reading the books, following the blogs, listening to the podcasts and checking out the websites. I’ve learned and experienced enough to see the value of emerging worship and how it really is about honoring the faith that Christians have held for centuries. But when I talk about emerging worship I’m afraid that all people will hear is “let’s get a praise band and project a sermon outline in a crappy Powerpoint presentation.”

Does anyone have any experience or insight into briefly and clearly presenting the possibilities of emerging worship without making greying Presbyterians cower beneath their pews? How do I convince them that emerging isn’t a pomo word for mega-church?