NEWS FEATURE: Making radical changes to keep the unchurched interested

c. 1997 Religion News Service FAIRHOPE, Ala. _ So. You’ve got the family, the job, the house, the cat, the dog, the two-car garage and … what’s the meaning of life again? You’re not quite sure, but you remember, when you were little you sat inside hallowed halls where stained glass filtered the sunlight, and […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

FAIRHOPE, Ala. _ So. You’ve got the family, the job, the house, the cat, the dog, the two-car garage and … what’s the meaning of life again?

You’re not quite sure, but you remember, when you were little you sat inside hallowed halls where stained glass filtered the sunlight, and someone there seemed to talk about life’s questions and answers.


Maybe you should try that again. You’re not really the religious type, but maybe. … If only you could be sure it wouldn’t be irrelevant, it wouldn’t be boring, it wouldn’t be self-absorbed.”The great challenge for any pastor is to take a scriptural message and take people by the hand and help them understand what the Bible is saying,” said the Rev. Brad McClain.”Show them the practical applications. I think the message of Christianity is radical and life-changing, but some people get turned off before they get the message.” So McClain’s trying to do something about that.

A little more than a year ago, he started Jubilee Shores United Methodist Church in Fairhope, Ala. Members first met at his house, then at the Grand Hotel. Now they’ve settled into an old fitness center, where they start their Sundays with coffee and doughnuts, rock and reggae.

You know, church.”We wanted to create a church in an atmosphere that emphasizes reaching people who one way or another were not comfortable with traditional church stuff,”McClain said.

So they cut the”Gloria Patri.”Said good-bye to the Apostle’s Creed, adios to the Doxology and sayonara to the Lord’s Prayer.”We realized that if a person had never been involved with church or hadn’t been in a long time, there would probably be certain elements of the liturgy that probably would not be very relevant,” McClain said of the decision he and his wife made about the service’s structure.

Take the Apostle’s Creed, for example.”On cue, everybody gets up and recites it,” he said.”If you didn’t know it, you’d feel out of the club.” Instead, McClain said, the Jubilee Shores congregation makes sure every part of the service is understandable and familiar to every person in its congregation that Sunday, whether they’re there for the first time or the hundred-and-first. They sing hymns and provide the lyrics on an overhead projector. Individual prayer requests are on the back of the bulletin; during the service McClain will single out a few for congregational prayer. There is a sermon. But really, no liturgy.”I’m not against liturgical churches at all,”McClain insisted.”Many are very effective.” But, he added,”How can we interpret this liturgy so that people who are out there can find a common ground with it?” Greg Bordenkircher, raised Catholic and now Methodist, never thought church would be like this.

Until a few years ago, Bordenkircher was a model member of a Mobile congregation, helping with the liturgy and attending meetings. Then he and his wife moved. After one Sunday too many of trekking back to Mobile with two little boys, Bordenkircher and his wife decided they needed to find a church closer to home.

The first Sunday they attended Jubilee Shores, Bordenkircher remembers feeling a little leery about trying someplace new. He knew”high church”and he liked it.


Then he walked in and saw the pastor _ in shorts.

That really threw him for a few weeks.”Now I love it,”he said, laughing.

It’s such creativity that preserves the message while presenting it in alternative ways and that may spell the future survival of mainline churches, said Charles Arn, president of Church Growth Inc., Monrovia, Calif.”One of the things common among growing churches is related to the priority unchurched people have in the agenda of the church,” he said.”It’s fairly easy for a church to become more and more self-centered and self-serving.”

Money, people and energy is soon focused inward, he said.

But in growing churches, the priority expressed _ from budget meetings to sermon topics _ is to the unchurched.”The preachers and pastors of growing churches will more often bring into sermons or messages the priority that needs to be given to those outside the church,” Arn said.

McClain said he tries to think of every person sitting in his congregation on Sunday as someone who has come to church for the first time.”Suppose we do everything we can at the church to attract and be accessible to people who are not looked upon as religious, with an agenda to change their lives by the grace of God,” he said.”Jesus got in trouble for hanging out with the wrong people. He was accessible.”

Even in religious communities that aren’t making radical changes to their liturgy, attire or music, the environment has become more open, according to Mobile clergy.

On Tuesday evenings at Christ Episcopal, for example, a group of 40 to 60 people _ most of whom are not members of the congregation _ gathers for a praise and worship service. The services provide a midweek worship opportunity for people, said the Rev. Tim Smith.”We try to avoid it being wordy so people can spend their time before the Lord,” Smith said.”We just try to flow with what the Spirit desires.” That desire for a more free-flowing atmosphere extends in current theory as well as practice, according to some local clerics.”I think the church is much more understanding now,” said Aidan Licari, director of Toolen Institute for Parish Services.”I think it’s beginning to recognize and realize that faith is more important than religion.”Anything religious is external,”he said.”Light candles. Say the rosary. I’m not saying they’re bad. They’re wonderful.”But they’re not necessarily an indication of an individual’s spirituality or personal relationship to God, he added.”I think people are coming because they need a time-out from the steady stream of negative stuff,” McClain said.”They need a positive, encouraging piece of truth. They need to be re-energized.”

And maybe, they need to have fun.~”People look around church and they think, `Is heaven going to be this boring?'”McClain said.”If church was more fun, maybe there might be more people who’d want to go to heaven.” DEA END CAMPBELL


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