NEWS FEATURE: In Ohio, mainline meets evangelical _ musically

c. 1998 Religion News Service CLEVELAND _ Cover up the organ. Empty the choir loft. Pack away the liturgical robes. And bring on the T-shirts, sandals and electric guitars. Some 30 years after it began in the cultural revolution of the ’60s, and long after many nondenominational churches reached out to a missing generation by […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

CLEVELAND _ Cover up the organ. Empty the choir loft. Pack away the liturgical robes. And bring on the T-shirts, sandals and electric guitars.

Some 30 years after it began in the cultural revolution of the ’60s, and long after many nondenominational churches reached out to a missing generation by offering contemporary worship, the Jesus movement is meeting the mainline church.


Give them rock ‘n’ soul and they will come _ at least in Northeast Ohio. To a Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod congregation in North Royalton, a Presbyterian church in Bay Village, a Southern Baptist church in Broadview Heights and a United Methodist church in Mayfield.

The movement from Bach to Amy Grant is fueled partly by desperation. Mainline Protestant congregations have lost millions of members over the last three decades, and the ones who remain are aging.

But the movement is also spurred on by a sense of adventure and mission, of harking back to earlier days of circuit riders and camp meetings, when religious leaders embraced the common culture to bring people into the fold.

What has brought contemporary worship to this watershed moment where bass guitars and saxophones have become part of liturgical Middle America is this: It seems to work.

It is no coincidence, church leaders say, that congregations offering contemporary worship are among the most successful and growing congregations in Northeast Ohio.

Step into the Saturday night rock service at Bay Presbyterian or the Sunday morning service at Cuyahoga Valley Community Church, and the sanctuaries are filled with men and women in their 20s, 30s and 40s, demographics that are only pleasant dreams from the 1950s for many mainline congregations.

“For me, the critical issue is … if the United Methodist Church doesn’t make a concerted effort to reach the younger generation, the demographics tell us in 30 years most of our churches will be out of business,” said the Rev. Donald Cummings of Mayfield United Methodist Church, where weekly attendance at the Sunday morning rock service has doubled to 125 in the last two years.


“Mainline churches like the Methodist Church are faced with a Herculean task of reaching a new generation.”

Lynn Ruvolo, 28, and her sister Lori Terry, 32, grew up in traditional Lutheran churches where trumpets blared at Easter and Christmas, but the rest of the time the organ was the rock upon which the music program was built.

That was fine for the people in their 50s to 70s, who made up most of the congregations Ruvolo and Terry knew. But as the sisters entered their 20s, it wasn’t enough.

“It got very boring,” Terry said. “You lost touch with why you really want to be here.”

When they discovered Royal Redeemer Lutheran Church in North Royalton last fall, they found a spiritual home in a place where saxophones and bass guitars pump out Christian rock, and it’s OK to clap, sway and even laugh in church.

“When I first came here,” Ruvolo said, “I’m like, `OK,

I’m staying.”’

No suits. No ties. No dull services. With this simple formula adapted from the Jesus freaks of the ’60s, many nondenominational churches have experienced phenomenal growth.


Unencumbered by tradition, movements such as the Hope Chapel, Calvary Chapel and Vineyard Christian churches grew from three churches to more than 900 churches nationwide from the mid-’60s to the mid-’90s. About three-quarters of its members are from 21 to 45 years old.

While these independent evangelical churches actively recruited young people with laid-back services that featured casual dress, contemporary music and culturally relevant sermons, mainline churches were graying.

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In a study on religious mobility in America, researchers from Samford University in Birmingham, Ala., and the United Church Board of Homeland Ministries found moderate and liberal Protestants were the most likely to leave their churches, often switching to no religious affiliation.

In a separate study of mainline Protestant baby boomers, half of 500 people ages 33 to 42 who were confirmed in Presbyterian churches in the 1950s and 1960s were classified as not being active in any church, while only 29 percent remained active Presbyterians.

“My sense is that mainline churches have been pretty satisfied with what they’re doing, and only a few, a small percentage, have seen the handwriting on the wall,” said the Rev. Jim Martin of Royal Redeemer.

And the handwriting is ominous, some researchers and clergy say.

One recent study looked at Protestants who seldom, if ever, attend church. The study found that those who became inactive because services were boring and lacking in meaning were likely to raise children who no longer identify themselves as church members.


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What worked for a generation raised in the 1950s and ’60s, when going to church was a part of social life, no longer is compelling to young people who increasingly see worship attendance as optional, advocates of contemporary worship say.

These advocates say unchurched individuals, whose expectations for public gatherings are set by concerts and sporting events, are unlikely to want to get dressed in a suit and listen to organ music from another century with a congregation made up of few of their peers. Baby busters are not skipping church because they do not believe in God, Cummings said.

“The main reason the twentysomething generation is not in church is because they do not believe they will have an experience of God in church,” Cummings said.

Before he came to Royal Redeemer, Rick Deppisch, 38, used to nod off on Sunday morning. But no one was going to fall asleep on this recent Saturday night, with a Christian disc jockey and comic giving the sermon, the piano and drums rocking and Deppisch and his wife and 7- and 5-year-old children singing and swaying to the music.

“You feel like singing and praising God vs. where you’re sitting back and passive. I fell asleep. That happened to me frequently,” he said.

“The kids get into it, the clapping, the singing. It’s fabulous,” added his wife, Sandy. “It’s just brought us so much closer to God.”


That is the goal of most contemporary worship leaders: to bring people to God without letting what they consider the nonessentials get in the way.

For the most part, the contemporary services are working.

The Rev. Rick Duncan of Cuyahoga Valley Community Church came to Cleveland 10 years ago to plant a Southern Baptist Church. With a mix of contemporary worship and casual dress, his congregation in Broadview Heights is now 550 members and growing, dwarfing most of the established Southern Baptist churches in the area.

At Royal Redeemer, the church had to add a Saturday evening service because the Sunday morning contemporary service held only 300 and was overflowing. At Bay Presbyterian, church leaders are planning to move the contemporary service from Saturday evening to Sunday morning in recognition of its importance to the community.

The trend is not going unnoticed. These churches that once pushed the liturgical envelope locally are now getting weekly calls from other congregations seeking to emulate their success.

Still, the future of contemporary worship in the mainline church is uncertain.

Some churches are concerned about dividing the congregation along traditional-contemporary lines, and some young people prefer the services they grew up with. And even the churches that have been successful continue to experience tension from members who are concerned contemporary worship eventually will replace traditional services.

Introducing contemporary worship to a congregation is a struggle, said the Rev. David Luecke of Royal Redeemer.


“I kind of doubt that it will happen in most mainline churches because they don’t have a sense of mission, so there’s no reason to change what they’re doing,” Luecke said. “The smaller they get, the more elderly they get, the less likely they are to change what they are doing.”

DEA END BRIGGS

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