COMMENTARY: A Visit to the `Other Side’ of Protestantism

c. 2003 Religion News Service (Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.) INDIANAPOLIS _ I am overdressed in jacket and tie. They told me it was casual, and I wanted to wear jeans and boots, but I hesitated. So off with jacket […]

c. 2003 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

INDIANAPOLIS _ I am overdressed in jacket and tie. They told me it was casual, and I wanted to wear jeans and boots, but I hesitated.


So off with jacket and tie, on with microphone, do a sound check, and gather in prayer with musicians and worship leaders. In come worshippers for the first service _ all ages, all forms of casual, from shorts to jeans to summer dresses. They stop by refreshment stations for coffee and bagels, then find a table in the five-tiered dinner theater where they worship.

First comes a video clip from “The Simpsons,” showing a daughter’s love for her father. Then a Paul Simon song about father and child, performed by a well-rehearsed ensemble to an energetic beat.

The Father’s Day theme continues to build with a clip from “Father of the Bride,” starring Steve Martin, then a duet about parenting, performed by a pregnant woman and her husband. After another video clip, it is my time to preach. I stand in a spotlight and sense that my well-honed manuscript requires deviation.

The flow of superb music and cleverly chosen video clips conveys a clear message _ “We are trying something new here” _ so I venture into the swing of things. A little deviation from my intended message at 8:15, more at 9:15 and, at 10:15, I finally preach what I wanted to say all along.

At The Garden, an offshoot of a large and well-established United Methodist church, they are “going across to the other side,” as Jesus once invited his disciples. It isn’t for everyone, and the truly strait-laced would recoil at amplified music, PowerPoint slides and video. But they are drawing 700 to 800 every Sunday, and are doing so without the we-are-superior edge of so many nondenominational congregations.

I note the absence of audience participation. No hymn singing, no communal prayer, no moving around. Maybe that reflects the theater setting, but I also think worship-as-performance speaks to their target audience: the unchurched, formerly churched and those looking for new ways. It is like Jesus speaking to the 5,000, rather than Jesus drawing his inner circle into dialogue.

Participation happens on weekdays in small groups, one of which meets at a shopping center across town.


I note the congregation’s hasty departure after the 45-minute service. With the dinner theater’s matinee looming, time is tight. But a worship leader says most simply desire “anonymity.” Many at The Garden aren’t ready for the intimacy of a close-knit Christian community. Having seen the heavy-handed ways that many church “families” enforce conformity, I can imagine why.

Is this “other side” the future of mainline Protestant worship? Not for everyone, but for many. In seven years, The Garden has outgrown all but a handful of Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian and Methodist congregations, and has done so without any of the supposedly normal accouterments, like sanctuary, pews, pulpit, pipe organ, choir, vested clergy, hymn singing, sacraments and three readings from Scripture.

Can it be “church” without those accouterments? That is a good question. When you cut through superficials like musical style, clergy attire and seating, what makes a church? It is more than numbers, for as crowded as these tables are, the aisles at mega-stores are even more crowded on a Sunday morning. It is more than production values, although these well-rehearsed musicians and worship leaders are a refreshing change from the half-hearted fare offered in some Sunday venues.

There is here, I think, an air of adventure. They are trying something new. Musicians who once sang in vested choirs are trying electric guitar and close harmonies. Worshippers are looking up at large screens, rather than down at programs and hymnals, and they are allowing otherwise distinct worlds like the Gospel of John and comedian Steve Martin to inform each other.

They are crossing to the other side. And that, I think, is the heart of church as “ecclesia,” “those called out.”

Faith, you see, is an adventure, not an act of repetition. It is people allowing themselves to change. It is God bending near the Earth, nearer and nearer, until all creation catches the beat.


DEA END EHRICH

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