Tiffany and I (Dan) ate at a local restaurant called Houlihan’s the other day, and as I sat there waiting for the check, I realized that Houlihan’s was a lot like a typical American church. Let me walk you through the similarities.

The Experience
Before going there, I checked out the website to see the menu. I always view church’s websites before attending as well, to see what it might be like (and to see if the church is culturally relevant enough to publish a somewhat informative website). Anyways, the Houlihan’s website was really flashy and had some progressive music playing (see for yourself). It seemed pretty cool.

Upon arriving, the atmosphere was fairly trendy: they had metal covers on their menus, a neat paint/color scheme, progressive music playing, and the staff wore all black and looked stylish. Despite the artificial atmosphere, the wait staff wasn’t all that good, the glasses were dirty, and the food was average. It was a let-down. I used to feel this way a lot when I attended new churches. They would have a cool atmosphere, but the same old attitudes and ways of doing things (just like in the Starbucks church video, watch it if you haven’t seen it yet!).

What They Say About Themselves
Later, after reflecting on this. I decided to revisit their website and read the “About Us” page. There were some startling similarities with how churches present themselves. Let’s go through some of the statements they make about themselves and compare it to how churches portray themselves:

In 1972, Houlihan’s first opened its doors in Kansas City with a progressive, eclectic menu and energetic bar scene. Ferns hung throughout, artifacts cluttered the walls and tapestries made by San Francisco hippies formed the ceiling. Caviar burgers, roasted duck, foot-long hot dogs and fresh carrot juice were just a few original menu items so ahead for its time. It was hot.

Just as Houlihan’s opened in the early 70’s with an eclectic and energetic atmosphere, so too many churches found their origin in the “Jesus Movement” of the 60’s and 70’s and used charisma and popular culture to draw in crowds. Notice the goal here is to cater to the consumer, not to conform the consumer to a greater ideal. In many ways churches today have it as their goal to meet peoples’ needs, rather than to conform them to the image of Christ (even when it’s not popular to do so).

Before long, there were a lot of ‘casual dining’ restaurants opening and call us crazy, but they looked a whole lot like us. We tried to be flattered. Some grew really big, and by the ’90s, the whole ‘casual dining’ landscape was pretty me-too. Instead of watching the consumer, the industry seemed more worried about what competitors were doing. Casual dining lost its way, and in doing so lost its edge.

Houlihan’s makes a good observation here, they recognized that not only had the casual dining industry lost touch with the consumer, but it also became self-absorbed and chased after competition relentlessly. Over the last few decades, churches have also been racing to be the biggest, most “relevant,” have the best worship band, and draw the largest crowds. They have forgotten that the true focus is Christ, not having better preaching than the mega-church on the other side of town.

Fast forward to 2002. That’s when we had our ‘Aha!’ moment (as Oprah would say). New leadership, new ideas, new inspiration. We completely re-imagined ourselves, and got back in touch with the consumer. New menus. New plates. New building design, new soundtrack. Stylish uniforms. And a modern, warm restaurant design with an open kitchen and prominent bar. Today, our company is built entirely around what the progressive consumer seeks in a restaurant + bar experience. And we plan to keep it that way.

Forget ‘casual dining.’ That’s an industry term so out of touch with how consumers eat and drink today. For premium quality and style; fare that’s at times familiar and other times adventurous and a laid-back modern setting, Houlihan’s is a true original.

Notice two things: 1) All of the changes involved the external environment, not any real internal change on the parts of the staff; 2) Above and beyond merely stating the casual dining industry has gotten out of touch with the consumer, Houlihan’s believes entirely new terms need to be employed to describe their “original” setting, rendering the “old” terms obsolete and “out of touch.”

Isn’t this also the only real change many churches have made – external only? In an attempt to make church all about the people in the pews (rather than keeping its sole focus on Christ), it has tried to create an experience that will meet the Christians’ needs for belonging and adventure, among many other things. The problem is, these needs can only be met in Christ! The church will never be able to meet all of peoples’ needs, the local bar or the person’s family can do that much better – but the Church can show the person the only thing that will truly meet their needs: Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!

Also, just as Houlihan’s has sought to employ new terms, the church is filled with new terms such as “missional,” “relevant,” “seeker-sensitive,” etc. Now those terms are being attacked as out of touch, and new terms are emerging such as “post-missional,” “beyond relevance,” “seeker-friendly,” “post-denominational,” etc. Despite the terms, the church still looks and feels the same, and it’s still doing things the exact same away (in many instances it is doing them worse than it did before).

Conclusion
Just as my Houlihan’s experience was blah and average, my experience with many churches is the same. The church can’t compete with Satan’s progressive culture, nor should it try. The church needs to stand against the grain of culture and challenge it to embrace Jesus Christ. Rather than adapting to culture, the Church should transform culture. Only Jesus Christ can do this, not a new movement, program, or committee.

How many times have I said those words followed by some great goal that I have yet to accomplish? Too many. I’m still working on my New Year’s Resolution from two years ago: to lose weight (unfortunately the number on the scale has been moving in the wrong direction over the last few years). But this new year involves much more than what I have yet to accomplish, it is about the many new things that God will be doing among His people. I forget about that perspective too often.

2009 is a year of uncertainty. Many evangelicals seem to be extremely worried about President-elect Obama and the morally erosive “change” he promises to bring. Others are worrying about the state of the economy and if we are on the verge of another Great Depression. Still more are troubled at all of the wars and recent natural disasters, wondering if perhaps the end of the world is at hand. All of these are valid and important concerns, yet the real question is how the Church will respond to all of this. This is important because how the Church responds will determine how it witnesses Christ to a new age.

We really have entered into a new age. No, I’m not talking astrologically, such as Horus or Aquarius. I’m talking about the death of the modern era. Postmodernism really is the new age in which we live. The Church has done a great job pointing out its dangers, such as its corrosive effect on the notion of absolute truth and it’s existentialist thrust that asks us to accept cognitive dissonance as the norm in religion, politics, and in our relationships. But it has done very little to address it other than to point out its faults. The game is up — postmodernism has won this generation and all subsequent ones (until the next age is ushered in, probably in a century or so).

The real question is, will the church continue battling the philosophical platform of postmodernism, or will the Church embrace its adherents? Maybe it can do both. The bottom line is, the Emerging Church has taught us a valuable lesson about reaching the postmodern generation. The Church can continue to critique its early mistakes, or it can learn from its experiences and growing success.

Recently I ran across the website of a church that has figured this out and has decided to embrace the postmodern generation. The reason this website struck me as so profound was because of the way they are doing it, and because of the denomination to which they belong. It’s not a new church plant with a fancy title like “Remnant” or “Scum of the Earth,” nor is it being run by a group of 20-somethings. This church has found a way to reach three generations: the traditional modernists, the Baby Boomers who embraced the seeker-sensitive “Jesus Movement” of the 60’s and 70’s, and the postmodern generation. Of course a person’s age has nothing to do with which generation they identify with, I know folks in their 20’s who belong in the traditional crowd and folks in their 60’s who belong in the postmodern category. Check out this church’s worship schedule before I tell you who it is:

As I’m sure you’ve mostly deduced from the bottom of the image, this is an LCMS Lutheran church located in Carrollton, Texas. Wow. Now I must admit my bias towards the LCMS at this point and rescind it. The LCMS (Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod) is well known for its hard-line patriarchy and ultra-traditional and liturgical adherence. Yet this Lutheran church has found a way to reach all of these generations harmoniously, as is beautifully expressed in the top portion of the image: “three different styles all worshiping the one true God.” What else stood out at me was the title and words they used to describe each “style” of worship:

• Classic: traditional hymns, organ, choir, liturgy
• Praise: contemporary, band, video screens, high energy
• Epic: experiential, participatory, image driven, community

These were carefully chosen words. At surface level, they may appear to simply describe each style. But these words say much more, particularly in the postmodern “Epic” worship style. These words are values. Experiential, participatory, image driven, community. All of these words are value statements that ripple through the soul of my generation. After reading those four values, I want to attend that service. If Chicago wasn’t so far from Texas, I would.

Kudos to Prince of Peace Lutheran Church and Pastor Luke Biggs for becoming part of the solution, rather than simply critiquing the problem.

“This is what the LORD says— he who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”
        – Isaiah 43:16, 18-19

God bless you in 2009!

Yes, yes, I have not been writing much lately. OK, I haven’t written anything in the entire month it seems. December has been a busy month with Christmas and all, between all five of my families thanks to divorce, and other nonsense — busy. Not to mention I’m taking my final capstone course for my bachelor’s degree, and I’ve written close to forty pages for that paper so far… still going. Excuses, excuses — I know.

Anyways, if anyone is still reading this — I apologize. I do intend to post some more great content soon as life returns to the speed of normalcy. For now, to wet your appetite, I found a great article on the Emerging Church by Marcia Ford entitled The Emerging Church: Ancient Faith for a Postmodern World. In her excellent attempt to define the Emerging Church (which by nature refuses to be defined), she writes:

I am among those who have grown increasingly disenchanted with evangelicalism. Don’t get me wrong—I could sign, and have signed, any basic statement of faith issued by most evangelical ministries and companies. It’s not a problem of doctrine; it’s a problem of practice. . . .

Bear with me now as I engage in a bit of keyboard stammering, because this is the point where I need to define the emerging church. I’ll start by explaining what it is not: It’s not an organization, a denomination, or an association of churches; that kind of structure runs counter to the thinking of its adherents. (Even the word “adherents” is suspect, but let’s not get sidetracked.) It’s not an entity with a single doctrinal stance, though most in the movement could, like me, sign any standard evangelical statement of faith. It’s not—thank God!—another regimented program for the church to follow. And although it emerged as a reaction to church as usual, its leaders take care not to criticize or disparage people who are quite content with the usual church.

What the emerging church offers and encourages is a new way of doing church and being the church, one that resonates not only with the 18-to-34-year-old demographic—the first fully postmodern generation—but also with people who think like those in the younger demographic but are older in age. Or way older, like me. If you came to faith in Christ during the Jesus Movement of the 1970s as I did, you should readily understand the emerging church. Remember how we tried to create a whole new model based on Luke’s description of the early church in the book of Acts? Well, the emerging church is succeeding where we failed, for reasons I can only speculate about. Sometimes I think we just gave up too soon. We ended up with some decent alternatives for that time (think Vineyard Fellowship and Calvary Chapel), but that’s not what we really wanted. What we really wanted then is what they’re actually doing now.

So where can you find examples of the emerging church? Some postmodern-friendly churches have sprung from an intentional and interdenominational effort, such as Brian McLaren’s Cedar Ridge Community Church near Washington, D.C. Pretty much everyone in the emerging church recognizes McLaren as the movement’s elder statesman; his books, with titles like A New Kind of Christian and Adventures in Missing the Point (the latter with Tony Campolo), have helped define the emerging church.

Sometimes, the name of a particular church is a dead giveaway that it’s part of the movement, such as Scum of the Earth in Denver. Little question that it’s not, say, a Southern Baptist congregation. Many, like Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis, which meets in a living room setting in an industrial building, see themselves as an experimental community. Still others aren’t really churches but ministries affiliated with traditional congregations, like The Crucible, a postmodern outreach of the huge Belmont Church in Nashville. Vintage Faith in Santa Cruz, California, Apex in Las Vegas, and Holy Joe’s in London are but a few others.

What all these groups have in common is this: They believe Jesus intended his followers to interact with the culture around them, not become an alien subculture. They adhere to the ancient creeds of the church. They emphasize the visual and performing arts and acknowledge the enormous influence pop culture has on society. As much as anything else, they believe in the communal and missional aspects of the church—the responsibility Jesus-followers have to each other and to those outside the faith. And they believe that as we draw closer to God, we draw closer to each other, despite the denominational boundaries that divide us. Emerging church evangelicals comfortably draw on the rich traditions and practices of the diverse streams of Christianity, believing that by genuinely living where our common faith intersects, we can surpass the efforts of even the most successful ecumenical programs.

Beyond that, there’s not always uniformity among the beliefs and practices in the emerging church, and its adherents would have it no other way. They believe faith is a journey rather than a destination, and each community of Christians needs to find its own way of continuing on that journey. Underscoring that idea are books like Doug Pagitt’s Reimagining Spiritual Formation: A Week in the Life of an Experimental Church—in this case, Solomon’s Porch. Like other leaders in the movement, Pagitt’s intention is to bring readers along on one church’s journey, not provide a rigid model for others to follow.

Among the many authors to pay attention to are Vintage Faith pastor Dan Kimball, author of The Emerging Church and Emerging Worship; Drew University professor Leonard Sweet (Postmodern Pilgrims; A Is for Abductive); youth pastor Tony Jones (Postmodern Youth Ministry; Read, Think, Pray, Live); Robert E. Webber, author of The Younger Evangelicals and Ancient-Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World; Spencer Burke, Sally Morgenthaler—the list is far too extensive to include all the recommended authors here. For the most thorough collection of postmodern resources that I know of, go to www.agts.edu, click on “Free Resources,” and then click on the folder labeled “Emerging Culture/Emerging Church.” [DIRECT LINK] That will give you access to a PDF file of 1,700-plus resources amassed by Assemblies of God professor Earl Creps, a man for whom many in the emerging church movement give thanks daily.

As you discover more books and authors, you’ll see that the movement receives strong support from several publishing houses—Zondervan, particularly its emergentYS imprint; Relevant Books; Jossey-Bass; NavPress; and to some extent, Thomas Nelson, Baker Books, and Paraclete Press. Some of those publishers sponsored emerging church events at CBA, including a Zondervan/Relevant panel discussion designed to help booksellers discover what they need to do to reach the postmodern demographic.

Web sites to visit include www.emergentvillage.com and www.theooze.com, both of which provide links to partner ministries. Or simply enter “emerging church” into a good search engine like Google; once you start seeking information on the movement, you’ll discover that there’s a wealth of information available on the Internet. Enter the same term into the Amazon search function (on the main Christianity page, to narrow your choices), and you’ll find numerous books on postmodern ministry.

The emerging church is clearly in its infancy, with some leaders suggesting that it’s in the earliest stages of what could prove to be a 100-year-plus shift in our thinking about church. But no matter where it is on an unknown timeline, it’s a welcome relief for those of us who have longed for evangelicalism to become what we hoped and prayed and believed it could be—an authentic expression of our “ancient-future” faith.

That is a well-written article and says it well. I wanted to post that to show that you don’t have to be 18-35 to be considered postmodern or emerging, I know many who are older who fit into the category well. The funny thing is, the more traditional churches are in more of a position to reach this generation than most seeker-sensitive ones, but authenticity is the key. You must get back to the meaning of all traditions, not do them merely because it is the way you have always done them!