Exploring Something New
by Jason Morris

“The Gathering,” which is the name of the new worship service that is taking shape here in the summer of 2006, is New Life’s first major step in exploring the concept of going multi-site. The Gathering will be held in the Hartseil Ministry Center at 11:00 during New Life’s existing 2^nd service, and it’s all about worshipping God in a way that resonates with people who tend toward having a postmodern mindset. As postmodernism infiltrates more and more of the thinking within our culture, we must figure out how to communicate the timeless truth of the Bible and the good news of salvation through Jesus in a way that can be understood by the postmodern thinker.

Postmodernism is a word that attempts to encapsulate a major movement of intellectual thought that is currently having a large-scale impact on art, philosophy, literature, interpretation of history and culture, and really is a reaction to Modernism – which could be described as having an emphasis on grand, absolute statements, values, and establishments. The term “postmodernism” defies easy definition, but is neither good nor bad; it’s just a change in mindset – and it is growing with each passing year.

In the realm of spirituality, the postmodernist might say “It’s futile to try to convince me of your biblical point with words and evidence. Let me experience what you mean so that I can understand it.” Postmodernists don’t like absolutes. They prefer relativism over rationalism. They are a pluralistic, globally-minded group of people who believe that no communication is without cultural bias. The term “absolute truth” rubs postmodern thinkers the wrong way because it implies that someone has the corner on real spirituality, and the postmodern person’s experience usually proves otherwise (at least in their own minds), and therefore he feels imposed upon by such a grandiose and authoritative concept. It’s this kind of mindset that sends a searching, lost person on a journey through the church doors seeking something deeper, and leaves them embittered and disillusioned an hour and a half later, never to return.

With the creation of this new worship gathering, the New Life leadership acknowledges that this shift in thinking within our culture requires that we place more emphasis on allowing each attendee to have a true spiritual “experience” when they walk through the doors of the Hartseil Center, and we must turn away from an overt focus on objective intellectual exploration of spirituality – not because it’s “bad,” but because it is a less effective form of communication to postmodern people. The goal here is not to water down the meat of scripture and truth, but to present the truth in a postmodern language. It’s much like translating the gospel into words that an isolated tribe can understand – we wouldn’t take years to teach the tribe English and then present the gospel to them once we thought they had a firm grip on our language. We would find a way to make them understand in their own language. In the same way, we must find the language of the postmodern man and give them Jesus, who ultimately transcends language and culture.

Now the reality of the situation is that the current leadership of this new gathering mostly includes people who are in transition between modern thinking and postmodern thinking – we’ve been trained to take modern approaches to ministry and are comfortable with these, but postmodern approaches to worship tend to feel more natural for us. For example, in our current services one of our pastors usually brings a 25-minute message based on two or three main points, which are then divided into sub-points, ending with a call to action. This approach obviously works and certainly allows people to grasp the content of the message, and surely persuades some people to make decisions that lead to biblical life change. However, this approach to communication is less effective with people who lean toward postmodernism. The postmodernist tends to mentally “check out” after a short period of listening to logical establishing of values based on fact and principle, and would probably find that a five-minute version of the same twenty-five minute message gets the point across adequately. If the content of this abbreviated five-minute message is comprehensively supported by media or arts which compel the listener to actually become a participant who is then allowed to “feel” the message content in a way that motivates him to action, we’ve accomplished the same goal of bringing biblical truth that results in life change, but in a more effective way to this particular group of people. We’ve spoken their language instead of asking them to speak a dialect of their language that is not quite natural for them.

It’s sort of like we’re all listening to the same radio program, but there are some folks who live far enough away from the broadcast tower that they are dealing with a significant amount of static and fuzz. So we’re building another tower that’s closer to these people, because until now they haven’t been able to hear the program as clearly as we’d like them to. Suddenly, with the advent of a new tower right down the road from where they live, the signal is loud and clear - and the static is gone.

When creating a new worship gathering aimed at this different mindset, we are forced to maintain an atmosphere of experimentation, risk, and exploration of methods that will resonate with the participants. We don’t always know what this will look like, and we don’t guarantee success. But the hearts of those who are investing themselves in the implementation of this gathering are longing to worship Jesus in a way that is relevant to them and those with similar mindsets.

I’ll attempt to list as many of the ideas we have right now regarding how this gathering will be “different” from our current services – and that’s all these are; ideas.

• We want the room to feel “spiritual” in the sense that when someone walks into the gathering, there is an immediate sense that something serious or mystical is going to happen here. This might mean that we do a gathering by candlelight only, or perhaps we keep controlled lighting at a low level in order to facilitate a quiet reverence. We are considering setting up comfortable seating in a circle to promote community. We are also thinking about removing the platform from the equation so that any and all leading is done from among the people.
• We want to allow for variations in worship music length and style. Perhaps a gathering will feature a three-person ensemble leading worship for 45 minutes at the beginning of the gathering…or maybe it’s a full band who does three ten minute worship sets intertwined with the message…or maybe it’s one person on piano leading us in song for twenty minutes at the end of our time together. The worship leader could be placed among the people rather than on a platform, or even behind the people as we project imagery on the screens to remind us of why we’re singing and who we’re singing to.
• We want to approach communion in a fresh way that drives people to Jesus. One idea is creating communion “stations” that would be set up around the room where people could go to receive communion at a certain point during the gathering. And perhaps there could be different cups of the juice and forms of bread, or maybe we introduce wine instead of juice – anything to keep communion from becoming rote or relegated to an afterthought.
• We want to use creative ways to communicate the message that we’re trying to get across. This means less talking time from the communicator, and more use of video, graphics, visual art, meditation, and other creative arts to communicate the same message. This also means getting away from the idea that the pastor has to be the one who communicates the message. Our pastors currently create their messages in a preaching team format, and our plan for the new gathering is to use five or more volunteers who communicate effectively, and plug them into the existing preaching team on weeks when they are communicating. The message theme and main points would remain the same as what is being preached in the New Life worship center, but volunteers who work closely with the pastors would teach the content at the new gathering, and would cut down the talking time significantly, allowing the arts to speak for themselves.
• Prayer stations are another idea that we’re kicking around – set locations around the room where people can go to pray; either alone or with a friend or family member. We would encourage movement to prayer stations at any time throughout the gathering so that there is a loose community-like and prayerful atmosphere.

These concepts are not being proposed for the sake of doing things differently. They are being explored because they will potentially resonate with people and give them a sense of worship that perhaps they’ve been longing for but haven’t been able to conceptualize or experience before. We expect that there will be a lot of mistakes and interesting problems that arise as we step out into uncharted territory, but there are a few things that bring me a lot of hope: God has placed me and the other leaders of this endeavor in a church full of people who love Jesus, are gracious, and who aren’t afraid to try something new. These qualities alone are enough to give me the courage to keep going. But when you add the words of the vision of New Life Christian Church – to “produce disciples, leaders, small groups, missionaries, and churches throughout central Illinois and around the world…” I suddenly have the sense that we’re right on target as we move ahead, and we have an amazing group of people supporting our endeavor.