I received a postcard recently and maybe you did too. It was mailed to 50,000 households in Broome County. The postcard is from Two Rivers Assembly, a church that will hold its first worship service this Sunday. I honestly wish them well, but I have some questions about what they’re doing.
The postcard and an article in this morning’s Press & Sun-Bulletin play up the “fun” aspect of this church. In the newspaper article, William Hampton, the pastor of Two Rivers Assembly says,
“We are working very hard to be a church where people who don’t go to church will love to attend,” said Hampton, who moved from Springfield, Mo., about nine months ago to launch Two Rivers. “The days of being bored in a dry environment are over.”
If you are currently not active in a church, by all means, please try Two Rivers Assembly and score some movie tickets. It’s great that they want to be a church that reaches out to the unchurched. I applaud the effort, but question the methodology.
Many churches are boring, but for reasons that Pastor Hampton doesn’t mention. It’s about what is taught and believed - liberalism is killing mainline churches. It is a pandering based on the liberal mindset of secular society. We see this most glaringly in the denomination that is losing members the fastest, the United Church of Christ (the UCC). The UCC is also the most liberal of mainline denominations.
The Episcopal Church (TEC) has become increasingly liberal in theology and since 2003 has been losing over 50,000 members a year. That pace has slowed a bit more recently, but a current trend is for entire parishes to leave the Episcopal Church for the Roman Catholic Church. Our parish, St. Andrew’s Church in Endicott, left the Episcopal Church in 2007 and became part of the evangelical Convocation of Anglicans in North America.
The church building where St. Andrew's now worships was built by George F. Johnson in 1923. It was constructed for a Methodist Church. In 2000 or so, St Paul’s Methodist Church at 400 W. Wendell St. closed and disbanded. The problem? Liberal theology. At the end of the block is the building that was once the home of St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church. That church also closed and disbanded. The building is now home to a Russian Orthodox Church.
Liberalism spawns death; it’s happened in the UCC, it’s happening in TEC, the Methodist Church, and the mainline Presbyterian Church.
On Saturday, I attended an ordination service in Syracuse at a cavernous church building on Genesee St. It was a former Presbyterian Church with gothic architecture and beautiful stained glass windows. The church in that building now is called Missio, and they've planted another church elsewhere in Syracuse. The liberal Presbyterians are long gone.
On Saturday, I attended an ordination service in Syracuse at a cavernous church building on Genesee St. It was a former Presbyterian Church with gothic architecture and beautiful stained glass windows. The church in that building now is called Missio, and they've planted another church elsewhere in Syracuse. The liberal Presbyterians are long gone.
The postcard and the newspaper article I received make it sound like the problem is being boring. I suggest that the problem is liberal preaching and teaching. With solid, biblical preaching and teaching, bathed in an atmosphere of prayer (yes, prayer is important), there should be an environment that is centered on God. There is no boredom in the presence of God.
I suspect that the new church that is starting at the Regal Theaters in Binghamton is working from a marketing plan based on pandering to the felt needs of the unchurched. There’s nothing wrong with reaching out, that’s a good thing. What I suspect given what has been said, particularly in the newspaper article, is that the methodology of mission is based on appealing to the lower nature rather than the higher nature of humanity.
What do I mean by this?
An entertainment approach to worship suggests that worship is about giving people an experience. Actually, genuine worship has always been about connecting people to God. Humanity’s deepest yearnings are for connection with God, but entertainment-based worship appeals to more base yearnings like the desire to be entertained. The hook for entertainment-based worship is often contemporary music and teaching based on felt needs. The contemporary music can be shallow in lyrical content, although it doesn’t have to be.
The felt needs approach to teaching tends toward sermon series like “5 Keys to a Happy Marriage.” This isn’t bad in itself, but whatever happened to God-centered worship?
Christian educator Marva Dawn calls the entertainment approach to worship “dumbing down.” In an article excerpted from a book and published last year in Christianity Today, this phenomena was called “the juvenilization of American Christianity.” It could also be called the trivialization of the Christian faith.
The church that pioneered this approach was Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago. Willow Creek took a four-year self-study of their congregation and published their findings in 2007 in a book called Reveal. What was revealed by that study was that Willow Creek had a surprising number of members whose faith-journey was “stalled” or dissatisfactory to them.
It was courageous of Willow Creek to publish that study. They have since shifted to more depth during their weekend services . As the study shows, surface-depth just isn’t deep enough.
I am praying for Two Rivers and their launch. I hope that they are successful in reaching unchurched people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I also hope that they’ll take them deep into the life of Christ and not just give them a fun time in the shallow end of the pool.
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