Thursday, August 12, 2004
Is God reshaping -- and reviving -- his church?
OVER ADVENT, people across Germany did something very out-of-character for most of them: they went to church. What drew them was the novelty of stepping inside the world's first polyvinyl inflatable church. Invented by a British entrepreneur, The Daily Telegraph reported, it "has a blow-up organ, altar and candles, and plastic 'stained-glass' windows."
Although its original intent was to promote a chain of nightclubs, a German priest who bought one of them discovered that it drew people who had perhaps not darkened the door of a traditional church for years. He decided to take it on tour.
"It allows us to take God's message everywhere, and reach people who usually don't go to church," said Gerhard Maier, the bishop of Stuttgart. "The whole idea is to surprise people and meet them at places where they wouldn't expect to find a house of God."
And while the thought of worshipping in an inflatable church may seem undignified to some, its success underscores a growing universal awareness that God is leading his church in some new and surprising directions, as it seeks to reach a postmodern culture. The end result, say many observers, may well be a radically transformed church.
"People have rejected what we've shown them as the church, but I'm not sure what we've shown them has to be the only way that we do church, says Cam Roxburgh, senior pastor of Southside Community Church in Surrey and B.C. regional coordinator of Church Planting Canada.
"For too long we've defined 'local church' as a place where I go on Sunday morning to attend a religious service, and oftentimes the bigger the better.
"I don't want to rip that apart, because so many good things have been done through that model, but I'm not sure that's the approach that's going to win the day in our country over the next generation or two."
Recent polling bears out that concern. According to one survey, 77 percent of Canadians said that having an inner spiritual life was important. But only 48 percent agreed it was important to belong to a religious group--a figure that rose to 65 percent among young adults.
"We must learn to live without a building," says Vancouver-area church planter Tom Tan. "Right now, churches are leaving the city. We have to go back to the city to reach the lost there. And facilities are expensive for a city church."
It is a way of 'doing church' that can take many forms.
One approach is to meet in people's homes, often with a meal being part of the worship. "It's a growing thing," says Ken Stade, the Winnipeg-based Prairie regional coordinator of the recently formed Canadian House Church Network.
"Many people who are committed to community, to deeper relationships and more accountability in their lives are finding this is a very effective way to meet together as the body. Church programs and big, slick services and so on aren't really that exciting to them. Just because there are lots of people doesn't guarantee relationship."
Currently, there are only about 125 house churches in all of Canada. But Stade believes the movement is uniquely designed for dramatic growth.
"The house church has a ready-made discipleship factor built in, and has the ability to multiply rapidly," he says. "We believe that there's going to be 10,000 house churches here in Winnipeg in the next 10 years."
In Montreal, meanwhile, a group of Quebec Roman Catholics began meeting in October with the blessing of the archdiocese for a non-traditional mass called the 'Repas de Fraternite.' As The Montreal Gazette reported, they gather for "family-like meals" which also include Bible readings, singing and discussion, "often in the absence of a priest."
Eddie Gibbs, who teaches church growth at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, says such "intensely eucharistic" meals -- in homes, but also in restaurants and cafés -- are becoming a key feature of these new churches.
"In the context of the meal, the bread is broken and the wine is blessed," he says. "It is a participation; it is a means of grace. It can be powerfully evangelistic.
New churches are also springing up on university campuses, as students show a renewed interest in developing their spirituality.
"It is quite broadly characteristic of post-modernity and the emerging generation, where the skepticism of all things institutional -- government, business and the church -- continues to be very high," says Murray Moerman, director of national church planting strategy for Outreach Canada.
"God's doing something. There are stirrings, and that's very exciting," says Roxburgh.
"I think the culture is ready and poised for some new things."
Ray Bakke, executive director of International Urban Associates, echoes that sentiment. "I thought the barriers to mission were the big, bad cities," he writes. "But 90 percent of the barriers to reaching cities are not in the city at all; they are inside our churches, things like, 'Our bishop would never let us get away with that,' or, 'They'll call us liberal if we do that' or 'We can't do that, the seminary didn't prepare me for that.' The barriers are inside our structures."
For Glenn Gibson, Outreach Canada's director of church revitalization ministries in Kitchener, Ontario, the issue is ultimately not what the church of tomorrow will look like. The much more crucial issue is that change -- indeed, radical change -- must occur.
"We're in a time when there is a whole new type of church that needs to emerge," he says. "To use Jesus' metaphor of the wine and wineskins, people still have a taste for the wine. But we have problems with our containers."
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