TruthBook Religious News Blog

March 18, 2007
BY DAVID CRUMM
FREE PRESS RELIGION WRITER

Macomb Township mom Laurie Hempel went from doing zero to 20 hours of church work a week over the last year -- all because she finally found a church where she could "give my 2 cents and shape something new."

And though engineer Nicole Howard of Lathrup Village was laid off by Ford Motor Co. last month, she said she's not worried, because her Detroit church is the real center of her life. That's where Howard said she does her most important work -- spearheading a group of women who train themselves in skills ranging from weight loss to financial planning.

Hempel and Howard are among millions of Americans who are driving a head-over-heels transformation. The rising power of self-expression is becoming a central part of faith. Congregations across the country are changing from places where people go only for religious inspiration and instruction to places where people seek concrete ways to express their creativity, insights and talents.

Some scholars call the transformation the end of a 500-year cycle of reformation, a continuation of the individualistic streak in Christianity touched off by religious reformer Martin Luther. Others say what's unfolding is part of the trend toward what is called crowdsourcing -- allowing ordinary people to shape the future of congregations.

Whatever it is called, the trend is powerful. As the American passion for religious self-expression rises, the centuries-old power of religious leaders is fading, and many traditional labels are falling away.

Change is showing up in many ways:

• It's usurping the power of the preacher. "It makes you nervous as a pastor these days when you step into the pulpit knowing that everybody sitting in front of you is just two clicks in the Internet away from being smarter than you are on any subject you choose to talk about," said the Rev. Ken Wilson, pastor of the Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor.

• It's making familiar religious denominations obsolete. Howard's church, one of Detroit's most famous Baptist congregations, is dropping "Baptist" from its name at the huge new Second Ebenezer Church rising along I-75. Second Ebenezer is going nondenominational because Howard, the Rev. Edgar Vann and other members have decided that religious consumers now care more about the quality of programs than even the most time-honored religious names.

• It's causing mainline churches to look for new methods of shoring up membership and sending even nontraditional churches such as Kensington Community Church in Troy back to the drawing board.

Last year, Kensington clergy were shocked when they called for volunteers to open a new branch. They got a great turnout but were stunned to learn that 400 of the 500 who volunteered had been inactive until then. Even with their established marketing savvy, the Kensington leadership team hadn't fully tapped the power of the crowd in the pews.

"It was humbling to discover that," said the Rev. Steve Andrews, the senior pastor. "We like to think we know our people and that they're already active in our church, but these 400 had been sitting there with us -- and they weren't on our radar screen until that moment."

Triumph of faith and expression

Americans' historic passion for faith remains as strong as ever, University of Michigan sociologist Wayne Baker found in studying American values.

What's fueling the transformation in American congregations, Baker has found, is a strengthening over the last 20 years of another powerful American value: freedom of self-expression.

"I agree with those who say this looks like a continuation of centuries of reformation in religion," Baker said. "It's been going on around the world, but this desire for self-expression in religion has become most extreme in the U.S."

Flipping a pyramid in Detroit

In Detroit, Vann and members of Second Ebenezer figured out what was happening without global data. They simply listened to one another.

Still, the decision to drop their Baptist label was a dramatic step.

In the late 1990s, Vann was the public face of the city's Baptist churches as president of the Council of Baptist Pastors of Detroit and Vicinity. He spoke for a denomination whose urban roots are in the great migration of African Americans from the South to jobs in the North a century ago.

"But now, we realize that people are moving away from following the old brands in making religious choices, so when the bronze letters finally go up on our building, we'll drop the word 'Baptist,' " Vann said.

The $25-million church is expected to open later this year.

"It's becoming clear to us that the traditional denominations were shaped like pyramids, with the critical mass at the bottom, mainly being asked to support a very small cone of people at the top," he said.

"In the 21st Century, that pyramid is inverted, and the hope of the local church -- really, the hope of the world, I think -- depends on our focusing not on that little cone, but on listening to the needs and the voices of that mass of people we often overlooked."

Firing up a crowd in Troy

In Troy, pastors at Kensington Community Church thought they pretty much understood America's religious transformation.

Two decades ago, they surfed along on a leading wave of casually dressed young preachers who gave up hymns for rock music and made worship so entertaining that even the most skeptical baby boomers would bend a knee.

They brought thousands of religiously inactive families back to church. About 10,000 people now show up for weekend services -- and that's after Kensington has dispatched thousands of members over the years to start a dozen other congregations.
But most of those start-ups were relatively small. Kensington had never had a volunteer mobilization quite like the one last summer that went to start Kensington East in Clinton Township.

The day after the Sunday that church leaders asked volunteers to sign up for the launch, they found themselves looking over a puzzling list of names.

Andrews and his colleagues soon realized they were watching a crowdsourcing event unfold in their midst. These 400 men and women weren't willing to register with the church office until they saw an opportunity they liked.

Marty Cracchiolo, a software developer from Macomb Township, was among the 400. "I used to be a Chreaster," he said. "You know? Just Christmas and Easter.

"Then, I started attending Kensington in Troy, but I was on the fence there, waiting for a good opportunity."

Finally, Cracchiolo heard that the new church in Clinton Township needed volunteers to work with electronic gear. "I enjoy that and, now that I've gotten involved at the new church, I've found that the people are awesome."

A restless group of believers

Tony Campolo, one of the most popular evangelical speakers on college campuses these days, has been telling evangelical leaders about this powerful shift for years and urging them to develop a new set of ministerial skills.

The problem in many traditional denominations, Campolo said, is that "church leaders are wasting time yelling at each other over old issues ... and they're not watching what's happening right in front of us."

At the Vineyard Church in Ann Arbor, Wilson said one of his most important ministerial talents these days is stepping out of the way and unleashing his congregation.

"We all know how churches have worked for years: We welcome people, put them into classes, teach them all these beliefs we want them to swallow and tell them that they're expected to serve in our programs. Then we sit back and hope they do what we told them to do," Wilson said.

"But that just doesn't work anymore. We've got to realize that people see themselves as pilgrims. They're not clay waiting for us to turn them into Christians."

Here's how it works now, he said: "When people come up to me and say, 'Oh, wouldn't it be great if our church did this or that?' I stop them right there and I say, 'Great idea! You're the church. Go start it."

Contact DAVID CRUMM at 313-223-4526 or dcrumm@freepress.com.

Labels: Christianity, church, congregations, crowdsourcing, David Crumm, religion, service