| Touch. Feel. Create. Connect. It's Easter for the postmodern mind-set 04/14/2001 By CHRISTINE WICKER / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
Allison V. Smith / DMN
People are "sick of sales pitches and conversions," says Scott Gornto, the 28-year-old pastor of Dallas' Journey community.
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They will meet in an upstairs room, write their sins in a pot of sand and wipe them away. They'll dip bread in a cup of juice, say ancient words and light a candle as a symbol of forgiveness for their iniquity. They'll tell stories and pray amid icons and images from a thousand years ago.
This is Easter, 2001, in a place called Journey.
This is not a church, its founders say, even though it is housed and supported by Gaston Oaks Baptist Church in Dallas. It is a Holistic Missional Christian Community.
Translation for those fifty-dollar words? Christianity is reaching out to postmodern culture. The result looks a lot like faith in the first century, say the movement's proponents. Conversion is downplayed in favor of community. Helping the poor, the sick and the lonely gets strong support. Services eschew rational explanations in favor of experience furthered by stories, art, music, ritual and symbol.
At some services, Journey members are given little canvases so they can paint. They carry journals and are encouraged to write their own thoughts even when that means disengaging from what the worship leader is saying. Pictures of symbols from A.D. 500 and 600 are often projected during the service.
For Easter, Journey pastor Scott Gornto will tell a story about how Christ's resurrection has affected him and others.
"The stories won't be to make a point," he said. "The story will be the point. Whatever we do, it will be something that we all experience. It won't be a presentation."
Allison V. Smith / DMN
Cameron Reid, 16, writes his sins in a bowl of sand before a service at Journey. The community, supported by Gaston Oaks Baptist Church, meets at Greenville Avenue and Royal Lane.
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He says that more "modern" approaches to Christianity served up ideas as the way to transformation and created "consumerism Christianity" where people came to get their needs met. In contrast, the postmodern approach is typified by Minneapolis' Solomon's Porch, which describes itself as "not a 'religious service provider' but a gathering of people who are on a pilgrimage through life" with Jesus.
To understand this movement, it helps to first understand modernism, which began with the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries. Science usurped Christian authority; education offered earthly salvation; and rational thought routed miracles and divine revelations. After a few hundred years, most Christian faiths brokered some kind of peace with science. They were running Sunday schools and had learned to appeal to people's minds as much as their hearts.
Then came postmodern thinking. Terrified by the Bomb, horrified by the Holocaust, more and more people began to suspect that science might not be completely wonderful and that humans might be evil beyond what education could fix. Philosophers and artists said that no one truth or universal story could hold for all time because truth changed according to who was talking and who was listening. Literature, history and even religion began to be "deconstructed," which meant that everything people believed about stories and heroes and God was challenged. Diversity and tolerance were in. Traditional authority and moral judgments were out.
Some Christians adapted. They accepted that God might be a she as well as, or even instead of, a he. They softened their insistence that only Christians would go to heaven. Some came to believe that the Bible might have errors of fact, be open to radically different interpretations or even that it might be a collection of allegories teaching sacred truth instead of a literal, historical recording of events.
Other Christians saw such changes as death for the faith. For decades, these more conservative Christians fought postmodernity at every front. Most still do, but an increasing number are beginning to believe that a new kind of approach is needed for a new age that isn't going away.
Allison V. Smith / DMN
Mariel Mueller sings with the Jason Solley Band at Journey. Services there and at other postmodern communities employ art, music and stories to heighten the religious experience.
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"There are thousands of churches in this country that are reacting to this shift in worldview or have been influenced by it," said Carol Childress, knowledge broker for Leadership Network in Dallas. The nonprofit organization works with innovative churches across the United States and Canada.
"Twenty-five or 50 years from now, this will not be an anomaly; this will be reality," she said. "For the kids today who are 10, 11 and 12 years old and who will be the young adults of tomorrow, this will be their world, which is why the church needs to understand this."
Brad Cecil, teaching pastor for Axxess, a ministry supported by Pantego Bible Church, sees the change as a boon for Christianity. "I think postmodernity is causing us to live in faith again," he said. Religious conviction was never really based on objective rationalism, he said. "It's subjective and it's always been subjective and it's always been based on faith."
The movement has roots in England, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. In the United States, it is strongest on the East and West coasts. "A lot of people are saying this is just as big a shift as the Reformation," said Mr. Gornto, "but Christian culture out there has not really found this yet."
Michael Kelly, pastor at Seattle's Green Lake Presbyterian Church, said he doesn't think that any church in his area that ignores postmodernism will be effective in the future.
But he and others say conservative Christians are not adopting postmodernity. Instead, they're trying to better serve a postmodern world. Their core beliefs aren't changing. They still see the Bible as the infallible word of God. They still see Jesus as the only way to salvation.
"Easter is the meta-narrative," said Mr. Kelly, whose church attracts about 250 people to services. "Easter explains the universe. If a church buys into the idea that there is no meta-story and that Christianity is one of a number of truths that can be told ... then that would cease to be Christianity in any way. It would be baptized individualism."
Conservative and Bible churches are not alone in adopting what is being called a postmodern approach. Minneapolis' Spirit Garage, supported by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, stresses a relationship with Christ over sudden conversion experiences. Its pastor is a woman who left the Missouri Synod because that denomination did not ordain women.
The church's communications specialist, Jennifer Bingen, said openness is a hallmark of the church. "If this church were conservative, I wouldn't be here," she said.
The postmodern approach, sometimes characterized as Gen-X outreach, is typically set apart from traditional churches by form, setting and some of the goals of worship.
The Journey room has a dorm rec room ambience. Couches, overstuffed chairs and little tables flanked by plastic chairs sit in a semicircle before a stage strewn with musical equipment. There is no lectern. A big Celtic cross is painted on one wall. Paintings hang about the room. Several feature a monk in a brown robe. A hundred candles flicker. An old Jacuzzi serves as baptistry.
Solomon's Porch meets in a place that looks like a cross between Greg Brady's bedroom and the lounge in a nursing home, according to the church's Web site. Pantego's Axxess is lighted only by candles.
Messages tend to be conversational.
On Easter, "my sermon will be preached from a stool, hopefully spoken without any posturing of superspirituality – 'cause my life hardly reflects it," said Kyle Lake, pastor of Waco's University Baptist Church, which draws up to 700 on Sundays.
Mr. Gornto, 28, recently told a Journey congregation of about 50 that getting a relationship with Jesus "is larger than salvation from hell."
He displayed a quote that dismissed counting conversions as "mechanistic, consumeristic and individualistic," and he said people are "sick of sales pitches and conversions."
He dismissed classes on how to evangelize and make disciples. Information and formulas aren't equal to faith or true conversion, he said.
"We experience God, and we experience one another. We have relationships with God, and we have relationships with one another," he said.
Not everyone likes this message, Mr. Gornto said. He's been called a heretic, and one woman left Journey after complaining that his message didn't offer enough solid guidelines. But when 25-year-old Scott Row visited Journey, he liked it.
"They aren't hammering you with deep theological thoughts. They're bringing it down to a kid working as a waiter at Bennigan's," he said.
At the same time, tradition is also important, Mr. Lake said. Many such churches have Communion every week.
"Within modernity there existed a mind-set that rejected tradition in exchange for our intellect's ability to provide us with a better tomorrow. We can see where that's gotten us," he said.
Redmond, Wash., church consultant Kathi Allen attends a church where St. Patrick's Day was celebrated with dramatic readings, incense, candles and ancient Celtic Christian instruments.
"All the senses were touched," she said. "It was more than just an auditory learning."
A baby boomer, Ms. Allen is older than many attracted to this type of Christianity. She especially likes these new churches' emphasis on art as an expression of spirituality.
"For the longest time I felt like I didn't fit in traditional church," Ms. Allen said. "I'm not a great singer, and it seemed the only way we had to worship God was through singing."
Spirit Garage hosts an annual arts event that includes video and performance art. Seattle's Green Lake hosts an art gallery night that brings in art from other churches as well as people who don't go to church.
Community service is also important. Spirit Garage dedicates 30 percent of its offerings to helping others. Axxess members mentor students, distribute food and, worrying that the city of Arlington doesn't have public transportation, they talk about how they might provide low-income people with ways to get about town.
Marty and Patrick Pitts, both 48, are probably the oldest people at a recent Journey gathering. Their son, Ryan, 21, is the group's violin player, recruited by Mr. Gornto 18 months ago from a Deep Ellum band.
Journey is about "letting religion really be a part of your whole life," the elder Mr. Pitts said.
Angela Ardis, a 27-year-old Web designer who has been part of Journey since it started, grew up in a Southern Baptist church. Journey is a better fit, she said.
"Here it's OK to come in and not have everything together every minute of the day," she said.
Postmodern groups often have less hierarchy, said Mr. Cecil, whose leadership group meets every week to decide what to do the next Sunday. Agenda isn't very important at those meetings, and long theological discussions usually ensue. Some have criticized the process as less than productive.
"We always smile," he said, "because we know that we are accomplishing what we really want, which is to build into each other's lives."
Christine Wicker, a former Religion staff writer, is a free-lancer based in Milwaukee. Information from staff writer Jeffrey Weiss was used in this report.
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