Making New Ways Out of Old Ways: Alternative Churches

Growing up, I was raised ELCA Lutheran and attended Catholic school through high school. I got the church experience from both sides. Sit, stand, pray, kneel, sing, sit, stand, sit. While both churches I went to differed in many ways, they had some things in common. For the most part, both services were very traditional.

Many people, including myself, associate the image of “church” with large sanctuaries inside a large building, with the pastor or priest wearing vestments (the fancy clothes you usually see them wearing during services,) sometimes incense, wood pews, a number of crosses and images of Jesus.

For some people, this traditional style of church is intimidating.

This intimidation has affected the church as a whole in America. Primarily, the Protestant church is seeing a rapid decline in membership. A leading response to this decline happens to be the rise of religious Nones. More and more, people are becoming less associated with church because of their disinterest, discontent, or discomfort with it. Declining numbers suggests that traditional ways of doing church are becoming less effective as they have been in the past.

For most, it isn’t that they don’t want to go to church. In fact, a lot of people have said they miss it. More and more, people are “shopping” around for services that are less traditional. There are places that offer more contemporary, alternative styles of worship. A couple examples are right here in the Twin Cities.

Places like Humble Walk are a response to the traditional forms of church. They’ve heard folks’ discontent with traditional styles of worship and styled a new kind with what they felt was most needed. While Humble Walk is more community-based, Mercy Seat, a Lutheran church in Minneapolis, is more liturgy-based. While maintaining a sense of ease and inclusivity, Mercy Seat uses chairs with backs instead of pews. Pastors Kae and Mark don’t wear the fancy vestments, but they do wear the white tabby collars you see most pastors wear. The music is entirely written and composed by the people performing it. There are babies and old people and everyone in between. The worship space is in a community center that’s shared with four other churches.

What is distinctive of the feel that Mercy Seat provides is the openness to questions. Their mission as an urban church is to provide “a creative response to a growing need for critical-thinking, grace-based Christian orthodoxy.” With a firm commitment to the arts, as well as children, Mercy Seat is what I would call alternatively traditional. It maintains the liturgy you would expect to see at a Lutheran church service, but throws in some spunk that keeps the punks-at-heart interested.

Churches are moving away from more traditional styles of worship and developing new ones. They recognize that some folks are looking to maintain some traditional aspects of worship, while others need to steer clear of it all together. They are acknowledging the feelings we are having about doing and being in church and are responding to us in alternative ways that say, “Come. Your questions are welcome here.”