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.”

Wait, What Even Are Nones?

If you’re like me, the first thing you think of when you hear the word “none” is Whoopi Goldberg in Sister Act. Yes, Whoopi played a nun in a movie, but that’s not the kind we’re talking about.

Someone who identifies or is categorized as “none” is someone who is not affiliated with any place of worship or religious/spiritual practice. So let’s say you’re taking a survey and a multiple-choice question pops up. It asks “Which church do you belong to?” and lists off options. If you don’t belong to any of them, you may select “none,” as in “none of the above.”

Nones are not a new phenomenon. However, there has been a rather stark increase of Americans who are not affiliated over the past 50 years. According to the Pew Research Center, statistics taken from the U.S. Census Bureau’s August 2012 Current Population Survey show that just under 20% of US adults are religiously unaffiliated. A large number of nones are young adults (18-30ish) and the number is growing.

For some people, me included, the phrase “none” carries connotations that I do not like. It’s a vague word that suggests that someone who is a none is someone who holds no religious or spiritual beliefs. And while that may be the case for some, it isn’t the case for all.

In their book, Robert Putnam and David Campbell explain that it’s important to clarify that nones are people who are “less attached to organized religion than other Americans” while they also “do not seem to have discarded all religious beliefs or predilections.”

There are many reasons why the percentage of nones is rising in the United States. Putnam and Campbell offer one example that historically, a number of churches have been deeply infused with politics, and vice versa. That makes some people uncomfortable. The topics of abortion and women’s rights, 9/11, and homosexuality and same-sex marriage, are a few topics that make people uneasy when religion is thrown in.

One of my goals for this conversation of nones is to come up with a new term, as well as think about whether a term is even necessary, or appropriate. It sort of reminds me of gender fluidity. A number of my friends identify as gender non-conforming and queer. That’s putting it simply because many of us feel that there just isn’t a word in the English language that articulates how someone identifies well enough. The same goes for how some people practice religion. Maybe I’m Buddhist today, even though I was Christian yesterday. Tomorrow, I could have no idea what I am. 

There have been some religious typologies that a lot of people have thought of. My favorite so far is “Seeker.” But is that specific enough? I’d love to hear your reactions to “none” and offer any thoughts on it in the comment section below.

A Humbling Walk in Questioning Faith

I am very overwhelmed.

I’ve been going to church services for a couple weeks and it’s been great. A rabbi gave a sermon at one service, I painted a tiny wooden ninja at another. At the Sunday evening service I attended at Humble Walk, something happened. As most of you know, I’m not the most expressive person when it comes to talking about my feelings. But what I experienced at Humble Walk Lutheran Church was everything having to do with feelings.

Whether it was the art gallery space that we were in for the service, the painting of the wooden ninjas beforehand, the snacks, the kindness of everyone, the fact that Pastor Jodi Houge was in jeans, or when she talked about just how simply weird church is in her sermon, I’m not sure. It was probably a combination of all of those that lead me to trying to hold back tears in the back row in my comfy chair. I was in the midst of the one of the best practices of community I’ve witnessed in a long time. It is that sense of community I’ve been waiting to either stumble upon, or have thrown at me.

I’ve never reacted emotionally to a church service before.

My girlfriend and I joke about how we can’t be seen doing cute things because “it’s not punk rock” and that’s sort of how I feel about talking about church. And as a young adult in America talking about church, I realize that it’s rare to hear of other Millennials talking about it as well. I get nervous about talking about my project and this blog because so many people I know and am friends with get uncomfortable with just the mentioning of the word “church.” I get uncomfortable too. It’s become such a taboo thing to talk about that people are leaving the church as an institution to go elsewhere, or nowhere at all.

More and more, scholars are finding a rapid increase in religious nones, or those categorized as “not affiliated” to a place of worship or tradition. This makes me a little bit anxious because of my current plans to attend seminary and eventually become a pastor. 

If people aren’t going to church, is what I want to do relevant?

As a young adult, and maybe as someone who you could call a "none", I want to find out why people are leaving church. I want to learn what people are doing to try and bring us back.

 

That’s a question a lot of faith leaders are asking these days. In response to that, a lot of churches are changing how they do services while maintaining their identities as faith communities. In an interview I had with Rob Fohr, Youth Catalyst at the Presbyterian Mission Agency, he argued that churches need to continue to be who they are and not change in ways that people will like them more (that sounds a lot like some of the relationship advice I got in high school.)

This whole experience is forcing me to come to terms with the fact that if I am to work in a church in my future, I need to start talking about it now so I don't have a breakdown in front of my community members in the middle of a sermon. I need to become comfortable with church again. With going to services and just simply saying it. Church.

Doing Things Differently

I’m going back to church.

This past February, I visited a service at Hamline Church United Methodist. I wasn’t with family and it wasn’t for a holiday. I went by myself just to “get back in the swing of things”. I knew it was going to be different than past worship experiences for me, but I was shocked at how nervous I was when I sat down in the pew. It was a similar environment compared to the sanctuary I grew up in, but at the same time I felt a little uncomfortable being there – not because of how the greeters treated me (they were more than hospitable) – but because I simply have not been to a regular church service in what feels like forever. It was sort of like how you feel on your first day of school, or first day at a new job: finding your way around the building, the closet door you just opened is not the bathroom you thought it was, where you sit, when you stand, do I genuflect?

What happened at that service was a radical thing. A rabbi gave the first portion of a two-part sermon. The associate pastor, Amanda Leunemann, presided for the second half.

In the years that I’ve been a member of the Lutheran church and gone to services, I don’t believe I have ever sat through a sermon that included a leader from a non-Christian community.

It was awesome.

This semester (and hopefully continuing into the summer) I will be studying various kinds of responses from Protestant faith communities to the decline of membership. Alternative forms of worship, whether it’s the style of the building, or how the service is designed, will be one of the main focus points I will be visiting and talking about.

I will also be focusing on the religious category “none”, or folks not affiliated with any faith tradition or place of worship. I believe that while “none” is a practical category, it can mislead one's understanding by suggesting that those categorized hold no religious or spiritual beliefs at all. My goal is to explore other terms and categories and discuss whether or not a new one might be better.

The inclusion of non-Christian individuals in our services, and more importantly, our daily lives, is critical in our current society if we are to build a “beloved community.” If we are to truly be in communion with all of our neighbors, we must include those who might not always hang out with Jesus, but might instead read the words of the Hebrew Bible or the Qur’an, or those who worship multiple deities like in Buddhism, or even those who are either not sure what they believe or are sure they hold no religious beliefs. If we are going to do that, a lot needs to be changed about how we “do” church in America.

This is important because, as a young adult in America, more and more I'm learning of people my age (and older) leaving the church. This is important because church shouldn't be intimidating, abusive, or hostile. This is important because we should feel comfortable asking the hard questions and not feel like we're being spoon-fed answers. This is important because in a society that is as culturally diverse as the United States is today, we need to see that reflected in our local communities, including church.

A rabbi giving a sermon at a United Methodist place of worhip? Now that’s an alternative.