Postmodern church targets Generation X in Seattle

By Sarah Means, The Washington Times, August 12, 1998

When Matt Johnson's friend invited him to a "postmodern" church in Seattle 18 months ago, he wasn't sure what to think.

The Seattle rock band drummer resonated with the church's goal to find truth in beauty and art. But he became suspicious when the church said it was targeting Generation X.

As a Christian who had tried several large churches with youth programs, Mr. Johnson was reluctant to try a church that had already pigeonholed everyone born between 1965 and 1980 as being on intimate terms with MTV, restlessness and body piercing.

What the Roadside Monument musician found at Mars Hill Fellowship Seattle's University district was a "congregation" where the average age was 23 and members didn't seem to care whether one sports blue hair or a necktie.

About 150 churches targeting Gen Xers have sprung up across the Unites States in the last decade. Loosely known as "post-modern" groups, they meet on skateboard ramps, in coffee houses and at punk thrash concerts. Music ranges from traditional hymns to heavy metal.

At the Skater Church in Portland, Ore., hot and sweaty skateboarders-- all of them boys ages 12-20 - get skating lessons and a Bible lecture three times a week on a 10-foot skating ramp. Last week's lesson included anecdotes from the move "The Truman Show."

Dressed in a white T-shirt, youth leader Paul Anderson, who works out of Portland's Central Bible Church, discusses an upcoming mission trip to Canada.

"I don't want anyone coming that isn't serious about sharing their faith," he tells them.

Such churches are trying to make their mark on a society that often does not believe in absolutes.

"I don't think what we're doing is new. I think we're just living in our time."- Mark Driscoll

"I never felt comfortable in the Christian subculture: the looks, Christian music, religious right, that whole thing," says Mark Driscoll,27, of Seattle, one of the founders of the postmodern church movement. "but I wouldn't classify myself as a liberal. I felt homeless in a lot of ways."

He started Mars Hill Fellowship almost two years ago as a place where young people frustrated with traditional churches could express themselves. Mr. Johnson was one of the first to join the group, which evolved from a Bible study for students meeting in Mr. Driscoll's home.

"The Gospel always needs to be contextualized," Mr. Driscoll says. For instance, at the Seattle Mars Hill, musicians may worship God through dance or by meditating on a freestanding painting.

"So wherever you're at and however the culture around you changes and the people around you changes, you totally reinvent your church to speak to those people," he says.

Fitting a church to one's culture has built-in-hazards, cautions Ken Myers, the founder of a Charlottesville-based Christian tape series, also called Mars Hill.

"I think the church is always being called to be counter-cultural," he says. "So my big concern is, if you reach a culture on it's own terms, can you turn around and be counter-cultural?"

Many postmodern churches are linked through a national organization called the Leadership network, originally founded to help connect 1,500 pastors of mega churches like Willowcreek Community Church in Illinois. Postmodern churches are a subgroup of this network.

The term 'postmodern' became popular in the 1970s when architectural critic Charles Jencks described an architect's rejection of the modernist International Style of architecture- a design based on well-ordered glass boxes. The word soon came to define a rejection of the Enlightenment, which taught that truth can be arrived at through scientifically provable methods.

Postmodernism rejected Western rationalism, saying every tradition could be challenged. Artist Robert Rauchenberg questioned Lenardo da Vinci's originality when he placed palm fronds in his early 1980s work "The Razorback Bunch" alongside a photograph of the Mona Lisa.

In philosophy Frenchman Jaques Derrida, who is considered a founder of postmodernism, told Johns Hopkins University students in 1966 that there was no such thing as absolute truth. The movement grew from there.

Postmodernism has manifested itself in other churches by questioning all the former techniques for teaching the Bible, evangelism or conducting a church service. The result is a potpourri of traditions.

"in the same service we may have Episcopal communion, Russian Orthodox art and candles and a rock band," says the Rev. Ron Johnson of Pathways at the University of Denver. Like other post modern churches, Pathway holds to the Apostles and Nicene creeds, but differs greatly in the ways it practices the sacraments like the Eucharist and baptism.

Pathways combines the bible with "narrative theology," which involves using people's personal life stories and group discussions as a way to discover truth about God.

But not all evangelical Christians are comfortable with such methods. Mr. Myers warns that just finding truth in stories could lead to what he called a "don't worry, be happy" mentality that avoids facing personal moral responsibility.

"There's a profound relativism about postmodernism that I don't think is a solution to the problem of modernity," he says.

Churches like Willowcreek use postmodern techniques in individual programs but not in the main church service. Steve Gillen, the producer of Willowcreek's Gen. X service, says that use the same tools -- storytelling and the arts -- to teach unchurched youth about Christianity in their Axis program. But Doug Pagitt, president of the Leadership Network, wonders how effective that program can be in a church that is largely geared toward baby boomers, not Gen X'ers.

"What we saw was that the 'boomer churches' ... were strongly individualistic, very rational, very knowledge-based," he says.

British theologian and author OS Guinness believes both methods are little more than passing church trends.

"For Christians to take to calling themselves postmodern just when postmodernism is disappearing is another example of a suicidal search for relevance," he says. The only way to be relevant to the future church, he says, is to stress the timeless principles of Christianity.

For Mr. Driscoll though, church isn't about trends.

"I don't think what we're doing is new," he says. "I think we're just living in our time."