Had a good time sitting down with Ryan last night at Beatnik's that fueled thought that kept me up half the night (although that may have been the tall Cafe Mocha that I ordered). Ryan had approached me about mentoring him and last night was our first chance to build into that. We talked about his band, their next recording process, worship team stuff, church stuff and satellite stuff. I was encouraged by how much I had to say about the satellite resonated with him. He's definitely a guy that I want to stay in close contact with because I know he brings a solid perspective about church stuff and he's 12-13 years younger than me and will soon be a part of that target audience that we keep saying the satellite will have.
One particular thing that Ryan shared with me got me thinking a great deal. There is the beginnings of an emergent worship service once a month in Amboy at McGrawsville UMC that a lot of college age guys from Marion are going to. The pastor for that age group is a recent IWU grad, so there's not a lot of surprise that the college population would be plentiful there, but that might be a place in our own backyard worth checking out to give people a glimpse of what I'm envisioning and to help them see that it isn't just an east coast or west coast thing. I had first heard about "Encounter" last spring when Jason Makowski was having a conversation at IWU with a student while we were having coffee and Ryan said he and a few guys went last week to it. I asked him what they did in the service and he said they had a few prayer stations and a lot of music (at the appropriate volume, loud).
With this going on just over 20 miles from here I think it lends a lot more credibility to emerging worship as something that might be pursued in Marion. Here's the potential gap between what's going on there and what I'm envisioning: it seems like it might be just another place for already churched people to get their worship fix. Since everybody that I have heard about attending that service is either a student at a local Christian college or attends another church I have to wonder about whether they are impacting people with a post-Christian, post modern worldview. I don't know. I haven't done the research, called their church staff, visited a service... I just have a feeling. Now, if what they are doing at McGrawsville opens churched people up to the possibilites in other ministry approaches and paves the way for emergent ministries for the post-Christian person, then I pray that God will use them to shape this next generation of church leadership to value and pursue this kind of ministry. That is the kind of ministry that I am passionate about, not just another place where we can keep ourselves interested in worship, but a place where people experience an understanding of the love of Jesus for the first time and are supernaturally transformed into Christ followers.
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