‘Progressive’ Churches Return to Seeker-Sensitive Model
by Dustin Messer, The Gospel Coalition:
“A Sunday service that is part therapy session, part standup-comedy routine, and part live concert. . . . This is not your grandmother’s idea of church!”
That’s how PBS NewsHour began their recent segment on New Abbey Church in Pasadena, California. The segment on this LGBTQ-affirming church shows a standup comedian opening for a female pastor who talks about her wife to a crowd of hipster congregants.
The church was founded by pastor Cory Marquez, who left a large evangelical church when he realized why young people weren’t coming: they didn’t find it “relevant” to their needs.
On the differences between his new and old church, Marquez says, “It’s less about form and more about content. If the content is literally not healing you, not connecting you to something bigger, then you’re wasting your time.”
Little surprised me about the segment—but that line did.
[…] Churches that capitulate to the spirit of the age have indeed left Christianity… And yet the irony is, even as they’re leaving the faith once delivered, they’re returning to the form they once derided. They may be giving up the God of their youth, but they’re returning to gimmicks of their youth group.
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