April 9, 2001
New-style worship involves all senses
___By Ferrell Foster
___Texas Baptist Communications
___AUSTIN--Worshippers could not enter the church building through the wide glass doors in front. They had to stand in line outside, waiting to pass through a small basement door tucked away at the side of the building. A sign at the entrance said, "Enter Through the Narrow Gate."
___This was not a typical way to get into church, but Epicenter was not about typical church.
___The three-day gathering of Christians seeking to reach "emerging cultures" for Christ began with a unique worship experience. A promotional Internet site called the event a "voyage of visual, sonic and tactile discovery into the heart of God."
AT THE EPICENTER conference, Jorge ''Antidote'' Goyco and Nathan ''N8'' Amick provide a sound and light worship experience for particpants.
___Some people stood outside an hour on a recent Sunday night to get into the service at First Baptist Church in Austin.
___"This is a multi-sensory spiritual journey," said Sally Morgenthaler, a writer from Denver. "All of this is symbolic of how people enter the kingdom. The front doors of the kingdom are closed off, and people are needing to come through back doors and experience God in a whole new way."
___People attending the worship event looked different from one another. Some appeared to be typical churchgoers dressed casually; others wore orange hair, body piercing and wide-legged pants that make bellbottoms look understated.
___Worshippers were children and older adults, including at least one man in his 90s, plus lots of young adults in their 20s and 30s. They all shared at least one trait--traditional church does not draw them to Christ.
___Artistic, creative people planned the worship. They encouraged others who would not normally consider themselves artistic to connect with that side of themselves.
___However, the event was not about creativity; it was about worshipping God, drawing close to God and enjoying God.
___Leaders planned and created the worship experience over a 36-hour period as they came together from around the world, Morgenthaler said.
___After entering through the "narrow gate," worshippers stepped over crumpled beer cans, fast food cups and other trash littering a staircase. Candles lined the stairway. At each landing, worshippers received written instructions and a message from Scripture.
___"Kneel. Immerse your arms in the mud," said a sign beside a plastic container of muddy water used to illustrate the sinful world in which people live. "Meditate on its filth. Feel it between your fingers--cold, unfriendly, disgusting. When you understand this, move on."
___"Who may ascend the hill of the Lord?" Psalm 24 asked at the next landing. "Yourhands don't look so clean, and only God can see your heart. Hurry, take off your shoes and carry them, for you are standing on holy ground."
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following books offer information about the ancient-future trend of Generation X worship or general trends about reaching postmodern Americans:
Ancient-Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World" by Robert Webber.
___The climb continued. Eventually the worshippers were asked to pick up a flower that "signifies your life" and place it on a large wooden cross.
___"Wash," the next instruction said. "Be clean."
___After that, worshippers were invited exchanged their normal clothes for white robes, signifying cleansing.
___Hillary Stark, 23, of Denver helped create the stairway experience. "I'm totally into connecting and hospitality and setting the stage, ... helping people to just take time to slow down and enter through a pathway," she said.
___In the 36-hour planning period, conference organizers changed the entrance three times, Stark said. "We stumbled on this entrance," and the space "pulled" the ideas out of them.
___The stairway, however, was only the entrance. Worshippers then worked their way downward through rooms on four floors of the building. It was set up to be a journey, Morgenthaler said. "It's a journey in being rooted, in being cleansed," entering into God's presence as his beloved.
___The journey was a feast for the senses as sight, sound, smell and touch aided worship.
___"So much of this is physical," Morgenthaler said. People are "rooted in this physical world," and God desires that they "create ... and serve in the physical."
___Scripture played a role throughout, whether being read by someone or written on signs.
___The basement was a "place of creative play," Morgenthaler said. People played musical instruments and delivered readings.
___A labyrinth offered participants a meditational prayer walk aided by a recorded soundtrack heard over portable CD players carried by each worshipper. This depicted a spiritual "journey inward," a central place for communicating with God and then movement back out toward ministry and service in the world, said Steve Collins of London.
___About three hours into the experience, many of the worshippers gathered in the church auditorium. They sat around a plot of dirt, littered with garbage that had been dumped on plastic. The filth represented God's "coming into our messiness to lift us up and animate us," said Brian Ollman of Pomona, Calif, one of the event's creative directors, along with Mark Scandrette of San Francisco. This life is open to the transcendent, but it's rooted in the soil, he said.
___A brief message from Scripture preceded observance of the Lord's Supper. Participants lingered over the symbolic meal, walking barefoot onto the dirt a few at a time to partake of the bread and drink, then quietly moving away.
___Epicenter had a great attraction for younger generations, but Stark said she doesn't want to be cut off from those who are older. "We are starving for spiritual parents to birth our weird ways of being the church."
___Culbert "Cub" Rutenber, 91, probably was the oldest person attending the Austin worship event. "I guess I'm here to affirm and encourage the young people," said the retired seminary professor and former president of the American Baptist Convention.
___Rutenber had a word of advice for the younger people: "In embracing the new, don't throw out the old."
___And he offered advice to his older peers as well: "Every older generation should relate to the new generation. I think it's good for both groups."
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