Thursday, September 25
Knoxville News Sentinel article about Crossings…
I just realized I forgot to post this article published in the Knoxville paper on September 6th…(it’s edited down a little from the original because of length)Trio of downtown churches appeal to younger, urban parishioners
by Joy Fethe/Special to the News Sentinel
"As the city goes, the region goes," says Doug Banister, pastor of All Souls Church. "It's kind of like the heart."
That conviction is what led Banister, who formerly pastored Fellowship Church in West Knoxville, to leave suburbia and help start All Souls four years ago downtown. Now he's preparing to move even closer to the pulse of the city: the church, which meets in the convention rooms of Holiday Inn, will relocate its offices and meetings to 4 Market Square when renovation to the building is complete sometime this fall. The building will house a restaurant and the concert venue where the church will meet on Sunday evenings. On Sunday mornings, the same room will host Crossings, which currently meets in the Downtown West movie theatre. A third downtown church, Knoxville Life, is similarly nontraditional in both style and location, meeting in the Regal Riviera movie theatre since its beginning in October.
These new churches are all focused on appealing to a diverse and changing urban population while remaining true to the teachings of Christ, and that's not all they have in common. To varying degrees, all three draw a young crowd and are culturally alternative, supportive of the arts, and less politically conservative than most churches.
This political diversity may be part of the allure for the under-35 crowd that dominates the three churches. Young people who are politically active are more likely to be interested in traditionally liberal causes like environmentalism and social justice, yet the majority of white evangelicals in America identify themselves as Republican, according to Gallup polls.
The pastors at these churches, however, are comfortable with terms like "social justice" with politically progressive connotations - All Souls even has a "Justice Team" that meets monthly, and plans to guide the church in partnering with a disadvantaged neighborhood in the fall. "What we're learning about social justice is that it's long-term, relational, incarnational," Banister says. "It's being present in the neighborhood for a long time." Knoxville Life takes a similarly ground-level view of social change, and its members have already had work days to clean up nearby storefronts and serve food to the homeless at nearby charities.
And Crossings, on top of its social outreach, has taken on a traditionally liberal issue that's gaining traction amongst younger Christians: the environment. They have a Green Team charged with monitoring and reducing their environmental impact, although "we're not very good at it yet," Mark Nelson, pastor of Crossings, says laughing.
But the churches make a concerted effort to remain "aggressively nonpartisan" on stage, as Nelson puts it, so that people of any political stripe will feel welcome. Banister says that both people who campaign for Obama and for McCain attend All Souls.
All three are aware, however, that in taking an active role downtown, they may encounter resistance based on, as Nelson says, "preconceived notions of what people of faith are about." During the service at Knoxville Life, Sara Alsobrooks mentions a recent Knoxville Voice article in which some residents expressed concern about what kind of impact these newer churches might have. And Nelson acknowledges fears of hellfire-preaching and Bible-beating, but responds, "That's OK. They'll get to know us - and we are not that." He adds, "We just want to look like and act like and talk like and smell like Jesus."
Mark Nelson at 3:12 PM 1comments
1 Comments
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at 12:51 PM
The Anonymous Human said... All I want to know is...
How do you sign up to be on the "Justice Team"? And, how soon after do you get your special powers?