Church for a changing culture: an introduction to alternative worship

15: Evangelism

To many people in our culture evangelism is not a good thing and is not welcome.

This cultural mood is not aimed solely at the Church, but at any organisation seeking new members through personal persuasion rather than passive advertising. We fear that we may not be able to back out or change our minds. However, in our secular society an un-asked for approach is the only contact many people have with Christianity. It may be seen as an attempt to gain power over the lives of others, rather than as an expression of love and concern for their eternal wellbeing. Many people think that they will be 'got at' if they set foot inside a church, and are highly resistant to what they see as sales pitches from an institution masquerading in trendy clothes. In an age sensitive to the abuses of power, the Church finds itself under suspicion.

Alternative Worship is not a form of evangelism as such.

It is not about dressing the Church up in contemporary clothes to appeal to outsiders. It is not about putting on a spectacle in order to get a message across. It is an attempt by the people involved to make worship for themselves, in forms that allow them to bring their whole selves and lives before God. But this makes what goes on more accessible to outsiders - because it's recognisably part of the world they live in, touches the issues they care about, isn't just a religious experience that you have to be an insider to get. Sometimes they start to see where God is in their own lives - and that's often not where religious convention would have us expect.

Many churches now use contemporary music and media, and yet the emphasis remains on the leaders and their message. Alternative Worship, whatever its forms of technology or culture, puts the power in the hands of the participants to construct their own encounter with God using the materials provided. There are no strings attached and no predetermined outcome. Visitors are not targeted but encouraged to take part in the worship at whatever level they feel comfortable - or just sit back and watch. Much of what goes on is accessible to people at many levels and degrees of involvement, and the absence of 'threat' allows people to open up to God without having their freedom or dignity infringed.

For churches interested in evangelism, there is a danger that worship becomes manipulative, done a particular way to engineer the desired outcome.

Many churches are tempted to pick up the latest fashionable 'tool', use it for a while, and if it doesn't 'work' - 'work' often being defined as producing conversions of a particular kind in a particular timescale - it is discarded as a 'failure'. Not only does this damage the integrity of the tools, it leaves a legacy of suspicion about the real motives behind their use, wherever they are used. And it also denies the people who have 'used' and discarded the tools any longer-term or more subtle blessings that might have accrued from their use.

And it misses the point, because if the tool is good it connects people to God. What the two of them do about it then is up to them. Evangelism as usually practised works from a 'closed set' model, and seeks proof that one has crossed the boundary. Alternative Worship, working from an 'open set' model, seeks change of direction, which is less susceptible to immediate proof and, like turning the proverbial oil tanker, may not be visible until long after the rudder has been swung.