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Hillcrest Church Office
March 4, 2004
LeaderLines is a weekly “e-briefing” providing valuable information and inspiration to those who serve at Hillcrest Baptist Church.
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Here is this week's
“An EPIC Church for EPIC Times”
by Tom Goodman
Sociologist Leonard Sweet says we need to be an EPIC church, because we live in EPIC times. In his writings, the word “EPIC” stands for four characteristics of our time. These characteristics are culture-wide, and mark those who attend
our church as well as those we’re appealing to. Sweet says that a relevant ministry today will be—
E—Experiential. Sweet says, “Each one of us is
P—Participatory. We want to be part of the process, not detached observers: in worship we want to kneel or raise our hands, we respond to responsive readings, and we don’t just want a trained group to sing to
us—we want to sing with them. This is an indication that we want, in Sweet’s words, “interactive, immersive, ‘in your face’ participation in the mysteries of God.”
I—Image-driven. Film clips, story-telling, meaningful church logos, and symbolism: these are power-tools of church work today. For example, the Lord’s Supper is becoming more meaningful—and frequent—in many
churches.
C—Connected. We want to interact with others, to know and be known. Sweet says, “The transiency of the culture requires that our community building and hospitality be more aggressive, not less; more premeditated, not
haphazard.” Increasingly, I’m seeing people connect and identify with a church—even informally calling it “my church”—before they make a profession of faith. As I’ve said before, in many cases “belonging precedes
believing.”
I think he’s pegged our culture—those within our church and those we hope our church will attract. But we have to be careful how to respond to these observations. We tend to respond to these kinds of observations like a
pendulum—swinging from one extreme to the other. Instead, we need balance:
People want and need experience, but that doesn’t mean there’s no longer a place to educate people in our faith. We need to have “faith” (experience) and know “the faith” (education).
People want and need participation (like congregational singing), but that certainly doesn’t mean we have no place for presentation (like prepared ensemble and choral pieces). In fact, any good
presentation will provoke my heart’s participation even if my body or voice is not joining in.
People want and need images, but that doesn’t mean they no longer need instruction in the propositions of the faith. For example, Jesus commanded us to observe the Lord’s Supper, but he also told us to
instruct. Every age, generation, and culture will need both images and instruction.
People want and need to be connected to other people in accountability, but we’ll fail them if we don’t teach people what we used to call competency of the soul, which means that each of us have the right and
the responsibility of developing our own relationship with God.
So, we need to be an EPIC church, but apparently we have a choice: in Sweet’s writings, “EPIC” means “experience, participation, image-driven, and connected.” But it can also mean “education, presentation, instruction, and competency of
the soul.” Which definition will we choose?
After nine months with you, you already know my answer: Yes!
If our church has emphasized education at the expense of experience, for example, the solution is not to drop education for the exclusive pursuit of experience. Instead, we need to consciously include both. The same goes for
the other extremes: participation-versus-presentation, images-versus-information, and connectivity-versus-competency. If you’ll just change the “versus” to an “and,” you’ll find the characteristics of a great church!
Tom
Notes:
• Spread the word about our new Sunday night series, Experiencing the Passion of the Christ. At our website (www.HillcrestAustin.org) you will find an Acrobat version of our
promotional flyer and an attractive e-card for you to send to friends. You can also pick up as many flyers as you need from the church office.
• This past Sunday David Kemerling announced his upcoming departure from our church staff. It was a sweet report and response on Sunday night. If you need more information about David’s plans and the future of our
singles ministry, go to www.HillcrestAustin.org/singles where we’ve posted last week’s edition of LeaderLines.