• Home
• Events
  • Google Calendar
  • Subscribe
• Cohorts
  • Find a Cohort
  • Contact Cohort Support
  • Cohort Blogs
• Groups
• About
  • FAQs
  • Values and Practices
  • Support
  • Leadership
  • Emergent Worldwide
  • Publishing Partners
• • weblog
  • podcast
  • press kit
  • donate
  • Feeds (RSS)

UnLearning Church: Engaging the Whole Person

Posted Aug 27, 11:07 AM | 4 comments | by Editor | Link

By Michael Slaughter:

Libraries seem to specialize in hard chairs, reminding me of hard-backed pews. Libraries are too quiet, too linear, too predictable, and there’s no coffee or food. They’re not open late, either. Traditional libraries are stiff and institutional, they have sterile architecture, and the chairs are uncomfortable—just like a lot of churches.

The fundamental difference lies in their philosophy of space. Libraries and churches often think functionally, rather than environmentally. They design themselves for information, rather than experience.

Like libraries, most churches are institutions of modernity and are based on how we thought people learned. When I was a kid, my parents said, “Michael, turn off the television while you’re doing your homework.” So I’d put my stereo on instead. “You can’t learn with music blaring,” my folks would continue. “Go where it’s quiet.”

Compare that setting with a phone call I once received from my son, while he was attending an Ivy League college. He was studying for the next day’s physics midterm, chatting with friends on the Internet, playing music in the background, and talking to me—all at the same time. Yet he did much better in school than I ever hoped to do myself!

The old method was to minimize noise; the new approach is to increase stimulation. Far from the old-fashioned church service where people sat quietly to hear the pastor preach and the choir sing, today’s multimedia worship engages all the senses with video, lights, surround-sound, and interactive devotional experiences. Engaging people’s senses does not require advanced technology, however—creative lighting, acoustic guitar, drama, and draped fabric create an equally multi-sensory environment. Whatever the method and style, unLearning churches are intentional about facilitating multi-sensory experiences through which people can be transformed.

UnLearning churches realize that people become engaged through environment and experiences. Such churches develop an environment that frees people and allows them to experience God in closer and deeper ways than they’ve ever experienced before. Too many people believe they cannot find an experience of God in the institutional church. This is a spiritual age in which people are looking for an experience of God more than an explanation of God.

Protestant churches, especially, can default toward proclamation over experience, with worship services featuring long, boring sermons in visually bland settings. We may joke about the “smells and bells” of more liturgical traditions, but the elaborate rituals and ornate sanctuaries of old-world cathedrals grasp something that many of us in today’s churches have forgotten—that scents and sounds as well as visual imagery and inviting textures are important in creating a worship experience that engages the whole person.

Many people today assume that all they’ll find in church are abstract, cerebral ideas, theological definitions, and moral correction. But Jesus is God coming down to earth to serve real human needs. The message of the Incarnation is that God comes to everyday people. Like me. Like the church I serve. Like the people in my community who need an experience of God. Churches that reach people today by demonstrating radical Christianity do so by leading people to experience God, not just religious practices.

UnLearning churches focus more on connecting people to meaning than to activity. Fifteen years ago, we would have emphasized getting people to show up for church programs and listen-and-learn meetings. We would have sponsored a seminar and gauged its success by how many attended. Now we measure success by asking “How are people finding life change and purpose through the experience?” People are not looking for church meetings so much as for life meaning. We want to know if their church experience makes a difference in their relationships, parenting, Christian witness, and stewardship.

This paradigm translates into the organization’s structure as well. Older-mindset churches usually require a lot of committees and meetings. Ginghamsburg finds that its people have neither the time nor the patience for multiple committee activities, so we are down to one committee of nine people called the Leadership Board. No more staff-parish, missions, or finance committees. Major businesses operate with one board, but too often tiny churches become immobilized by layers of committees. They spend hours debating about what color carpeting to put in the church narthex, or about the precise wording of the congregation’s statement of beliefs.

Today’s marketing gurus understand that today’s culture isn’t looking for information about products. People don’t want information about your religion—what people really want is a life-altering experience. UnLearning churches understand that. It’s not about policies and procedures, or even morality and ideology. It’s about relationships. It’s about creating environments where people can experience God.

Excerpted by permission from UnLearning Church: New Edition (Abingdon, 2008)

---

Michael Slaughter is Lead Pastor and Chief Dreamer of Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church in Tipp City, Ohio. He is the author of multiple books.

Bookmark this article using Remarkable!