Not Quite Your Typical UB Service

Steve Dennie

September 1999

In October 1998, two United Brethren churches started worship services aimed at a specific age group--roughly, young adults from age 18 to 35. They have a lot of music, often rowdy music, and little else resembles what most of us call "church." But that's okay. The service isn't designed for the typical UB churchgoer. In both cases, the church saw a need to reach young adults--the post-high school, post-college, out-on-your-own group.

The services are led by guitar-playing associate ministers:

Matt Sargent of King Street UB in Chambersburg, Pa.
Tim Flickinger of Fowlerville UB in Fowlerville, Mich.

Matt and Tim responded to some questions about this new breed of service and how it's working for them.

What goes on in your service?

Matt: We rock hard for a half hour, and then Pat preaches. That's a little facetious, but it's our basic format. We have about 35 minutes of blended praise, prayer, and nuggets of teaching revolving around the music. Generally, we start with two or three really intense rock songs that are way out there. Then we do intermediate-type songs, and we usually close with intense, slow, ballady-type worship songs. But sometimes we want to do all celebration, and we'll hit them hard for the whole time.

We try to do everything that would be clerical--the announcements, response forms--at the beginning. Once we get rolling, the structure allows very little chance of distraction. We want people to stay connected for 70 minutes, constantly, without even a mini-opportunity to disconnect.

We have an incredible atmosphere of celebration
at our baptismal services. Everybody cheers. -- Tim

Tim: We try to get a lot of interaction, though not necessarily from new people. We don't want the service to be a show up front, but something everybody participates in. We've had paper up all over the walls, with markers everywhere so people could write praises on them for everyone to see. One time, to illustrate the sermon, we had arm-wrestling contests. Sometimes at the end we'll have people who need prayer come up and have other people join them. We do a lot of themes, too, with everything revolving around that day's theme.

We try to have one or two young adults give a testimony every week. It allows other people their age to go, "Hey, God makes a difference at my age."

We've had four baptism services where we brought in a hot tub, because we don't have a baptismal, rearranged the whole sanctuary, and baptized a whole lot of people. On two of those weeks, we invited people to make a public commitment to Christ that day. We had persons respond both times, and we baptized them right there. The whole place went nuts. We have an incredible atmosphere of celebration at our baptismal services. Everybody cheers.

Matt: One thing that needs to be consistent in services like this is flexibility. If it really seems you need to stop and have a prayer, or to add a song, you do it. The flexibility communicates, to this young adult audience, that what you're doing is genuine. You're not just following a format.

For some people, "contemporary" means songs like "Shine Jesus Shine." For others, "contemporary" means the Newsboys. How do you characterize your music?

Matt: Newsboys. We intentionally push the envelope as to how contemporary we can be and remain appropriate. We ask ourselves, "What songs are young adults listening to on the radio? What Christian music do they buy that is appropriate for worship?" We want to tap into that. We also keep an ear to the ground as far as what praise songs are making a connection with people in the major conferences they go to, like the Creation festivals.

King Street Regular services are held in the sanctuary at 8:30 and 11:00, with Sunday school at 9:45. The contemporary service meets in the fellowship hall at 9:45, with its own Sunday school at 11:00.

Fowlerville. There's a traditional worship service at 8:00, an informal service at 9:30 that uses a blend of contemporary music and hymns, and the contemporary service at 11:00. Sunday school at 9:30 and 11:00.

Tim: We do some songs from Third Day, some Vineyard stuff, a wide variety of songs. Sometimes the songs are rocky. We'll even do some songs with a country feel, which most of them don't care for. Some songs that teenagers love, young adults think are stupid.

I'll bring songs to the group to practice that I think are awesome, and they'll go, "That's a stupid song. We don't like it." Some songs have clicked, and some we've tried a couple times and not used anymore.

Matt: It takes a smattering. Between the ages of 18 and 28, you probably have four different segments as to what they listen to on a regular basis and would consider cool Christian music. The challenge is to try to please everybody without ending up pleasing nobody. We've found that each group is willing to give, if everybody understands that we're going to do it all, the entire spectrum. But you must be willing to go to the extreme hard end, the hard stuff that is usually taboo, to gain their trust and let them know you're willing to walk the line for them.

You push the envelope to stretch it, but if you stretch too hard, you go through it and have some damage to repair. We did Mark Farner's version of Jesus Loves Me, and from a technical perspective, we nailed it. But it was just too fast. I had a great time playing it. But unfortunately, we had 180 blank stares, so it accomplished absolutely nothing. Except to tell us, "You have crossed the line. Now go back a couple steps and start gently pushing the envelope again."

Tim: After a month or two, some people began saying, "Why don't you sing some of the classic church songs?" When I included some of those, the guitarist said, "Why are we doing these songs? These are favorites of a certain group of people. We're developing favorites for a whole new church, songs that they'll look back on as the ones they love to sing." That really changed my ideas. Our focus needs to be on pleasing the people we're trying to reach.

Matt: It's Kingdom thinking. We're meeting the needs of a specific group of people. What we do is no better or worse than the hymns being sung in the sanctuary during the 8:30 service, if that helps them have a genuine experience with the Lord.

Tim: We don't want the service to be music-driven. Music definitely plays a key role, but we want people to look beyond the music and realize, "We're here for a purpose."

Matt: That's an excellent insight. The goal is to keep them connected for the whole time, to have this experience of being with the Lord. And if you create dependencies, whether in preaching style or music style or even format, they'll disconnect after their needs are met.

We're there to worship, not to put on a
concert and then have preaching. -- Matt

What really pleases you about how your service is going?

Matt: One of my goals is to not let people leave without having genuinely worshipped. I think that is occurring. If you arrive and don't feel like worshipping, we'll try our best to suck you in and knock down those things keeping you from entering into a real time with God.

Tim: One girl in her mid-20s started attending, and one Sunday she brought a couple guys--big guys, about her age--who had never been to church in their entire lives. It was so cool to see her bringing people who had never been to church--the people who were part of our target audience. They've been back a few times, and they're thinking, I might be able to get used to this.

Matt: We're very pleased with what happens during the service. People are inviting their friends and family, the gospel is being introduced, and we are making inroads into that audience. However, we struggle with developing relationships outside of those 70 minutes. We do some of the ice-breaker things to get people talking to each other, but when we leave on Sunday morning, we don't have much interaction with each other until the next Sunday. We're trying to address those issues now.

It's a challenge, because this service is geared to people who often don't want to get involved right away. They are observers. But for that congregation to grow in a healthy way, we need to do more in the area of relationships.

Tim: That may be a generational thing. It's such a mobile group. They have a lot of unchurched friends that they enjoy being with and a variety of activities they enjoy doing--which can be a great benefit when they get excited about reaching their friends, because they can reach people I never will. But getting them to connect with other believers and build deep relationships--that's an area we're working on. People are sometimes a little tentative about getting involved in things outside the Sunday morning celebration time.

Matt: We have been overwhelmed by how well our other members have accepted this very alternative service. During our service, a Sunday school class for older ladies, the Golden Links class, meets right above the fellowship hall where we hold our service. We were concerned about them, but they've been so supportive. Their comment was, "It doesn't sound a whole lot like music to us, but if it's reaching people, we'll put up with it." Their attitude was one of the tremendous blessings about this process. It was inconveniencing them, but their inconvenience was worth what was being profited for the kingdom.

From the September-October1999 issue of the Connect newsletter, Interview by Steve Dennie