Via Christus Community Church
Pastor Mike has responded to this survey.
The other night, I went to Via Christus Community Church (http://viachristus.org/) in Yorkville, IL. Unlike other places I’ve been to, this was a new church — an offshoot of another, larger one — that is still in its beginning stages. In fact, the meeting took place in the pastor’s living room.
While the number of people was only around 20, they were all eager to see each other. Many were new. Many had only known each other for a couple weeks. But they were quickly united under their belief in Christ.
From what I heard, the reason this Church had begun was twofold: First, Yorkville is a rapidly growing town and people were eager to find a church they connected with. Secondly, Pastor Mike and his former church associates had a type of falling out due to differing philosophies (akin to conservative vs. liberal theologies). I guess Pastor Mike was too progressive. Many of the people at Mike’s place that night were those who followed him from his previous church. This worked out personally, since I was able to see a truly (what I would consider) liberal church. There was no “everyone else is wrong” atmosphere. That’s not to say everyone felt that all religions were right — the gatherers did believe Christ was the one true way to God. But they managed to convey this without putting all other faiths down, and I loved to see that.
The actual “service” was also a unique experience because there were no expectations of what had to be done. Pastor Mike and other members were free to experiment with how they ran the evening. This included listening to Christian rock music to open the night (Casting Crowns was the CD they put in… which made me wonder why there’s no Atheist music. Is it because we lack a muse? I’m not talking about Ozzy Osbourne/Prince of Darkness or pro-devil stuff. I mean music actually espousing Atheism). We also took some time to do some personal reflection on how we want to improve our lives, while listening to “Gregorian chant” music. I enjoyed it. It was different. I don’t think these types of things are possible when the church grows to such large numbers. And since I expect Via Christus to grow quickly, I hope they don’t lose the sense to keep trying different things when people start getting used to what they do each week.
Of course, there was the Bible study and prayer portions of the evening. But it was interesting to see how few limits there were when no dogma had been set.
During the Bible study, we looked at Luke, Chapter 3. I presume a lot of small groups talk about what was going on historically at the time, as well as how we would feel if we were in the positions of those in the verses. Would we act the same? What would John the Baptist say to us? Etc. Unlike other small groups, though, I think the benefit here was that since people were new and more informal, there was more side discussion allowed. When Pastor Mike brought up a particular point, we were able to go on tangents without detracting from the lesson. It definitely kept me engaged. He managed to address both the historicity of the time period as well as how the passage was relevant to our lives.
Throughout the discussion here, I noticed that Pastor Mike was the only one talking. When he asked questions, people would answer him, but no one was raising any questions of their own. Is this because they assumed Mike would tell them what they needed to know? Do other small groups have more Q+A aspects to them? I understand this might be hard to do at a larger church, but in smaller gatherings, it seems like a wasted opportunity to not question how we know something is accurate or why a particular thing was going on.
By the way, do Bible study groups only look at the New Testament? This is mostly my own ignorance, but I can’t remember hearing of a small group that discussed Genesis. It’s always the Gospels…
Anyway, during the night a few side discussions arose, and what was intriguing about that was that I found many of the people feeling the same way I felt. For example, there was a common feeling of awkwardness when seeing street preachers walking towards you… a mutual sort of disdain for extremely conservative Christian sects. I was actually surprised to hear this since a number of the people there were graduates of Wheaton College, a conservative Evangelical school in Wheaton, IL. It’d be interesting to hear conversations/discussions on that campus…
Pastor Mike asked us at one point to write down (and then discuss) times where we felt a calling for a change in our lives (this stemmed from the section of Luke we were reading). One woman mentioned that she was feeling stressed/overwhelmed; that she wanted one thing, but it seemed God wanted another, and she didn’t want to fight anymore. It was brutally honest. And I empathized with her words, while thinking to myself that if I were in her shoes, I’m not sure what I would do. I would probably think that I’m not doing enough. I’d be frustrated that everything I’m working on seems overshadowed by something else. But for this woman, the dichotomy of her want and God’s want allowed her to see things from a different perspective, and that gave her the comfort she needed; something would work out eventually for her. Atheists don’t have that feeling — it might work out, it might not. There’s no guarantee of a happy ending. And I think that’s more realistic, but it certainly doesn’t make me feel better when times are rough. Even though I may not agree with her assessment, I’m not sure if I could tell her anything that would comfort her.
When we finished, the Pastor made a request for people to come back to the next meeting as well as to help for a big Easter “kick-off” ceremony occurring in a few weeks. Mike said they were going to send approximately 10,000 postcards to people in the community, inviting them to come visit their new church (which for that weekend and onward, would be in a local YMCA).
I asked Pastor Mike if there were any other churches in the area, and he said there were nine others in the area. I asked why there needed to be another one. He responded that people may not have found a church they clicked with just yet. He added that so many new people move into the area each week that they are bound to look for a church. He didn’t mean this in a competitive way, but I wondered if he’d be happy or sad if the people who were looking for a church joined a different one.
I kept thinking of the Marx quotation, “Religion is the opiate of the masses” (Oh, the comments I’ll get for mentioning that…). I mean religion “sells” itself; is the promoting of the church really necessary? Won’t people find the church if they’re looking for it? I suppose a new church would want to let people know it’s out there, but I imagine very few people would get the postcard and think, “Wow, I need to go to church now!” Instead, most people would see the postcard and toss it away. I could be wrong. But for what it’s worth, I think Pastor Mike was on the same page as me, and was focusing on the minority of people that might be interested in seeing the new church and helping it grow.
I liked the way Pastor Mike ran the service. It wasn’t just a “small group,” poring over Biblical minutia. It was a small gathering of people trying to grow their faith in a number of different ways. It’s a type of Christianity no Atheist should have a problem with. In fact, it seemed the only people who would be against it were conservative Christians like the ones who told Mike to leave the old place.
I left the night trying to compare Via Christus with Willow Creek. Is one type of service more engaging than the other? Does one serve the people better? What is better: 100 churchs of 100 people? Or 1 church of 10000 people?
