I saw an interesting ad from Greensboro’s Presbyterian Church of the Covenant in the Nov. 30-Dec. 13 edition of the Greater Greensboro Observer, a free progressive biweekly tabloid (“The Triad’s only news, sports & entertainment biweekly”) that I picked up at the coffee shop in Elon.

On the bottom half of the inside front cover, this text in two columns with no graphics:

(Column 1)
If you are tired of the same old church
experience
You might try the 9:20 service
On Sunday mornings at Presbyterian Church of the Covenant.
No kidding.
A Presbyterian Church is stepping outside the staid old traditions
And doing something new.
It will take being there
To believe it,
And, even then, you’ll be wondering
When they are going to spring the same old, same old on you.
You know, up, down,
Hymns, creeds, confessions,
etc.
You may look for it,
But, you won’t find it.
(Column 2)
There will be music by local artists
(non-religious music by non-religious local
artists).
Silence.
A spiritual reflection.
An opportunity for dialogue.
And more fun than you’ve
Ever had in church.
But, it will take being there
To believe it.

http://www.athinkingchurch.org
The web address says it all.

I like parts of it, though I think it crosses the line into “in order to be relevant we’re going to be just like the culture” territory and reminds me from a section in the recent Christian Century article on the emerging church that has stuck with me for several days:

While emerging churches talk a lot about being relevant to postmodern culture, they are also aware that there is a danger in relevance. Lauren Winner, author of Girl Meets God, posed the question this way at the convention: “How do you simultaneously attend to the culture and be a pocket of resistance? You can’t be a pocket of resistance without attending . . . but I still think people come to church when church is different from the world, when there is something noticeably ecclesial in the broadest sense, when church seems like church rather than a shopping mall.”
(snip)
This kind of relevance will also include the recognition that the church becomes relevant precisely by offering something that the culture does not. In a loud and frenzied world, that may mean creating a space where people can bask in silence and rest in liturgical rhythms. In a world of superficial entertainment, it may mean throwing parties that nurture deep and authentic community. In these ways relevance and resistance begin to look more like dance partners and less like competing suitors for the church’s soul.

Perhaps “relevant-resistant” is another way of naming the “incarnational” church. To incarnate the reign of God means to take on local flesh, to speak the vernacular, to dive deep into the cultural particularities of a time and place. But as Jesus shows, to embody God’s word in a time and place is both to participate in the world of the fallen and to offer an alternative to that world. The emerging church, to be anything other than a hip blip on the radar of American religion, will need to live the tension of “relevant-resistant” no less than it lives the tension of “ancient-future.”

Most church marketing (and most church life) leans too far toward cultural resistance, and I think this ad leans too far toward cultural acceptance. The trick is walking the narrow path in the middle.