Thursday, January 17, 2008

overheard: edgy church breaks old rules, insists on new ones

ROCHESTER, Minn. — At The Circle, a young, innovative church which meets in a renovated bus depot, there is no pulpit, platform or pastor, as such. The congregation rejects the labels "Christian" and "congregation," preferring "followers of Jesus" and "friendship community."
There are no ushers, but rather "helpers."
There is no worship team, but rather "God artists."
And woe to anyone who affixes traditional church labels to any of it.
"God's doing a new thing here," says Mitch Townsend, the leader of the church. He shuns the "pastor" label and insists people call him, "Hey, man," or simply "Dude." If someone slips and calls him "pastor," he bristles and gently rebukes them.
"We got rid of all those old labels," he says. "There's no going back."


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4 comments:

Mike Murrow said...

pfft.

there is no pulpit, just a spot where someone preaches from.
there is no pastor, just someone who does the same stuff called "dude".
no ushers, just helpers.
no worhip team, just god artists.

they are right, there is no going back - cause they haven't gone anywhere.

sounds like they are just rearanging the deck chairs.

meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

this is neither edgy or new.

"but wait see we call it something else see, so it is different!"

"and we have tattoos"

snore.

cade said...

mike, i would like you to meet larknews. lark, this is mike. i'm sure you two will get along fine.

Ariah said...

I thought this was a real article before I clicked on the link, dude!

g13 said...

gotta love larknews.

thanks for stopping by man. glad to have you here.