The Next Church Worship Movement?

The OC Register carries an article today on Faith Forward, what looks to be a new church worship movement which is described as by one speaker as an attempt to "try to bridge the gap across three generations of churchgoers and reach out to younger generations who are less familiar with the church, says Robert V. "Bobby" Schuller." Schuller is the grandson of Crystal Cathedral founding pastor Robert Schuller, and the son of current senior pastor (wait for it) Robert Schuller (the son). Schuller was questioned about Faith Forward:

Q. What is the goal of Faith Forward?

A. One of the attempts of Faith Forward is to build bridges between three very different kinds of Christian traditions. There has been a misnomer that the younger generation is looking for what is hip and trendy and all of this stuff when it comes to spirituality.

I think for a lot of younger people, 20s and teens, the postmodern, a lot of them are coming from a world where their whole life has been consumed by materialism, by shops, by the idea that your identity is located in what people say about you, what you own and what you do for a living. People want to break free from that.

We find our identity from being children of God … no matter what people say about us, we're children of God. It's relevant. So many younger people are looking for something beyond the show. They are looking for a deep and real intimate relationship and what I found is that people desire something more vintage, not something in style. Vintage is something that is older but really valuable.

The younger generation is going after something that is older than the older generation. They are going to France to go to monasteries, people going to old cathedrals for lay worshipping to seek a deeper and ancient experience.

There is a lot of butting heads about which one is right, especially in O.C., where there is a greater emphasis on youth. A lot of older generations have been offended. The younger generation feels bound by older generations. We try to resolve in all of this and create a forum in which three generations can have a meaningful experience. ...

Q. What are the big challenges for maintaining and growing a membership these days?

A. One of the big problems for the group 16 to 30 is that a lot of their parents are coming out of a Christian world ... they went to Sunday school, but a lot of them left church.

Their kids never went to church. Their spiritual journey has become very different.
For us, it's a new journey, a new discovery. We have been given a package by parents who didn't go to church. These are the young seekers who have heard of Jesus and never went to Sunday school. They just accepted the package.

The way to recruit those younger seekers is through relationship building. Finding role models who are Christians who, in turn, invite them to church.

And what might one of these Faith Forward type worship experiences look like?

For example, my wife and I have started The Gathering, a group of younger people who meet in a very non-traditional setting to worship. There are couches instead of pews. A lot of velvet and softly lit candles. The message comes first. Tattooed men and women pray and meditate at different stations. They sing together and share artwork.

Sounds a little more like a seance than a church service, but to each his own.