A new church called New Church. . .

I have mentioned the FiveTwo enterprise, with its roots in LCMS Texas congregations and official sanction by several LCMS districts, including and especially the Texas District.  It was the source of the sacramental entrepreneurs thrust for defining Lutherans and Lutheran mission endeavors.  It is certainly missional (according to those who use that term) and on the cutting edge of things (meaning skirting the fringes).

The claim is that the theology is the same but the practices borrow from the best (meaning effective) practices of other churches, business methodologies, and social constructs.  They are entrepreneurs -- they keep the faith and take what works to package up and deliver that faith.  At least that is their claim.

"In our culture today, very few un-churched people are looking for a church service. They are, however, longing for a place to feel cared for, and a place where they can care for others. When they meet Jesus there, it all makes sense."  So says one of the leaders of a FiveTwo mission planting efforts within the Michigan District.

Perhaps the best known and most clearly articulated vision of this strategy is New Church -- a mission in Katy, Texas, under the leadership of Frank Hart.  Watch the videos below.  According to those who go there, New Church is a big tent revival with an edge, has music that sings like a prayer, offers Jesus' words as He really would have said them, and does not feel like church.  (The last part is certainly true both in terms of the intent of New Church and the result).  It is pretty new (launched in March of 2016). 

According to Hart, they meet on a Saturday night for worship, food, drink, and fellowship, their sound track is rock music, and they emply a heavily sarcastic style of humor.  He believes that the music in worship should be indigenous to the culture and theirs is clearly classic rock.  The church is a placed where you can hear what you may not have heard before, say what you dared not say before, and where they really mean come as you are.  Their goal is for you to walk in and feel at home and to provide a place where you can become more and more what God wants you to be (the real path of freedom).

Their tag line is this: 

Your home is your first place,
your work is your second.
Your THIRD PLACE
is where you meet your friends
and find your true identity.
NewChurch might be your THIRD PLACE.

Finally, he insists that they are not some mamby pamby churchy church like all the rest of the churches around and they are not for everyone (well, not for those who like mamby pamby churchy church).  

I would suspect he has a congregation like mine in mind with this and probably most of the congregations of the LCMS would come close to his definition of churchy church with which he wants nothing to do.   I would also suspect that he views this enterprise as real and authentic in a way that most LCMS congregations are not.  And I would suspect that most LCMS congregations would view his enterprise as not very Lutheran.  That said, it is clear that the division in Synod between so-called missionals and maintenance folks is not over which music is sung but what kind of church we intend to be.  Lutheran is but subset of beliefs for this new church and the culture is the driving force in what this church looks like and does.  This is the real tension in our church body -- can Lutheran be merely a subset of beliefs or is it the identity that Sunday morning expresses?