#129 – A new way to “do church”

“Why not just throw the worship service out the window, and re-think what it means to be a Christian community?”

Most Christians today have nestled into, or hopped between, a very standard modern expression of Christian faith, one that involves meeting for an hour on Sunday and having an unchanging mixture of songs, scripture reading, announcements, sermon, and prayer. Many people are leaving churches, and even Christianity itself, because it just doesn’t meet their spiritual needs.

Today, we talk to Dr. Evan Amo, who did theological training at Princeton Theological Seminary and after a few traditional conservative Christian pastoral placements, asked: “why not just throw the worship service out the window, and just re-think what it means to be a Christian community?”

Here are the main points in our conversation of his spiritual journey and his own answer to that question:

• grew up in a typical mainline Presbyterian church with a traditional worship style that was beginning to experiment with “contemporary worship”; quite comfortable and satisfied in that setting and with those traditions; “inerrancy and ‘personal relationship’ was the default thinking there”
• went off to university which introduced him to a more critical approach to the Bible, and joined a different Evangelical church which was a bit less conservative; both began to challenge some of his theological upbringing
• also began developing musical skills; formed a band
• following his undergraduate degree, and some Christian leadership experience at a Christian camp, as well as “doors being closed” in his music career, Evan began graduate training at Princeton Theological Seminary
• never had aspirations for typical pastoral career, but wanted something “outside of the box”; theological interests started curving toward social justice and liberation theology; these were hugely influenced by socio-political upheavals in the U.S. at the time
• after graduating from Princeton, he served for two years in a large church in North Carolina; then moved on to a temporary supply pastor position in a nearby small rural — and very conservative — Presbyterian church; this help shaped his sensitivity toward, and abilities to speak to, people with a very different worldview
• served four years in a small aging African-American church in Denver, including the years of COVID and racial unrest in the U.S.
• most recently, he has started a whole new venture in Denver, supported by the Presbytery of Denver, one that is completely different in how it engages Christian faith; a spiritual community that combines worship in nature (meditation hikes) with social justice and compassion work with marginalized groups in the inner city; this includes people from other faith traditions (Catholic) and world religions (Judaism; Buddhism); also very connected to Celtic spirituality, and indigenous spirituality
• his vocation better addresses issues in the current Post-Christendom age (marked by a major disaffiliation of society from traditional church)
• church and state have traditionally been kept separate ….. Christian Nationalism seeks to reverse that; conservative Christians have nostalgia for a long-gone era …. feel threatened by on-going cultural and demographic changes in which white people become a minority
• our discussion of Celtic/indigenous spirituality led to a lot of exploration of panentheism in Christian thinking (including the Apostle Paul) which many contemporary Christians are either unaware of or they react strongly against that
• is there a disconnect between trying to worship God in a very natural setting (remember, Evan’s doing this in the Rocky Mountains of Denver) while engaging in inner city ministry? And for other cities which don’t have such natural beauty (the heart of Detroit) or don’t have “an inner city problem” (rural Idaho), how can they learn from and apply this new idea?
• Evan is also an accomplished musician, and gave us a lot of descriptive insights about his two albums (their inspiration; their meaning), and excerpts from several songs

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more information about Evan’s new way of “doing church” at their website or Instagram account, and his music at www.bruisedreeds.bandcamp.com.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode #115, where we talked with Dr. Gregory Mobley about interfaith learning and finding God in unconventional places.

Episode image by permission from Dr. Evan Amo.

To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher.

Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook.

Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive