Recovering Evangelicals #55 Church for those who aren’t into God?
The Sunday Assembly build a community and celebrate life by rejigging a traditional church service …… but leaving out all the “God-stuff”.
We’ve been hearing over the past few episodes how important community is in the faith journey … for devout believers returning to church (Ep. #51) … for those trying to now revitalize the church experience (Ep. #52)… and even for those trying to help those struggling through the journey of faith deconstruction (Ep. #53 and #54).
Today, we’re going to talk to people who fully deconstructed their faith, and decided to leave church entirely behind, but felt they missed community so much, they would re-create the church experience entirely, replacing all the religious components with secular surrogates.
The Sunday Assembly substitute most aspects of the church experience—worship songs and a sermon with inspirational but non-religious surrogates; prayer with meditation or a moment of reflection; communion with simply sharing a meal; infant baptisms/Christenings with baby namings; short-term missions with community clean-ups—all without any reference to God.
And it started a wave that swept around the globe. The one group in London UK that started in January of 2013 has now grown to 45 chapters in 8 different countries around the globe (their growth trajectory hasn’t been as good as that sounds … we explore that within the episode). We talked to two key leaders in the movement: Colin Lee leads the one functioning chapter in Canada, and Matt Lockwood leads the one in London UK which started the ball rolling. We find out what drew them to the Sunday Assembly in the first place, why they invest so much time in leading their local chapters, what’s involved in pulling off their events, what the Assembly stands for (their mandate and charter).
And we find out that they share so many things in common with traditional churches, including a vulnerability to COVID, a dependence on community … as well as a tendency toward denominationalism!
You can find out more about the Sunday Assembly at www.sundayassembly.com
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