My first Sunday in Marin, some fellow seminarians invited me to a local church that had recently been started by a Golden Gate graduate. They described the place as "real casual," so I slipped into some khakis and left my ties in the closet. But upon our arrival at the high school cafeteria where the church met, I noticed that at least half the crowd was wearing shorts and t-shirts, including the guitar- and drum-playing members of a worship band. As we settled into the folding chairs that had been set out in lieu of pews, I whispered, "Are y’all sure this is a Baptist church?" My confusion was heightened by the congregation’s name: Mt. Tam Christian Community. Not only did this title omit the word "Baptist," it dropped the word "church"! What the heck was a "Christian Community"—some kind of hippie deal? I soon met Bart, Mt. Tam’s pastor, who had arrived that morning on a crotch-rocket motorcycle. Bart assured me that the church was duly affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention and explained that its name and worship style had been chosen to overcome any preconceptions Marin natives had about Christianity. I wondered how locals took the news when they joined the church and learned that they were now, in fact, Southern Baptists. But Bart was so infectiously upbeat that I didn’t have the heart to rain on his parade. Bart’s enthusiasm carried over into the sermon, a spirited but down-to-earth talk that made Christianity sound like the hottest thing going. According to this young pastor, the Christian life was not about what you ought to do, but what you got to do—you got to connect with your Creator and find your life’s true purpose. Conspicuously absent were any exhortations to tithe, attend Bible studies, or help in the nursery. This sounded pretty good, but could you really build a church on such fluff? It didn’t seem likely, but the next week I decided to don some shorts, return to Mt. Tam, and find out. As subsequent posts will show, that decision shaped the course of my life for the next 10 years. But at the time, I was mostly happy about the shorts.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Mt. Tam Christian Community
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2 comments:
That old bait and switch tactic has unnerved me for quite some time, too. The first thing you want to do when you plant a church is put "Community" in the name, because actually, you are ashamed of who you are.
I wonder if Bart's explanation was not necessarily so that Marin County natives wouldn't be sidetracked by preconceptions about Christianity, but about Baptists.
Tony - You're right in that the troubling word was probably "Baptist" more than "Christian." In hindsight, I do think there was a legitimate desire to have people judge the church on its own merits instead of dismissing it by name only and never visiting. In those early days, Mt. Tam was not particularly "seeker driven" apart from the name choice.
However, the church (which now meets under a different name) embraced more seeker-driven strategies as time went on, and that's where the bait-and-switch danger arises. Sometimes the goal becomes creating an attractive image rather than expressing who you really are as a church.
Of course, that's painting with a broad brush, and over time my real beef with seeker methods became the incredible amount of energy and resources that were devoted to putting on a high-quality, entertaining worship "performance" rather than investing in practical ministries to the community. Maybe you can do both, but I didn't like the balance.
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