Rethink Church: 'Mind-popping'

By Susan Passi-Klaus

It took the Rev. Lance Carrithers just five minutes to respond to an electronic Facebook post paging "excitees" willing to share their thoughts on The United Methodist Church's new awareness campaign -- Rethink Church. The senior pastor at First United Methodist Church  in Dodge City, Kan., has been hooked on the notion of rethinking church ever since he read an introductory article in Interpreter in January.

"It didn't sound like a media campaign," says the enthusiastic pastor. "Instead, it was a new vision and a call for the people called Methodists."

Within weeks of reading the article, Carrithers called his staff together to brainstorm how they could Rethink Church with the 1,000-member congregation whose mission is "seeking to create opportunities for people to encounter Christ."

"We used to think (that) meant we should create those opportunities right here in our building on Sundays and Wednesdays, and get as many people here in our building as possible. With Rethink Church, there's an entire reinvention," he said. "Now we're committed to using Rethink Church to give new thought to who we are and what we do as a church" in the community of 30,000 where the population has shifted from majority Anglo to majority Hispanic.

It didn't take long for Carrithers and his staff to get the ball rolling. The first step took place when the church's high school Sunday school class moved to a neighborhood coffee shop. The music-oriented class now starts at 11 a.m., rather than 9:45, to accommodate teenagers' sleeping habits.

Carrithers hopes to give a younger generation of churchgoers and other young people what the Rethink Church research says they want: new ways to express their faith, practical applications of faith to real life and a way to make a difference in the world.

"Mind popping!" is how the techno-savvy pastor responds to a key component of the Rethink Church media plan. It is a Web site dedicated to seekers ages 18-34, www.10thousanddoors.org. The site uses images of thousands of doors, each opening to a new way to connect with church. Seekers and other newcomers quickly see many different doors through which a person can enter into a relationship with a congregation. It might begin when a parent drops a child off at day care or a teen joins a youth group on a ski trip. The first door might be participating in a church basketball league or helping with a community project, such as Habitat for Humanity.

The Rev. Larry Hollon, general secretary of United Methodist Communications, says the positive reception to Rethink Church convinces him that people are hungry to connect with church.

"Many are simply afraid to do it," he says. "Either they've been hurt in the past, or they feel vulnerable because they don't know the language of religious faith or the practices of worship."

In February, directors of United Methodist Communications heard a panel of young adults discuss their perception of the church. According to Hollon, one young woman, who said she had been to church only once, shared that it had been a threatening experience because she did not know what to expect.

"Well, imagine that we live in a society that is increasingly made up of young folks who don't know what to expect," Hollon says. "We have to approach them with real sensitivity for what they are looking to find. What they want to find, they tell us, is a way to connect with friends they can trust. They want to be a part of a group of people that are making a difference in the world. They want to be more than individual consumer units."

"Rethink Church," he continues, provides "an opportunity to say to people that feel very vulnerable and very unsure about our motives and who we are that we are interested in hearing what they're concerned about in their relationship to God, to people of faith and to Jesus."

"The message I don't want (United Methodists) to hear is that traditional expressions of church that are meaningful to you and me ought to be abandoned," Hollon said. "The challenge is how can we be the church to all these different people with all these different understandings. It's not that we're saying sabandon who we are,' but instead we're asking how we can Rethink Church so we can incorporate other tools into our toolbox."

The fact that so many people have already jumped on the Rethink Church bandwagon makes Hollon optimistic about the campaign's impact on the church's welcoming legacy.

Rethink Church may have started as a media campaign to expand the promise first voiced in 2001: That The United Methodist Church is people of "Open Hearts. Open Minds. Open Doors." who are intentionally and genuinely welcoming and inviting. However, it quickly evolved into a vision -- as Carrithers noted -- and now a movement posing thought-provoking questions:

- "What if church was less about Sunday, and more about the other days of the week?"

- "What if church wasn't just a place we go, but something we do?"

- "What if church wasn't just a building, but thousands of doors, each opening up to a different concept or experience of church?"

"This is not a campaign to sell toothpaste," said Hollon. "We are not asking people to buy a product. This is an invitation to a relationship with a community that will care about you, that will talk with you about your questions, and that will provide you with opportunities to become engaged to change the world. This is a serious invitation to make transformational change. If we extend that invitation, we have to, in local congregations, live up to the invitation."

While many United Methodists leaders have learned of Rethink Church through presentations at conferences and events, the conversation will soon include people in the pews of local congregations.

In late April and early May, the campaign moves into the media fast lane with the debut of a multifaceted mix of messages delivered via television, radio, magazine and outdoor advertising. Messages will also be distributed online (including through a dedicated Web site) and through text messages, social networks, e-mail, events, sponsorships, collateral and public relations. Plans are for Rethink Church to deliver 95 million media impressions over a four-year period first in the United States and later in countries all over the world.

Wherever the churched and unchurched turn, they will find some manifestation of this catalytic campaign.

"The great challenge is to have a message that cuts through the clutter and sticks," Hollon says. "Never before in the history of humankind has the church had so many different ways to communicate: text messaging, iPhones, the Web, Twitter, Facebook and more. When we ask people to Rethink Church, we're asking them to give us a moment of the precious time in their mind -- to rethink how they might effect change in the world or be changed.

"This campaign gets a lot of momentum out of what's already going on in the church. It's not like we're bringing something new to the church and saying, stry it.' The church already is asking difficult questions about how local congregations can serve the neighborhood or the community better."

The Rev. Carrie West, pastor at the 114-member First United Methodist Church in Las Animas, Colo., admits Rethink Church excites her. "When I'm excited, the congregation I serve gets excited," she laughed.

"Being inclusive has always been important to us as a congregation. With Rethink Church, we don't have to reinvent the wheel," West said. "We're excited to have resources that reach a younger generation. We don't have many of that age group in this community, but the ones we do have are not going to church.

"I can make the assumption that they don't see church as relevant in their lives. This campaign will help educate us as a congregation about what they think is relevant and what brings meaning to their lives."

West expects challenges.

"Can the traditional congregation see church really does extend beyond their own walls and can they support a ministry of young adults worshipping and serving the community in nontraditional ways?" she asked.

"The thought of 10,000 doors seems overwhelming for our congregation," she concedes. "But maybe we can open 100 doors into the life of Christ."

Judy Rodman of Nashville, Tenn., is neither a United Methodist nor a dedicated churchgoer, yet the Rethink Church message has her applauding the denomination for thinking beyond filling pews and replenishing coffers.

"It doesn't matter to me what the denomination is," Rodman said. "It matters what the church is doing. I go by the quote Jesus gives in Scripture which says, 2By their fruits, ye shall know them.'"

Rodman recently received a link to a YouTube video  called "Rethink Church." The three-minute video, produced by United Methodist Communications and available at www.rethinkchurch.org, grabbed the voice teacher's attention. She eagerly forwarded the link to more than 50 friends, many of whom passed it on electronically to their friends. And so on.

In tech speak, Rethink Church had "gone viral."

For Rodman, the video that invites viewers to think of church as a verb instead of a noun struck a chord.

"I've been thinking the church was in danger of being irrelevant," she said. "When I saw this video, it hit me as absolute truth."

She's impressed with the vision of United Methodists in initiating the Rethink Church campaign, but not for "marketing reasons."

"There's been too much emphasis in mainline churches about how to get the numbers up and get the contributions," she said. "This isn't what I think church is about. It's about following the person and work of Jesus Christ."

--Susan Passi-Klaus, Strategic Marketing and Research Team, United Methodist Communications, Nashville, Tenn.