Culture-Changing Church

In effort to continue the conversation developed in class this past Tuesday (2/18), I thought it would be interesting to analyze the way my church attempts to redeem culture.

At home, I attend a Non-Denominational church called Northway Christian Community. This church started as a small group of people met in the pastor’s house in order to pray and study the Bible. Over about thirty years the church has grown to span the Pittsburgh region with six campuses. The one I attend was the first of the six churches and currently has a congregation size of about 2500 people per service.

After realizing these staggering statistics of church growth and contemplating our conversation in class concerning how to most effectively reach the “unchurched,” I began to question how Northway has gone about reaching the various people groups surrounding their church. Because it is such a large church, I immediately was able to pick out various ways Northway seems to do an incredibly effective job of reaching people who do not know Christ. The most prominent example that first stood out to me was their on-campus professional counseling center. This service is offered to anyone who needs it and definitely has proven to draw many people to the church. Furthermore, the counseling center has had such a large impact due to the drug crisis happening in America. Because the epidemic effects so many people, it is not unusual for the church to understand and meet many people of the “unchurched” characterization. Another simple way the church seeks to “meet people where they are at” is by making the church seem more “comfortable” for newcomers. They do this by adding things found in our everyday society such as a coffee shop, lights during worship, and sporty games for children such as basketball or dodgeball. While I do have some reservations with the church concerning if they cross certain lines while trying to contextualize the Gospel to our generations, it is obvious that they do a great job of attracting people normally not associated with the church.

Overall, I admire Northway for their passion to reach the “lost sheep,” but I also sometimes wish they would cling closer to Scripture. For example, sometimes the worship songs chosen on Sunday morning are more “feeling” oriented rather than Scripturally based.

While trying to determine how to best contextualize the Gospel, one thing I have learned since coming to school is no church will contextualize the Gospel perfectly.