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BY MELISSA LAUBER
UMCONNECTION STAFF

MELISSA LAUBER/UMCONNECTION

Carl Brown, left, discusses urban ministry at Emory UMC, in Washington.

Helping churches move from 'cookie-cutter' outreach to authentic urban ministry was the aim of 'authen-ti-CITY: an Authentic Encounter in the City,' held March 10-13 at Emory UMC in Washington.

'We're bringing the church to the streets and the streets to the church,' said Emory's pastor, the Rev. Joseph Daniels.

One of the cornerstones of the weekend event was music. An evening of 'Neo-Soul Food,' with live music featuring the group SoulFruit from Houston, and bands from Washington, was held in The Loft at Cada Vez Restaurant on U Street.

The next evening, SoulFruit and other musical groups performed at the church.

The two concerts served up unconventional evangelism, worship and fellowship, and offered the community some of the very best of what the church has to offer, said many of the participants.

On March 12, United Methodists from Emory UMC and several other congregations gathered for a luncheon discussion on ways to reach the un-churched and de-churched in a city setting.

Rasmus

Rasmus attributes his church's growth to the fact that it has destroyed most of the barriers that keep people from attending traditional worship.

Of the 9,000 people, one third don't have addresses, meaning they are homeless, said Rasmus, who admits to finding delight in slaughtering sacred cows.

'I do stuff intentionally for the sake of running church folk off,' he said.

At one point, he paid 40 homeless people $3 each to attend worship. Recently, he fired the church's entire choir in an attempt to enliven the worship service.

'I'm relatively critical of the church,' he told the crowd at Emory. 'For the most part, I don't think much of the church. It doesn't model the church Jesus had in mind.'

At an early age, Rasmus said, he learned from his father that 'You can't lie to folks. If you tell them you love them and don't show them, they'll walk.'

At St. John's, he said, people know they are loved. They delight in feeling like part of a large family. So does Rasmus.

In the early 1990s he became a Christian. Prior to that, he was a businessman of the streets, operating a liquor store and a whorehouse out of a small hotel.

Discovering Jesus, he said, was definitely bad for business.

But prosperity is not what church is about, he said, even though there is a trend to offer people a Gospel of prosperity.

'On what basis do we offer that promise given the fact that we follow a dude with holes in his hands?' he asked.

Instead, people come to St. John's because they feel the love, Rasmus said. They feel accepted without conditions. Their souls cry out, and the church listens.

But in order to banish barriers that keep people from feeling this unconditional love, Rasmus said, United Methodists need to dispel two myths: that we can grow without changing and that we can change without conflict. 'We can't. Change and conflict are inevitable.'

However, change cannot be made in the church's traditional 'scattershot' way, said Marlon Hall, who started a young adult worship at St. John's called 'The Awakening.'

Hall

'Too many times a church just shoots in the dark,' Hall said. 'We have to be more accurate; we can't base crucial changes on prayer and fasting alone.'

To do this, Hall recommends a cultural anthropology approach to church development.

This approach involves using anthropological methods to analyze trends in the community, discern truths from those trends and develop relevant programs and ministries built on those truths.

'The church needs to go to where people are, where culture is, and sit and watch,' Hall said. Once truths and trends are discerned, focus groups need to be brought in to confirm that the changes are on the right track.

'The objective,' he explained, 'is to care enough to truly understand the people you wish to attract and serve.'

This doesn't involve best guesses, he said. It means asking and confirming and connecting with people in ways that are authentic.

That requires intentionality, said Hall. 'The church may be the house of God, but have we made it the home of the people?'