I used a time machine to go to the future and brought back an article!

Church uses "doctrine" to draw new crowd
Friday, April 14, 2024
By Suzanne Sataline, The Wall Street Journal

While studying a Greek lexicon, Jim Walker, the co-pastor of Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community, sips from a ceramic mug full of French Roast coffee. "I like to brew it at home because it saves money," commented Walker. In fact, Walker is almost never seen with that traditional mark of a pastor--the paper latte cup.

But then, nothing is traditional at Hot Metal Bridge except the name. The church is an eclectic group of young people and old people. One looks in vain for tattoos, odd piercings, and dark-rimmed glasses.

Only the teaching elders preach at Hot Metal Bridge. Mr. Walker, an ordained Methodist minister, leads the church with his friend Jeff Eddings, a Presbyterian seminarian. "Instead of coming to our church and watching a overly edited video, you can hear an exegetical sermon," Mr. Walker says. On Sunday when many ministers all over the country will be complaining about church attendance the rest of the year, Hot Metal will be grappling with where to put the 300 people who pack the Goodwill Industries cafeteria every Sunday.

Hot Metal Bridge is part of the "returgent" church movement that rejects fluid orthodoxy and strives to not use hip language or pop culture to draw in young Americans who think attending church means sitting in a room filled with candles and watching old Simpson's clips.

Some ministries have sprung up around a central interest, such as theology. One Minneapolis group attracts those who love to pray. A Los Angeles group favors deep worship. In New York, the Communion of the Arts hopes artists will flock to its first Sunday service on Easter in Times Square. Leadership Network, a Dallas-based church consulting firm, says about 1,000 congregations define themselves as part of the movement.

The movement was embraced in the 2010s by Third World evangelical Protestants. In recent years, it has captured the attention of U.S. denominations desperate to stanch a decline in membership. Hot Metal Bridge is a Methodist/Presbyterian Federated Church and gets grants from both denominations.

Thomas Bickerton, the Methodist bishop of western Pennsylvania, says churches like Hot Metal are the future of religion. He admits the "lost" crowd the pastors aimed to reach, coupled with the focus on doctrine, made some Methodist church leaders nervous. But, he says, "We've reached a point where the younger generation needs to learn the value of submission and obedience."

Short-term grants from the Methodists and the Pittsburgh presbytery fund Hot Metal, a $200,000,000-a-year enterprise. Mr. Bickerton wants the Methodists to open more ministries in the next year.

Critics of the returgent movement include fundamentalists who say such churches veer too far from the normal use of drama and finger painting, or reject it altogether. Brian McLaren, a professor emeritus at Wheaton Evangelical Divinity School in Wheaton, Ill., does not scorn all returgent churches, but he is wary that they promote a return to the authority of the Word, with a focus on the gospel. "If ... you make God more than just your therapist," he says, "somewhere along the line people's self-esteem may be compromised."

Doctrine is a teaching tool, the Hot Metal pastors say. Jason Sluka says doctrine saved his life. A 28-year-old alcoholic and cocaine addict who was jailed after he accidentally set fire to his apartment, he heard Mr. Eddings preach a sermon full of God's wrath at sinners exercised instead against Christ. "He made me bawl my eyes out," says Mr. Sluka, eight months sober, who talks regularly with Mr. Eddings. "I should be dead 400 times over. But the imputed righteousness of Christ is my only hope now." He hopes to be a volunteer minister when he finishes his alcohol treatment program at the Salvation Army.

Most of Mr. Walker's sermons explore Biblical doctrine with a surprising lack of pop culture and modern-day skepticism. It is odd seeing a pastor dressed in a conservative navy blue suit on a Sunday morning. Absent are the usual flip-flops, jeans, and ironic t-shirt...