Rock'n'Roll Worship Service
Thomas Spence
January 1, 1997
From the street University Baptist Church looks ordinary enough. The squat brick building with white steeple near Baylor University in Waco, Texas, is indistinguishable from the small Baptist churches on every corner in this town. But the rhythmic thud of a bass guitar that greets you several feet outside the door suggests that something different might be going on here. Inside, you find the familiar atmosphere of a fraternity house: lots of worn but still functional sofas from the '70s, some metal folding chairs, and, on the dais, not a pulpit and communion table, but a drum set and amplification equipment. Peering through the musty dimness (the blinds are drawn over the plain glass windows), you almost expect to see a keg set up in back. The only conventional church accouterments in sight are a few old pews along the sidewalls. It is no mere coincidence that ubc bears little physical resemblance to the churches of mainstream American Christianity. Its mission is to reach the "seekers" of Generation X, and its pastor, the Reverend Chris Seay (pronounced "see"), has arranged everything to appeal to them. And how do you appeal to an un-churched generation whose hearts and minds have been formed by such pop-culture icons as mtv and David Letterman? With music that sounds like mtv, preachers who talk like Letterman, and churches that look and feel like the dorm rooms and fraternity houses where Xers plug into this stuff. That, anyway, is Seay's answer. He calls it "embracing the idea of church in a whole new way." His cutting-edge services are popular with students and are attracting the attention of other pastors, but they invite the question of whether idioms borrowed from the entertainment industry are appropriate for sacred ...
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