Meeting on the Frontline
Julia Duin
April 1, 1999
Upon entering the narthex of McLean Bible Church, one of
Washington, D.C.'s megachurch centers, you run into a guy on a skateboard. There he is, posing rakishly on the small board, talking animatedly with several Gen X types, all lingering outside the sanctuary on this Sunday evening.
Sunday evening at 5:30 and 7:15 are the main service times for the 18-to-35-year-old crowd at a church known for its proximity to power both figuratively (independent counsel Ken Starr and former Sen. Dan Coats are only some of the many famous names who show up there) and literally: McLean is a wealthy northern Virginia suburb directly across the Potomac from the District. Starr, et al., show up on Sunday mornings, along with the bulk of McLean's 5,500 members, to get a more traditional service. But the evenings are the province of the young: 1,300 to 1,500 of them attending what's known as Frontline.
"We consider Frontline to be the other half of the church," says its director, Ken Baugh, 35. "It's two of the seven services of the church. It's not a different service, it's a whole different philosophy of ministry, different music, and a style of teaching that is non-preachy."
In other words, there is some disconnect between Frontline and the rest of McLean, which is located in a suburb still tinged with vestiges of a centuries old, Scottish-implanted Calvinism. It is still not clear whether the average 50- to 70-year-old McLean member really "gets" what is happening amid the violet-laced lighting and blaring music at McLean on Sunday nights; nor is it clear how many of them would all-out endorse it.
"A lot of it depends on how well the 50-year-old understands postmodernism," says another of Frontline's ministers, Jim Supp, 37. "There are a lot ...
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