The Spirit Moves Generation X in a Different Way

WASHINGTON — To get to Sunday morning services at National Community Church, walk under the incandescent marquee off the food court in Union Station. Go past the darkened ticket booth, with the popcorn aroma and the posters promoting pop culture, as in, “Eddie Murphy Is a Donkey.” Step into the carpeted theater.

There, about 275 young people gather weekly to renew themselves spiritually. Casually dressed in shorts and sundresses, they are lawyers, congressional aides, artists, nurses and journalists. Most are single and overwhelmingly Generation X-ers--the MTV-reared cohort that supposedly responds to the notion of absolute truth with a postmodern “Whatever.”

Yet here they are, eyes shut and arms raised heavenward, singing to someone they cannot see. “Jesus light the flame, Jesus light the flame. Give us passion for your name,” go the lyrics projected on the big screen. Onstage, spotlights drift over a drummer, two guitarists and a keyboardist playing contemporary Christian songs. Except for Bibles, no traditional accouterments of Christianity can be seen: no cross, altar, candles or stained glass.

“God, we wait in your presence this morning,” says Pastor Mark Batterson, 31, who has short, spiked hair and a trim Vandyke. “We want to hit the pause button to allow you to refresh us, to renew us.”

National Community Church illustrates how Gen X-ers and their younger siblings of Gen Y are putting their stamp on Christian worship. Sometimes on their own, sometimes backed by a denomination, they’re trying different ministry styles and venues to reach their peers. Their efforts have several common elements, experts say, including an informal atmosphere, a nonhierarchical leadership, an aversion to the trappings of church and an emphasis on building community.

“We believe in experimentation,” said Batterson, who appears on his church’s Web site (https://www.nccdc.org) wearing a baseball cap backward, his two children in his arms. “That’s why we have no idea what this church will look like in 20 years. But I know one thing for sure: The church of the 21st century will not look like the church of the 20th century.”

These new ways are drawing young people who, for all their techno savvy and access to information, yearn for an experience of the transcendent, according to observers. Although younger generations consistently show up in polls as the most secular and least spiritual of all age groups, “there is a strong, highly religious component within young adults,” said Tom Smith, director of the General Social Survey program at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

Batterson added: “Postmoderns are comfortable with the fact that there is no way we human beings can get our minds around God. We embrace the mystery or bigness of who God is and realize we can’t understand everything about him. Who wants a god you can completely understand?”

This is one big difference between baby boomers, who changed the religious landscape in the United States with their mega-churches, and the younger generations, said Steve Rabey, author of “In Search of Authentic Faith.”

“A lot of boomer churches are famous for Sunday sermons that kind of loosely start off with a Bible passage but then reduce it to three rational principles on how to have a happy marriage or how to live a better life,” Rabey said.

“The younger people know that ... a god that is reducible to principles for success in life isn’t sufficient to evoke real reverence.”

National Community was established in 1994 by the Assemblies of God, the country’s largest Pentecostal denomination, whose members include U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft. The young church was foundering when Batterson was asked to take over as pastor in early 1996.

Now, it has added a second Sunday service and no longer needs subsidies from its denomination. Twenty percent of its budget goes to charitable missions.

The church moved to Union Station, the renovated train and subway station near Capitol Hill with its plethora of shops and restaurants, in late 1996 after the public school where the congregation had met was closed. The leased space is ideal for the church’s informal worship style, with a stage, a screen for the movie clips that sometimes accompany the sermon and plenty of comfortable seats.

“The ability to bring in a cup of coffee and use the cup holders in the seats ... that’s appealing,” said member Franklyn Cater, 31.

“Seventy thousand people pass through [Union Station] every day,” Batterson said. The church is “right in the middle of the marketplace. I think that’s where Jesus would be.”

Its venue also provides an advertising gimmick, such as ads in movie sections of newspapers and mass mailings of postcards, designed to look like a movie ticket.

Rather than teaching doctrine, the 45-minute services are geared toward providing an emotional experience, which several church members said is important. “We’re moving out of the whole stage of ‘If you can prove it’s true, I’ll believe it,”’ said Ginger Simon, 25, a receptionist at the U.S.-Saudi Arabian Business Council. “The Gen-X people want an experience. And if it’s an experience they like, then they’ll believe, and they’ll ultimately try to figure out the truth.”

Nichole Chamberlain, 29, a health program analyst for the federal government, said she chose National Community because “more than anything, I could feel the spirit move” at its services.

“It’s a very free atmosphere, to worship however you feel the spirit is moving you, whether raising your hands or standing quietly,” Chamberlain said. “In the church where I grew up, that just isn’t done.”

The church subscribes to Pentecostalism’s belief in the “gifts of the Holy Spirit,” which include miraculous healing, speaking in tongues and being “slain in the spirit”--an intense emotional experience that causes people to fall to the ground.

But these events aren’t part of the church’s services, Batterson said, and his congregation does not “equate Pentecostalism with speaking in tongues.”

Church members weren’t surprised, however, when the terrible back pains of one congregant evaporated as others prayed over him at a communion service. “A few decades ago, people would get weirded out by that,” Batterson said.