EPIC epochs

When Connections first started one of the things we had to interact with was how we arranged/targeted a Sunday gathering to engage with and be accessible to the younger generation we were trying to reach. This wasn't about the content of the gathering - expounding the ever-relevant truth of God's Word is the never-changing root of Christian spirituality - but about the style.

"Back then" (an ironic statement really - we're talking only two or three years) the whole "postmodern thing" was starting to be accepted and talked about - with varying degrees of insight. I was reading books like Ancient-Future Faith by Robert E. Webber and had already engaged with books like Postmodernizing The Faith by Millard Erickson. I was particularly moved by Gerard Kelly's RetroFuture and had attended a seminar of his in Launceston where, after a number of months of being stuck in post-war-church-of-england-curate-land, I felt like someone had given me a glass of sweet ice water in a very dry desert.

Remind me to blog about postmodernity in general some other time - the point for now, is that after engaging with the "postmodern thing" we picked up a little catch-cry for creating the style of our services: Our services were to be EPIC - Experiential, Participatory, Image-driven, and Communal (or Connected). I can't remember where we picked up the phrase - it's certainly not original to us, and a quick google shows its use is widespread now. A brief glance indicates that that the article at this location (link) is a good summary. Briefly, from my point of view, the essence is this:

• E = Experiential. For the postmodern person truth is determined primarily from experience (not argument or logic etc.) If you can experience it - it is true. An experiential service engages all the senses - the "primal pathways" as I have been known to call it - either directly through having something tactile, auditory, olfactory etc. in the service, or through narrative and creative words etc.
• P = Participatory. The postmodern person is dialogical - that is, they want to be engaged in dialogue and debate, not passive listeners to a monologue etc. Discussion times, non-rhetorical questions are a part of that, as is high-involvement of people in the running of the service.
  
• I = Image-driven. Previous generations have found that the prayer-book speaks to their heart through the use of wonderful, engaging words. The postmodern person engages more readily with images, received in parallel (all at once) - not words received serially (one after the other). Images don't need to be explained, they simply evoke.
• C = Communal/Connectedness. Religion used to be a very private thing - you came to church in silence to give each other space to be alone with God. Now communal gatherings are just that - gatherings of community - and we learn together, engage with each other, and help each other grow. (I think Hebrews 10:24-25 might support this one).

And so we embraced "EPIC" as a stylistic framework: lots of images on the screen, dialogical sermons, emphasising "authentic community" as a missional strategy, having lots of people involved in leading the service, using old and new things in an engaging way etc. etc. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't - but it was and is a good framework.

There's a couple of issues that relate to it, however. Firstly - it is very easy, when energy levels go down, when time pressures go up, to construct a service so that it is "EPIC" only in ways that you (the service leader) engage with. It takes time and energy to think through and implement what other "learning styles" or "primal pathways" exist in the congregation, and engage with them. Personally, in recent months when I have been stretched so thin with two half-time jobs, I have slipped down this slope somewhat. Now I am full-time at Connections this is something I want to address.

Secondly - the growth of a congregation necessitates a change in how an EPIC framework is applied. We are moving to a different "epoch" - we were an embryonic sized church three years ago and then we were a family-sized church (around the 40-50 mark including children) recently, and now/soon it is the community-sized church (theoretically the 70-100 mark) that we are becoming. Implementing the EPIC style in a larger sized church is different to a smaller one. Dialogue is more difficult, "experiential" elements are harder to implement and manage, the community is a number of smaller groups (rather than individuals) and so not as easily tapped into - perhaps the only thing that doesn't change so much is the "image-driven" bit as we still make use of the data projector in some reasonably creative ways.

What we need to do now is put some work into re-considering and re-applying the EPIC framework. It is possible to do things differently - a case in point is Mark Driscoll (of Mars Hill Church fame) who despite giving hour-long monologues as sermons (you can't easily field questions on the fly and to-and-fro dialogically with a 1000's strong congregation) does participatory things like using SMS and Internet polls to shape what topic he speaks on etc. - I'm not saying we should do that, but we can just simply note that we can be more creative.

What doesn't work is a hard-and-fast absolute application of a "style." Sometimes a didactic sermon is required. Sometimes the experience needed is visual and auditory silence. Sometimes people need to simply sit and receive from God rather than get up and do.

We are in something of a state of flux. I'm sure we will have new service leaders and preachers over the next few months as newcomers grow into the Connections community and through the necessary (but slow) proceedings of safe ministry accreditation and other formalities. Every new member is a new "input" into the service (whether leading it or not). And so we will be figuring out, again, what it means for us to take the Word of God and express it in EPIC fashion.