Emerging model: A visit to Jacob’s Well

From Christian Century: Emerging model: A visit to Jacob's Well. In 1998, a close friend told me that a small core group wanted to start a church in the neighborhood where I lived and worshiped. Melissa and I were attending a Presbyterian Church (USA) congregation (Roanoke Presbyterian Church) at the time and working to create a vital place of ministry in the neighborhood. I told him that the third floor of our church was available. To make a long story short, the congregation grew to be Jacob's Well.

Our Presbyterian congregation worked alongside theirs in the same building for almost five years. Then, due to a number of issues I won't bore you with here, the PCUSA congregation voted to sell the building to Jacob's Well and close the PCUSA congregation. I still visit JW occasionally, and several friends are actively involved there. I am still in the neighborhood, and it is truly a wonderful thing that God is doing.

The Westport neighborhood of midtown Kansas City, Missouri, is a mix of avant-garde youth and aging hippies. If bumper stickers are any indication, political views range from the muscular left ("Veterans for Kerry") to the forthrightly left ("Peace is patriotic") to the crudely left ("Dump the son of a Bush!"). The first man I passed on the street had his shirt off and displayed pierced nipples. No doubt he was on his way to one of the area's many wine bars or tattoo parlors.

This neighborhood is also home to a thriving church called Jacob's Well, which attracts about 1,000 people each week to its various services. The church is led by Tim Keel, who, along with author Brian McLaren, is a founder of the Emergent movement. I went to JW hoping that it could help me understand a phenomenon that remains elusive—the Emergent church.

The innovative JW is housed, ironically, in a classic church building that Presbyterians erected in 1930. The building is the envy of the numerous congregations in the neighborhood, including two that have exchanged their denominational labels for more jazzy names and logos—one Southern Baptist (now River City Church) and one Evangelical Covenant (now City Church).

The classical space and biblically resonant name suit JW just fine, and they also say something about the Emergent movement. If yesteryear's evangelical church was the equivalent of a starter castle in the exurbs, JW is more akin to a rehabilitated loft in a gentrifying city. Whereas evangelical churches (and increasing numbers of mainline ones) seek to attract young people by designing spaces stripped of Christian symbols or tradition, JW people seem to like the traditional feel of the sanctuary, with its dark wood, stained glass and high ceilings. While other churches would be thrilled by the numerical growth—1,000 attenders after seven years of existence—JW worries that the growth means it may not be intimate enough to nurture community and friendship. A recent sermon on stewardship insisted, apparently in all seriousness, that the church didn't need any more money or volunteers, so giving of time or money should come only out of genuine gratitude.

In short, JW is a rebuke to those churches that, in imitation of cutting-edge 1970s evangelicalism, deliberately strip themselves of historical symbols, creeds and practices in an effort to grow. JW is succeeding by moving in precisely the opposite direction….