One Version of the Future Church Has Arrived in Louisville

by Ray Waddle

At a Louisville pub, every Thursday night, a religious revolution reconvenes.

It's called Theology on Tap, a time of informal discussion of faith, politics, the Bible, mystical poetry — whatever's on people's minds. The ringleader is 36-year-old Jud Hendrix, who, from a convivial and dimly lit backroom at Molly Malone's Irish Pub and Restaurant, is trying to discern the future of Christianity. "Church isn't a worship service or a building but a Christian community," he says.

Jud Hendrix at Molly Malone’s Pub

"Community means sharing resources, breaking bread together, reading texts together — practices, not doctrine. And somehow in those practices we're formed into Christians." Hendrix and colleague Liz Kaznak are co-pastors of an experimental Presbyterian congregation called Covenant Community Church, with about 100 members and full backing from the mission-minded Presbytery of Mid-Kentucky.

Theology on Tap is a relaxing way for newcomers to get acquainted with Covenant members, but it is merely one component of the church.

The congregation meets for worship at a borrowed church on Sunday afternoons (James Lees Presbyterian in Louisville). But the core Covenant experience happens in small groups that meet regularly in people's homes.

These "intentional communities" allow a handful of Covenant people (up to a dozen) get acquainted and discern together a mission project to undertake.

Liz Kraznak

One community agreed to sponsor a group of Sudanese refugees for a year, paying for their groceries, medical bills and other expenses. Another group meets to teach values of peacemaking to children. Another gathers around issues of motherhood. The church's web site, cccoflouisville.org, lists others. This is where the "missional" work of Covenant emerges - people becoming friends and embarking on a journey of Christ-oriented service.

"Our job is not to start programs but empower communities," Hendrix says. "We don't have a missions committee. We ask a community what is God calling you to do in the world, and what can we do to help?"

When a particular project is completed, the community identifies another initiative, or disbands and joins another group within Covenant.

Jud Hendrix

Covenant church was conceived in the late 1990s to be a new expression of Christian identity among people weary of conventional churchgoing and doctrinal rigidity. It got started with grants from the Synod of Living Waters, General Assembly and Mid-Kentucky presbytery. It is still supported by the presbytery, which encourages congregations to seek new ways of stirring passion for gospel action.

In Fall 2005, the church was awarded an additional grant through the General Assemby — a $50,000 Sam and Helen Walton Grant to help Covenant start a coffeehouse that draws people to an unconventional setting for spiritual stimulation and growth.

"Covenant is a new model of church without walls," says Betty Meadows, general presbyter of the Mid-Kentucky presbytery.

"It's not about buildings and stained glass and up-keep but about building disciples who live missional lives and worship together. The faith of these people is profound."

Co-pastors Kaznak and Hendrix, both graduates of Louisville Theological Seminary, had experience in traditional parish ministry when they discovered they shared a restless desire to create church around new forms of authentic community. They visited progressive churches across the region, searching for a model before they started Community church with its structure of intentional communities about five years ago.

"It's a work-in-progress," Kaznak says.

"We're mostly reaching people who have dropped out of church, and they're finding their way back, and we're finding our way with them. "We're discovering things. One is, people are searching for genuine community. People want to be where they can feel free and admit mistakes and experience reconciliation and have the opportunity to be in someone's home and get to know each other. Another thing is, being without a building, we were forced to be in the world, meeting people in their own settings, not ours. We learned how hungry people are for genuine friendship."

Covenant church encourages three dimensions of Christian life — "inward practice, communal practice and outward practice." Emphasis is not on doctrinal conformity but faithfulness to the way of Christ.

"Our understanding of Christ means he opens us up to relationships. We care about hospitality - to the inclusion, not the exclusion, of all," she says.

Nevertheless, Covenant is a Presbyterian congregation, rooted in the Presbyterian order of worship. The co-pastors are committed to that. "We don't want to get cut off from deep sources of meaning and accountability, so it's important we stay connectional and Presbyterian," Hendrix says. "We want to be in dialogue with tradition, but we also want to reinvent it."

"Reinventing" mainline churchgoing means, in part, rediscovering old-fashioned mysticism. There's a mystical streak to Covenant church worship — use of silence and contemplative prayer for cultivating "inward practice" and openness to God, he says.

Kaznak and Hendrix believe inward spiritual richness and outward-looking missional passion, twinned together, are routes to 21st century Christian renewal.

"Presbyterians have done the rational side very well, but we need the mystical side too, that place of holiness where we all meet God," Hendrix says.