Bibles and Brewsky: The New Church?

Crossroads Church isn’t your typical church. Located on the second floor of a bar called the Loft in downtown Lansing, Michigan, founders of Crossroads Church have dubbed their congregation the Upper Room. On the tables sits a copy of the Bible next to a glass of beer and basket of popcorn. First time visitors to the Upper Room are treated to their first beer on the house or rather on the church.

According to the Detroit News, Noah Filipiak, founder of Crossroads Church, sees the gesture as one of friendship. “We think it communicates something to people that are very leery of church and very leery of the church being very judgmental about things,” he said.

Two summers ago, Filipiak was playing safety for the Capital City Stealth, Lansing’s minor league football team. He invited other players to attend his church which he considered “cool” since they served coffee and pie, and people could attend Bible study in blue jeans. Few came, and the few who did come didn’t return. USA Today reports that the problem of getting people to attend church inspired Filipiak to think about the most important question. What was it that kept people from coming to church?

“There are concentric circles of people,” he said. “I think that your blue jeans and coffee and rock and roll band on Sunday morning church plant is reaching a certain concentric circle, and that demographic has now been pretty saturated.”

Filipiak decided to take his evangelism efforts one step further. He and other members of Crossroads Church started asking questions of their non-church-going friends.

According to the Detroit News, the fastest growing religious group in the United States are individuals who say they don’t belong to a group at all. Two-thirds say they believe in God and read the Bible and 1 in 5 reports praying every day. As reported in an earlier Inquisitr story, many people don’t attend church as much as they claim. They just don’t want to belong to a church. As a result, church planners are experimenting with evangelism tactics that move as far away from the traditional church as possible.

Warren Bird, director of research and intellectual capital at Leadership Network, a firm which follows church trends, says the tactic is nothing new, reports USA Today. “From Jesus and the Apostles to today, church leaders have tried to take the Gospel to where the people are,” Bird said. “This meant using public places, as well as houses of worship.”

Filipiak’s approach with the Upper Room includes no praying and no hymns or Christian music. There will also be no Bible scare tactics invoking hellfire and damnation.

John Yunker, a construction worker who has been a member of Crossroads Church since the beginning, appreciates Filipiak’s approach according to the Detroit News. “I was struggling on and off with Christianity, grew up with it,” he said. “When I started going to the church, it felt like it was actually geared toward me, not somebody who had been a Christian their entire life.”