'New' worship style takes Presbyterian church back in time

The Rev. Bill Warhover sees the role as pastor in the Presbyterian Church as a changing one. And he's OK with that.

 “What's happening is, as pastors we are stepping away from giving to people and instead are inviting people to participate in understanding the mystery of God,” said Warhover, pastor of Echo Hill Presbyterian Church, 9000 C Ave., Marion.

Warhover and the Echo Hill congregation are involved in the “emergent church” movement many Presbyterian churches are following. At the very core of the movement, Warhover said, is a transition from being an observant church to being a participatory one, where the pastor is a facilitator more than a leader.

Simply put, he said, it's less of a teacher/student formation in which the message is read and more a community where everyone lives out the message alongside each other.

 “We live in a culture that no longer needs the church for knowledge,” he said. “There was a time - a very long time - when we turned to the church for knowledge. Now we can, and do, turn to other places, the Internet, books.”

“Now we have a culture that is very hungry, not for certainty but for understanding the mystery that is God,” he said.

The emergent church is nothing new, said Harry Olthoff, general presbyter for the Presbytery of East Iowa in Iowa City. Instead, the movement is a return to “the very traditional and ancient concepts of Christianity,” and the effort to meld those practices with today's culture.

An “Art of Living Water” display and silent auction is one example of how congregations and pastors are participating together. As a fundraising activity for flood recovery at the Presbytery of East Iowa, congregations within the presbytery were challenged to create a piece of art that rendered their interpretation of the Gospel of John and the story of the woman at the well.

The traveling display is at Echo Hill and will move on to several other Presbyterian churches before the auction ends in May. Pieces include paintings, drawings, woodworks, quilts and stained glass.

“ It looks like art, but it's so much more than that,” Warhover said. “We want to not just hear, we need to ‘do,' and we need to ‘do' with a purpose,” Warhover said. “We need to do things that are meaningful.”

What that means, Olthoff said, is that more and more congregations are moving toward involvement in social issues and social justice and are getting more involved not only in the community at large but within their own church community, as well.

It's following the same path of early monastic traditions, Warhover said.

“Those who started those monastic communities wanted something more spiritual, they were tired of the institution of religion,” he said.

The emergent church is also pushing for that spirituality and not looking at the church as an institution.

 “We're inviting people to be part of a community for whatever part of time to equip them to move on,” he said. “It's not about building membership, it's about understanding the spirituality.”