The Journey – Leveraging and Redeeming Culture at The Hub

This month will mark the 6 year anniversary of The Hub, the student center at the Wesleyan Church of Hamburg, I can say that I have been honored and privileged to be a part of the staff here the entire time, and I look forward to more years to follow, if God allows it.  Through these 6 years, the staff of The Hub has been on a journey to establish a facility that is here for the community, and offers a relevant and current experience for all ages who attend.  We try to accomplish this in several different ways, however the area that I am most involved with is music and worship.

Through the 6 years The Hub has been open, our goal, first and foremost, has been to honor God with the resources He has given us. We’ve been blessed with incredible musicians, both students and adults, to lead worship here on Sunday mornings at our student worship service, FUEL.  It has been great to watch both bands, LiFT, our adult band, and Ignite, our student band, develop into extremely relevant and solid bands that both have a high standard of excellence when it comes to leading worship.  It has been amazing to watch God work through our student band and see them grow and develop into young musicians who love and honor God.  It has been indescribable to be a part of LiFT as the worship leader here at The Hub, and see lives changed through the ministry here.

When it comes to our worship services, we’ve tried for years to make them as engaging and relevant as possible.  It has been a goal of ours to leverage and redeem culture to honor and glorify Christ.  That process has been a learning experience for all of us, and will continue to be so, I’m sure, for years to come.  We use secular music at times to raise a question or to give fresh relevance to an older worship song.  We generally play in a musical style that is widely accepted by students of all ages, as well as students who are unchurched.  Overall we want to be a place that students who are followers of Christ, would be excited to invite their unchurched friends to, while at the same time, experiencing God in an exciting and fresh way.  We strive to push the boundaries of church culture a little bit by redeeming what “pop-culture” has become outside the wall of the church, for Christ.  I think Tim Stevens says it in an amazing way in his book, “Pop Goes the Church:”

“It’s not just about being seeker-sensitive, it is about turning around, staring your culture straight in the face, and leveraging that culture to reach people for Christ.  It is about bringing pieces of the culture into the church in order to make the Bible understood, and highlighting where Biblical principles are already present in pop culture.  It is about NOT giving up on the church but changing our view of church from the inside out so that we begin to see life-transformational changes in our communities.

It is about getting out of our holy huddles, turning around and looking real people right in the eyes, seeing the lives they live and the problems they encounter (as messy and unholy as they might be). It is about celebrating parts of pop culture where there are signs of spiritual interest. It is about building churches that focus more on preparing followers to live in the culture and leverage the culture rather than criticizing and building walls of protection around our commune-like congregations.”

When I read those words, I think of a production like the Grammys.  You have an unbelievable production, with state of the art lighting and sound, stuff we as a church and 99.9% of churches, will never come close to having.  This production is set up, in all reality, to worship and glorify what our world deems the “gods” of pop culture, ultimately God’s creation.  So why is it so taboo for a church to even begin to imagine a worship service coming close to that, for the reason of worshiping and glorifying THE GOD of the universe, the CREATOR.  That is something I’ve struggled with for a while and will probably struggle with for years to come.  I realize The Hub is no Grammy Production, nor will it ever be, or should be.  However we are trying to take back just a piece of that culture, a piece of that technology, and use it to worship OUR GOD, OUR CREATOR.

This past year we have recently been blessed with some addition lighting.  We unveiled it at our annual Fall Retreat and have been using it throughout the year, slowly adding to it.  Over the years we’ve been constantly trying to engage our students more and more, without becoming a distraction for worship. And for the most part, from what I’ve been seeing and hearing, its been working.  However we are always struggling with how much is too far.  For several reasons:

-We don’t want the experience at FUEL to be so over the top, that when students graduate, they can’t find anything like it anywhere else, and end up falling away from church altogether, because we’ve raised their standards too high.

-We also don’t want our music and production to go so over the top, that it simply becomes a distraction.  That is the last thing we want.

When it comes to lighting, we want it to enhance the worship experience, to pull emotion out of the worshiper.   I’ve been to several worship events where the lighting was so powerful when combined with the lyrics and music that is was almost spiritually overwhelming, in a really good way.  It is simply amazing to think that all of that is going on for one reason, to glorify our GOD.  It’s amazing.

Recently we’ve added blinders, haze and most recently a center spotlight.  Now some of these have definitely come close and may very well have gone over the line for a worship environment.  We are learning though.  We figure lets try something and see how it works.  Always asking the question, does this enhance the worship, or simply direct attention to the stage, in turn, almost turning the stage into a worship barrier.  That is the very very last thing we want.  And this can be tricky at times, very tricky.  One reason it can be so tricky is that for several people in the room, it might offer exactly what we want, an incredible worship experience. For others, it may do the exact opposite, draw attention to the stage and off of God.  For others it may be setting a standard that will quite possibly be unmatched when they are no longer young enough to attend FUEL.  So we have to be in constant prayer and discussion as to what is best for the greatest number of students.

Ultimately, my goal as a worship leader, and the goal of the team at The Hub, is to create an experience that is current and relevant to ALL who attend.  Our heart and passion is to draw individuals closer to God through music, teaching, and even lighting.  That is our job and our passion.  TOGETHER, we will continue learning what is best, and ultimately what God is calling us to do.  My hope and prayer is that students leave The Hub, energized and focused on nothing but the One who created them, Jesus Christ.  I never want to get in the way of that.  God please forgive me when I do. : )

 

 

 

 

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