Congregational Leadership

Interview with Jason Robertson

Interview with Jason Robertson

Epworth Pulpit: Jason, Tell us about the strategy of the EPIC service at Beavercreek.

Jason: The EPIC approach initially came from a book by Leonard Sweet called Postmodern Pilgrims.  The goal was to be Experiential, Participatory, Image-Rich, and Connective.  For the next five years we would continue trying to be EPIC, but it really fell to the background of who we were soon after EPIC launched.

One year into doing EPIC, we started to feel less like a worship gathering and more like a church.  It was important for us to start thinking about a more holistic approach to ministry besides just what we were doing on Sundays.  I had a strong team of leaders around me and we began having conversations about how we were going to provide environments that were conducive to formational experiences with the Holy Spirit.  At the time we were primarily fixated on our weekly gathering as the place where transformation would take place, but this approach shifted drastically the summer after EPIC began. 

It was at that time that I led a trip to Honduras with fifteen people from Epic.  Half of the people on the trip weren't professing Christians, and the other half were either new to the faith or had recently returned to it.  We had a married couple on the trip that left their three boys at home with a babysitter so they could attend. Their participation in this trip was their attempt to heal their marriage. I'm not sure why they thought going to a third world country would help their marriage, but it worked.  This was a turning point for our ministry.  From that point forward, and without discounting what the Holy Spirit could do in our worship gatherings, we decided that serving would be the catalyst for all our community would embody: evangelism, discipleship, community, etc.

There tends to be a progression of involvement in churches that goes something like this: (1) Come to Worship, (2) Go to a Small Group or Sunday School class, and then (3) Serve Others. In EPIC we were going to place serving others as much at the "top" as we possibly could.  We knew that since we had our beginnings as a worship gathering we would almost always be the front door to our ministry.  But we wanted people serving as soon as possible.  We even set a goal that in five years half of our people would have been on an international missions trip.

We believed that when one is serving they are in a good place to build relationships with others.  It's a little less likely to hang on to false pretenses about yourself when you are in a room full of Honduran children with HIV, sitting with an orphan in Benin, Africa, or amongst the homeless serving meals in downtown Dayton.  Most of the time people are in a vulnerable place when they are serving.  They are learning valuable things about themselves, and those around them.  They are also asking the big questions of life like, "What is really real?" and having conversations about things that matter.  Our strategy was to place as many people as possible into these vulnerable situations.

Epworth Pulpit: Give us some examples of the kinds of people that were reached by EPIC.

Jason: Like most churches we had our share of successes, and even more failures.  We took a heroin addict to Honduras, and he came back a heroin addict.  We took a homosexual to Africa, and he came back as committed as ever to the lifestyle he had chosen.  Our strategy didn't always work, but no model of church is flawless.  But I'm thankful to look back to my time in Beavercreek and recall stories of people that will always define what we wanted to be about in EPIC. 

Scott made the papers in January of 2007 when he wrecked his car on the major interstate that ran through our town.  He had been intoxicated, but the story behind the story never made it to the paper.  Right out of college, Scott had spent six years in a federal prison for drug trafficking.  Now with his third DUI he felt he had little left, and he was mostly right.  The week after his accident he got involved in AA and came to an EPIC service.  His family had been attending BCN for years and I can even remember his mom asking me to pray for him long before I would get the chance to meet him.  We immediately got Scott involved in serving.  He is a gifted carpenter and a natural when it comes to serving.  Desiring to minister out of his own brokenness, he started an AA meeting at the church.  I wish I could tell all the stories about that, but his meeting became the largest one in the Dayton area after just one year.  But one of the best memories I have of Scott is when he preached a Sunday in EPIC and shared a tremendous story of redemption.  His story of transformation became a story we told over and over again to communicate what we wanted our ministry to be about.

Another story I continue to carry with me is the transformation of my friend Shiva.  Shiva was born and raised in Iran and came to the US with her husband, Freddy, who was a radiologist at the local hospital.  Shiva was raised in a Muslim home and she always had a sensitivity to the things of God.  When she first came to EPIC she struggled with our proclamation of the exclusivity of Christ.  But she attended regularly and immersed herself in our partnership with Target Dayton, the local ministry to the homeless of Dayton.  Over a period of four years she came to understand our relationship with Christ as a means to loving the world, not condemning it.  Like Scott's, her story is a lengthy one, but it all culminated in my last Sunday in EPIC when she was baptized into the Christian faith, accepting and proclaiming her faith in Jesus as the son of God and the one who died for her sins.  I was pleased to have her serving alongside us to better our community and never thought I would see her make such a bold and radical step of faith.  But she did, and I will forever be blessed by her commitment to our community and the faithfulness of God to bring about his purposes.

Epworth Pulpit: What kinds of factors (particularly in reaching unchurched people) were important to the success of EPIC?

Jason: I didn't grow up in church.  In fact, it could be said that I grew up in bars and bowling alleys.  My parents had a strong social network in these places, and I learned to be social with all kinds of people.  That contributed to my ministry orientation. My leadership team was also comprised of people who had similar stories, converting to the faith in their adult life.  We all shared a core value: to love and connect with those who had little interest in religion, or whose disillusionment with church stemmed from experiences in their early years.  Sure, we provided environments that were non-threatening to the unchurched or de-churched.  But a lot of that was superficial and can be created by any church who reads a book on creating worship services for the unchurched.  I think what made us successful was the fact that behind those efforts were hearts who felt it was their purpose to minister to the crowd which EPIC was attracting.  When we greeted people into our community, it wasn't because we merely hoped they would come to our church, it was because we genuinely wanted to hear their life journey and to connect with them in an authentic way.  I know it sounds trite to say, but we really wanted people to feel like they belonged before they believed.  I just don't think this is a technique to be mastered.  Either you embody that value or you don't, and I was thankful to be surrounded by people who had to exert little effort to accept people regardless of their beliefs or socio-economic status. 

Epworth Pulpit: What do you see as the critical challenges for the typical church in connecting with young, unchurched people?

It wouldn't be fair for me to propose a strategy or technique that, if adopted, would make a church successful at reaching the unchurched.  As with any other ministry, our effectiveness was determined by many different variables, and honestly, some of those are still unknown to me.  But I do know of one value we had that posed a challenge to others in church leadership. 

"Excellence" was the mantra of the church growth movement and led to many churches experiencing growth.  What we found was that excellence (both in worship services and programming) was attractive to the dechurched (those who at one time had been involved in church life but for whatever reason had cut themselves off from Christian community), but what the unchurched desired in our community was authenticity over excellence.  I would never want to pit the two against each other because I don't think they are mutually exclusive.  We functioned in a middle upper class community with mostly young professionals and had to be aware of how well we did things, especially when it came to caring for people's children.  But overall, we tried to create an environment in , in which doing things in an authentic way was more important than doing things in an excellent way.

For example, I shared the story about Scott's transformation and how we allowed him to share his story as the sermon for one of our gatherings.  Honestly, it wasn't that good, as far as sermons go.  And I know some in our church wondered why we would allow such an unpolished speaker to give the message in our service.  But for us it was real life, Scott was one of us, and his story was part of the story we were all living.  Those new to church loved it.  Others of us who had been in church for a long time, and I definitely include myself in this, were uncomfortable at times as Scott stumbled through his story.  Because being attractional is so engrained into us, I think we have lost the ability to be authentic.  Young people come to church asking two questions: (1) Are you real? and (2) Is what your preaching about real?  It can be freeing to realize that smoke and mirrors are no longer needed, and I see this as one critical challenge for churches reaching young,

Epworth Pulpit: What do you see as the most promising possibilities for churches in the Wesleyan Holiness tradition in reaching postmoderns?

Jason: Though it's often said that postmoderns are cynical of metanarratives to the point of refusing to give themselves to any story bigger than themselves, the election in 2008 tells us that this isn't true.  Regardless of political preferences, one would have to admit that the "Hope Campaign" conducted by Barack Obama shows that people are desperate for a bigger, better, and brighter story, and they want to be a part of something that makes a difference.  This is as true for the unchurched as it is for those of us who attend church on a weekly basis. 

Our Wesleyan Holiness tradition provides us with a robust view of the Holy Spirit's work in individual lives, particularly through the work of the Church.  Our story is not one of deterministic despair, but rather we believe in God's prevenient grace that is at work in the world inviting us to partnership to bring about his rule and reign in the world.  What a great story in which to enter!

Epworth Pulpit: Jason, you are pretty connected to the emerging church conversation. How do you balance that conversation with your relationship with the "traditional" church?

Jason: Ten years ago I was well on my way to becoming a cynical ideologue, living in world where ideas were valued more than relationships.  That is the danger for the modern vs. postmodern conversation: that ideas become that which defines our relationships with others in the body of Christ. 

The people who have impacted me most in life are 100% modern-minded folks.  While there are stark differences in how we view the world and the role of the church, I would never allow these differences to cut me off from them.  EPIC was launched within the confines of a traditional Nazarene church, and while we had several opportunities to launch to a new location, which would have given us more freedom to "do our own thing," we knew it wasn't best for EPIC or the traditional church that birthed us.  Many Christians surround themselves with others who think the same, act the same, dress the same, and worship the same, and then call it community.  I would suggest that true Christian community could only be "true" when it's done with people who are different from us. 

At the same time I have strong convictions that we must have expressions of church within our denomination that connect with a postmodern world.  I'm no longer concerned with the emerging/emergent conversation, because I feel like that conversation has been put to rest amongst those who had to wear those labels.  My circle of friends who were once passionate about deconstructing the church, have now settled back into somewhat traditional settings to do ministry.  I too have come to value and be completely committed to my tribe.  I love what we are about, and I believe our theological and ecclesiological values are conducive to effective ministries to a postmodern world.