Place of Grace: The Santa Cruz Experiment in "Multicongregationalism"
By Eric Stanford

When Dan Kimball-pastor, former rockabilly punk band member, and idolizer of the early Elvis Presley-happened to hear the name of a Bible study for musicians, he thought at once, That's it! He'd finally found a name he wanted to borrow for his new church service. A felicitous fusion of theological and pop-cultural references. Graceland.

Kimball's Graceland is located a long way from Memphis in the high-tech playground of Santa Cruz, California. And to be truthful, besides the name and Kimball's bouffant do, there isn't much at this Graceland to remind you of the swiveling singer. Kimball likes to quote a disavowal from the lips of Elvis himself: "I am not a king. Christ is King."

Graceland out west is in fact one part of a megachurch called Santa Cruz Bible Church (SCBC). But don't call Graceland a church-within-a-church.

"We call ourselves the Graceland services of Santa Cruz Bible Church," clarifies Kimball, the Graceland pastor. "If Graceland was really a church-within-a-church, then it definitely should be birthed. You can't have a body inside of a body otherwise. But Graceland is intended to be a permanent part of Santa Cruz Bible."

Kimball also uses the term "multicongregationalism" to describe the experiment going on in his church. The first three weekend services of SCBC are the "regular" services, while the fourth and fifth services on Sunday evening are the Graceland services. Graceland extends the ministry of the church to a population who might otherwise not feel at home at SCBC.

You could say that the non-Graceland services are primarily drawing in Boomers, while the Graceland services are attracting post-Boomers. Or you could say that the non-Graceland services of SCBC are modern and the Graceland services are postmodern in their approaches. But neither of those attempts at definition quite gets you there. Kimball chooses to speak vaguely of the Graceland services as being "geared for younger adults" or as being appropriate for the "emerging culture" and leaves it at that.

Graceland is what it is. Certainly it's different from the other services at SCBC, and you're welcome to come and join in if you like, regardless of your age or personal style. As it happens, more than three-quarters of the 800 persons currently attending Graceland fall into the 15-to-30-year-old age bracket.

Graceland as it exists circa 2001 is hardly the result of a template that existed in Kimball's mind from the start. Rather, it has evolved as Kimball and his ministry teammates have responded to unmet needs and new cultural tendencies they have perceived among the people they are attempting to minister Jesus to in their geographical area. It's a work-in-progress and has been since its beginnings.

The Prehistory of Graceland

Graceland is for people who don't feel at home in a more traditional church environment. Dan Kimball knows what that feels like.

In the late 1970s he prayed for salvation when a "Jesus freak" witnessed to him in a shopping mall. But for a while his newfound faith didn't make much of a difference in his life. Not until he was at Colorado State University, where he studied landscape architecture, did he began thinking deeply about God, life, and ultimate meaning. Hoping to explore Christianity further, one evening he decided to check out a campus Christian ministry. Kimball by this time was already the drummer for a rockabilly punk band, and so naturally he showed up at the meeting dressed all in black. Everyone else was dressed in pastels. "They were all very happy, as I remember," says Kimball. "I thought, I can't relate to this."

It was only when Kimball graduated from college and moved to London with his band that he started to make progress in his spiritual life. He met an 86-year-old pastor named Stuart Allen who took him under his wing. Kimball began worshiping with Allen's tiny congregation (all of them about as old as their pastor) and learning about the Christian life as a frequent guest into Allen's home. "That's when my faith became real," Kimball recalls.

After a three-month stint on a kibbutz in Israel (Kimball wanted to soak up the atmosphere where Christianity had its birth), he moved to the Santa Cruz area with his band. His day job was landscape architecture, but he put in an increasing amount of time as a volunteer at Santa Cruz Bible Church. With his pastor's encouragement, he next spent a year in Oregon completing Multnomah's Bible certificate program. And then, upon his return to Santa Cruz in 1989, he immediately began working with the high school group at his church.

Within a couple of years, the high school ministry was attracting 300 teens for its midweek event, which was a combination of high-energy large-group meetings and lower-key small-group Bible studies. But Kimball noticed that the more hard-core teens in his group weren't showing much interest in what was going on in the church's weekend services. So he took a handful of them to a service and afterward asked what they thought of it. They gave him an education.

"It seemed like the band was just putting on a performance," said one because the band members would disappear behind curtains after playing.

"Why is the pastor way up on the stage like that?" wondered another.

"It felt like Wal-Mart in there, not a church building," said a third about the new multipurpose worship center.

Kimball underscores that the regular services of Santa Cruz Bible Church were-and are-very contemporary services meeting the needs of large numbers of people. "The other services are great," he says. "If you went to them, you'd think, Wow, this place is happening. There's great music, great preaching, and a great pastor and God is using it tremendously." But younger generations tend to be sensitive to different values and issues about church, and that was reflected by the comments from the "focus group."

So Kimball did some experimenting. He held an "unplugged" service for high schoolers, featuring acoustic guitars and candles. "I'd seen that on MTV and thought that was original," says Kimball. And it worked. Even the hard-core kids were paying attention.

In 1996 Kimball took over the church's college ministry, continuing to develop his new methodology. The group grew from 40 to 180 in a year. But what surprised Kimball the most was that people both older and younger than college age wanted to join in. He realized that what he had on his hands was not just a college ministry anymore but the start of a new church service for people of all ages who feel themselves drawn to this style of worship.

With the blessing of the SCBC senior pastor and elders, Graceland was born as a distinct church service in the fall of 1997.

The Graceland Experience

Let's say you're a Santa Cruzer who has heard about this Graceland thing and shown up one Sunday evening. What do you see and hear?

The currents in the flow of humanity first push you toward the eddy pool by the greeter table. There someone gives you a "Howyadoing?" and offers to answer your questions about Graceland. You chat a bit and pick up an informational print piece or two from the tabletop.

You're early, so you order an espresso (coffee, as we know, has become the third sacrament). Then you drift over to the artwork lining the black partitions that have been set up to create the worship space. Along the way you pass a giant Graceland logo made out of hammered copper. The pieces of art, you discover, are spiritually attuned artistic expressions created by Graceland members themselves.

Turning a corner, you enter the auditorium. The first thing you notice is that the haunting musical strains you've been hearing are louder in here. They're playing tapes of music from the Russian Orthodox tradition, creating a contemplative mood. Meanwhile, on the video screens a Bible verse appears, only to melt away and be replaced by another a minute later.

Once you take a seat, you examine the stage area. For props, there is a Roman column, some drapery, and lots of candles aflicker. Random images-stained glass, nature scenes, and so on-appear one after another on video screens throughout the service. Steps have been built to bring the speaker down to the level of the worshipers.

The start of the service is signaled by the cutting off of the Russian music and the start of live music by the church's band-playing behind you. There's a message there: the music is not a performance but an aid to worship. The music is pop acoustic, guitar-driven. Praise choruses. Old hymns in hip new arrangements.

Before long, the blond, sun-tanned preacher starts his talk (you wouldn't guess he's not a California native but originally hails from New Jersey of all places). It's a topical sermon, heavily laden with stories and employing terms that don't require you to be a church insider to understand it. But it's also firmly based on Bible passages and pulls no punches about beliefs or morals. Somehow friendly and in your face all at once. Its forty minutes go by quickly.

To your surprise, you discover that the end of the sermon is not the climax of the service. After the sermon comes a second, more extended and intense worship period. There's more singing. A spoken prayer. A responsive reading led by a church member from "poet's corner." Scripture reading followed by several minutes of complete silence for individual prayer or meditation.

The pastor invites those who feel so moved to go behind the side curtains to pray. And at random moments during the worship period, people do just that. Through a gap in the curtains you see a scene that reminds you of nothing more than a Muslim mosque-people are lying facedown or kneeling in prayer. It's free yet orderly, discreet yet expressive. Kind of like the Graceland service as a whole.

As you head out into the warm California evening, the mood you're in is not one of having been manipulated to some sort of rousing sendoff but rather one of having been in the presence of God.

Nuts and Bolts of Multicongregationalism

Dan Kimball defends his church's approach against both those who say he should have a separate church and those who say it's wrong to have two different kinds of services in a single church.

At one time Kimball seriously considered planting a separate church. "I thought about renting space," he recalls, "but then I thought, Why bother? The facility here is available on Sunday nights. It seemed to make more sense to plant within the church than have to deal with all the money hassles and buildings and everything else." Being a part of Santa Cruz Bible Church also gives Graceland opportunities for the intergenerational relationships Kimball considers so important.

Yet when Kimball is criticized for dividing the church more or less along age lines by holding separate services, he argues that it isn't in a worship service that intergenerational relationships happen anyway. He says, "What difference does it make which worship service you attend? Real community occurs outside of the worship service. Real community occurs when you're in homes together, the older mentoring the younger. Real community occurs when you're on mission trips together."

In short, he sees multicongregationalism as a solution for both maintaining cross-generational connections and targeting worship experiences for different populations. To get these dual benefits, Kimball and other leaders at SCBC have had to work out the practicalities of their different-but-not-disconnected congregations.

A lot of credit for the success must go to SCBC senior pastor Chip Ingram and the church's elders. When Kimball approached the church leadership with the idea of turning his college ministry into a separate church service for people of all ages, they were not threatened by it but saw it as a work of God. They continue to experiment with how to let Graceland be what it needs to be while keeping the church together as one happy family.

"I get a lot of empowerment by the senior pastor here," says Kimball, "and that relationship is critical. The rest of the church is graciously allowing this to happen."

Kimball himself, while as keenly aware as anyone of how Graceland needs to be distinct, is committed to integrating his congregation as much as possible with the larger church body. "The goal is to see people become a part, not just of the Graceland community, but of the entire Santa Cruz Bible Church body life," says Kimball.

The doctrinal statement for SCBC is the same one used by Graceland. The elders of SCBC are Graceland's elders. The senior pastor preaches at the Graceland services three times per year. Kimball and other leaders of Graceland attend all relevant church leadership meetings. The once-a-year all-church vision message, given by Ingram, includes Graceland. These are all techniques for integrating Graceland with the rest of Santa Cruz Bible.

When it comes to the church's subministries, some are for Graceland, some are not for Graceland, but most are shared by everyone. The way it works now, for example, Graceland people coordinate the church's home groups for people under 30 years of age, while older home groups are coordinated in the other side of the church. Graceland's children's ministry on Sunday night is run by the same people as the children's ministry for the rest of the church, but it is staffed by Graceland volunteers. Graceland shares all life-stage ministries with the greater body. Graceland people volunteer in all areas of the church.

Leaders at SCBC are constantly having to consider how Graceland fits into the larger picture of the church. But by talking through each issue as it comes up, they have managed to make multicongregationalism a working reality in their church.

Advice for Other Pastors

The history of Graceland has not been without its misunderstandings and heartache. Nevertheless, it is an example of how Christians who are coming from different places can meet different needs while maintaining genuine Christian unity. Sadly, such unity is not seen everywhere.

Dan Kimball is troubled by the tension he sees in the Christian church today between older and younger leaders. His experience at SCBC gives him a unique perspective from which to speak to both groups.

Kimball to older pastors: "Even giant seeker-sensitive churches are saying, 'We're not bringing in young people anymore.' If that's the case for your church, too, don't think of yourselves as outdated or out of touch. God is still using you in great ways to reach certain people in a certain way, and you are called to do that for the rest of your life. That's great. But don't feel that you have to reach everybody. Allow another expression to birth in your church if it comes. Empower and embrace those who are called to lead new services. Allow them to flourish and don't feel threatened by them. Have a kingdom mindset, not a controlling mindset."

Kimball to younger pastors: "Let's get past all of the ego and power and control issues that come when you try to be the big boss. It's okay to plant congregations within existing churches. And let's not say that what we're doing is better than the seeker-sensitive thing, or whatever; it's just a different way. And there should be no criticism of older pastors-'Oh, those guys are out-of-date' or 'Those guys are so program-oriented.' I think Jesus would weep at our poor attitudes. We should say God uses different approaches with different people. We should all have a kingdom mindset together."

To help others who may be thinking about starting a new service similar to Graceland, Kimball offers the following five question to ask oneself:

1. What type of church service is this going to be-a service for people in a particular age range or a service that is just culturally distinct?

"I personally think that a life-stage service is going to hit a dead end," says Kimball. "Say you've got a service for twentysomethings and a member turns 30. What are you going to do? Kick him out and make him go to a different service that has different values and a different way of worship? Postmodernism is not something that you grow up out of or graduate from. That's why almost all of these services that started out as life-stage services end up becoming all-age services."

2. What roles are the elders and senior pastor going to play in the new service?

Who has decision-making power over what issues? When will leaders of the new service participate in leadership meetings of the larger church? How much of a presence will the senior pastor have in front of attenders of the new service? Hard feelings can be avoided by answering such questions in advance.

3. How are you going to encourage intergenerational relationships?

There are lots of older, more mature Christians in the traditional part of the church whom the younger attenders of a new service could benefit from knowing. And vice versa. So it's necessary to consider points of integration between the new service and the rest of the church. For example, as at Graceland, older Christians could be drafted to lead small groups for the younger crowd.

4. How will the existing children's, youth, and college ministries be impacted by the new service?

If (let's say) the new service draws off the college-age members of the church, the college-level minister may feel that his or her turf has been invaded. But it doesn't need to be a competition. There may be a way of making the new service and the college ministry work together in a way that builds up both.

5. How do you prevent the new service from becoming just the hip new place in town for all the young Christians to go to?

To some extent, it's all right if Christians from other churches start turning up at your door because you've got new music and a different approach they resonate with. But if you're intending your service to be a missional venture, you have to consider ways to keep from losing your focus on reaching unbelievers and the unchurched.

Thinking through issues such as these, pastors can plant new congregations within existing churches, just as Kimball has, to contextualize the gospel for emerging generations in their own hometowns.

Conclusion

When asked what Elvis Presley would say if he showed up at a Graceland service, Kimball responds, "He'd probably say, 'What the heck is this?' It's definitely not his mama's Baptist church. But then he'd fall in love with the people."

Kimball himself has fallen in love with the people, and it is for their sake that he has created a place of grace where they can be themselves and meet with their God.