Post-Dispatch

I know we've only been here for a few months, but the Salyers have already created a pretty impressive footprint on the STL culture. In fact, Dawn was recently interviewed in the St. Louis Post Dispatch. Anyone who knows her can understand why her expert opinion would be sought out by the highest ranks of journalistic endeavor. Actually she took a weekend class at Covenant that our pastor at the Journey (www.journeyon.net) was teaching. She was interviewed for a "woman's perspective" on the weekend. Here is the article:

The Journey, and others like it, aiming to reach younger people
By Tim Townsend

Saturday, Oct. 27 2007

It's always a bit of a thrill to associate with something scary.

That might have explained the large turnout at Covenant Seminary last weekend for the Rev. Darrin Patrick's three lectures on the emerging church.

The term "emerging" has come to define a movement that uses alternative ways of attracting younger people by tapping into secular culture.

Patrick's St. Louis-based church, The Journey, is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the country with 16 million members.

The leadership of the Missouri Baptist Convention — the state arm of the Southern Baptists — has campaigned against the emerging church, though it has a working relationship with The Journey. It says Patrick's methods of evangelizing to young people conflict with what the Bible teaches.

But some scholars say those Baptists are afraid. Afraid because the emerging church is reaching a generation they've been unable to reach themselves. And without the young, how will a denomination survive?

The seminarians attending Covenant's Frances A. Schaeffer lectures last weekend seemed more curious than bent on destroying denominational Christianity. That Patrick delivered the three lectures within the walls of a denominational institution (Covenant is run by the Presbyterian Church in America, a conservative evangelical church) put to bed any conspiracy theories about the emerging church stomping all traditional denominations into the ground.

But there were signs that some seminarians at the lectures were there to scope out the emerging church movement to see how it might fit into their plans for their own ministries.

Bo Kyle, a 23-year-old Covenant student from Louisiana, said he was brought up in a "traditional church" but "grew a lot" when he began worshipping at emerging churches. He said he could see himself eventually practicing his ministry in the emerging church.

Dawn Salyer, 25, and her husband are students at Covenant. "We came from a small, traditional church in Nebraska," she said. "But we got here and we found we have a real heart for what Darrin Patrick is doing in St. Louis."

Patrick, the lead pastor of The Journey, founded the church in 2002 with 30 people. It now has 1,800 members on campuses in St. Louis' Tower Grove neighborhood, Clayton and west St. Louis County. A fourth campus will open in south St. Louis County in February. The Journey also has started two more churches — one in St. Charles called The Refuge, and another called The Mission that just opened in Edwardsville.

It's that kind of rapid growth and energy that worries church leaders across the denominational spectrum who look down from the pulpit and see only white hair. Many would give anything to tap into the fleece jackets, jeans and hip, bed-head hairstyles that populate Patrick's church.

Patrick said The Journey also is starting to attract more people in their 50s who are looking to find a church that would be palatable for their young-adult kids who lead very secular lives.

Despite its enviable 18- to 34-year-old demographic, not all is going swimmingly for the emerging church.

In his lectures, Patrick described the ideological and theological shifts that led to a splintering of the movement.

Patrick's branch, which is the most theologically conservative, coalesces around a national network of 125 churches called Acts 29, of which Patrick is the vice president. Then there's a less conservative branch. And the most theologically liberal branch is organized around another network called Emergent Village.

Patrick was educated in Southern Baptist seminaries and believes that the Bible is the literal word of God. He took issue during one lecture with his more liberal emerging church cohorts, saying many of them question orthodoxy. "When God has clearly spoken, we don't converse, we obey," he said.

The annual meeting of the Missouri Baptist Convention begins Monday at the Tan-Tar-A Resort in Osage Beach, and the emerging church is sure to be a hot topic of conversation. Patrick, and many of those involved with Acts 29 in the state, will be there. The meeting is scheduled to end, appropriately enough for those scared by the emerging church, on Halloween.