{"id":8195,"date":"2004-01-11T00:37:05","date_gmt":"2004-01-11T00:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/church_for_yuppies.html"},"modified":"2004-01-11T00:37:05","modified_gmt":"2004-01-11T00:37:05","slug":"church_for_yuppies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/church_for_yuppies.html","title":{"rendered":"Church for Yuppies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Not my headline. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washtimes.com\/metro\/20040109-100913-2203r.htm\">The Washington Times reports on a new church in DC<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The concept originiated with the Rev. Tim Keller, a Presbyterian minister who in 1989 founded Redeemer Presbyterian in Manhattan. It is now at 3,000 members, 80 percent of whom are single, meeting at Hunter College on the Upper West Side.<br \/>\nEvangelical Christians, Mr. Keller realized, by and large were not conversant with the educational, medical, media, artistic and cultural institutions that surround them in any large city. Thus, most cities had taken on a secularized, post-Christian, postmodern spiritual dynamic.<br \/>\n&#8220;These churches want to embrace the city,&#8221; said Ted Powers, the PCA&#8217;s planting coordinator. &#8220;We don&#8217;t want to have a posture against this big, bad city. We wish to [affect] the people who make it tick.&#8221;<br \/>\nUnlike the highly charismatic 1970s vintage churches that brought a whole generation of baby boomers into born-again Christianity, the newer PCA brand is a far more sober milieu. Its music often includes 19th-century hymns and social action is a given. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I read articles like that one and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.therevealer.org\/archives\/feature_000039.php\">this one<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;For better and worse, Hollywood is the culture we live in,&#8221; Pastor Mark says when I ask him whether he worries that his stable of references might have too short a half-life. But in a sense, that may be the dilemma awaiting NCC as it continues to grow. While it remains studiously relevant in form \u2014 and wins itself a congregation in which young single professionals account for 80 percent of the membership, making it the envy of less media-savvy churches \u2014 NCC, like many growth-minded Protestant outfits, is pointedly &#8220;apolitical&#8221; on many of the hot-button controversies that convulse other denominations, and produce the great Protestant virus of denominational schism. Indeed, even though Batterson was certified out of seminary to preach in an Assemblies of God, he proclaims himself &#8220;a theological mutt&#8221; and says NCC &#8220;is about as eclectic as a church can be.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8230;and I am left wondering, every time, about Us Catholics. Where is our missionary impulse to the unchurched among us? But then, thinking historically, at least in the US, I am not struck by there ever being such a thing, with the exception of Fulton Sheen, perhaps. We&#8217;ve been way to busy for most of our history trying to serve our own as they have streamed to these shores and strained resources and spread throughout the country. Do you think that&#8217;s true? Evidence to the contrary?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not my headline. The Washington Times reports on a new church in DC The concept originiated with the Rev. Tim Keller, a Presbyterian minister who in 1989 founded Redeemer Presbyterian in Manhattan. It is now at 3,000 members, 80 percent of whom are single, meeting at Hunter College on the Upper West Side. Evangelical Christians,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Church for Yuppies - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/church_for_yuppies.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Church for Yuppies - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Not my headline. The Washington Times reports on a new church in DC The concept originiated with the Rev. Tim Keller, a Presbyterian minister who in 1989 founded Redeemer Presbyterian in Manhattan. It is now at 3,000 members, 80 percent of whom are single, meeting at Hunter College on the Upper West Side. Evangelical Christians,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/church_for_yuppies.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-01-11T00:37:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Church for Yuppies - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/church_for_yuppies.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Church for Yuppies - Via Media","og_description":"Not my headline. The Washington Times reports on a new church in DC The concept originiated with the Rev. Tim Keller, a Presbyterian minister who in 1989 founded Redeemer Presbyterian in Manhattan. It is now at 3,000 members, 80 percent of whom are single, meeting at Hunter College on the Upper West Side. Evangelical Christians,&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/church_for_yuppies.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2004-01-11T00:37:05+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/church_for_yuppies.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/church_for_yuppies.html","name":"Church for Yuppies - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2004-01-11T00:37:05+00:00","dateModified":"2004-01-11T00:37:05+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/church_for_yuppies.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/church_for_yuppies.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/church_for_yuppies.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Church for Yuppies"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}