strip it down, take it away and start over
As members of the Rock, we've all been dreaming about what could be in store for The Rock with the new audio plus building. I guess you could say I haven't been so much dreaming about what could be, but I've been dreaming about what shouldn't be. It is my main desire to see the Rock grow to be on the cutting edge of cultural relevancy, and subsequently, to win an amazing amount of people for Christ. What I'm about to present may shock some of you, it may offend some of you, and it definitely will present ideas that are outside of our comfort zones, but I believe that God is asking us to do something new, something crazy.

Currently the Rock operates with a production type of approach. We play loud music, we use video productions, we have lots of lights and we have a speaker. Its basically the same format every friday night the Rock is held. We hear a few songs, hear announcements, watch a silly video or an awesome star wars trailer, hear a speaker, worship some and then head downstairs to the Rock cafe (which by the way, emily and jana and whoever else puts that together, you guys do an awesome job). The production model is outdated and ineffective. It was once effective, but it no longer is. Why? you may ask. Because any college student who is looking for a good production is going to find it at the bars while listening to a good secular band and drinking their favorite alcoholic drinks. They are not going to come listen to worship music and be surrounded by a bunch of christians at a church event.

Another problem the Rock experiences is conflicting purposes. We call the Rock an outreach, yet we play intense worship music. The unbelieving person doesn't get worship music, because they don't "get" the One we are worshipping. But because we are trying to invite our unsaved friends, we don't go all out for worship because we don't want to alienate them.

How can we make the Rock effective as an outreach?

I think we should scale the rock back to 2 times a month. We shouldn't have worship music and we shouldn't have a speaker. No college student who has spent a week in class wants to spend their friday night being lectured. Instead we should have discussions open to the whole community. We should be asking people the big and tough questions. Questions like, "What's wrong with the Church?" and "How can there be a good God in a world of such pain?" and etc. And we should invite everybody we can to discuss it on a friday night. I don't think the Rock should build a stage. The cultural signifigance of a stage is that it elevates certain people over the rest of the people. We should set up 2 microphones and allow people to present their opinions about the given topic. There should obviously be a moderator, but mainly to give order to the discussion. And at the end of the discussion time we as the Rock should admit that we don't have all the answers, but we have come to experience something real in our midst, and we would love people to hang out with us, have a few drinks (yes, that would be alcoholic drinks as well) and see if they too can experience Christ as we know him. The whole premise of this approach is that we are trying to start a dialogue with people. A dialogue is a two way conversation that leaves room to continue the conversation. It's letting Christ witness to people in a way that is far more powerful than our best attempts. Then the other 2 friday nights during the month we could do any number of things. We could have an all out worship night. Again, I would open this night up to the whole community, but tell them that we love to sing to praise Jesus, and they are invited to check it out. Then maybe the other friday we could have an all rock prayer nite. This would be beneficial because people could just plan on spending their friday night at the rock like they normally would. If we want to reach those "far from the cross" we are going to have to start asking the right questions, and we have to start crafting the Rock to be enticing to them. If we really are serious about reaching the people who are in the "bar scene" we have to serve alcoholic drinks. We simply aren't going to win those people by serving kool-aid and playing audio adrenalines "Big, big house" really loud.

I may not have explained this as fully as I needed to, so feel free to ask me questions about these crazy ideas.

-teege