church plants

It's entirely possible within the next few months that I may be involved in starting a new church here in New Jersey. Knowing the other people involved, we're talking about a church that would be seeker-friendly by design; i.e., it would be a church that anyone off the street could walk into and feel at home in, even if they had no church background. Rather than creating a church with its own subculture, we would be trying to create a church with Iowa's culture.

So let's talk about this. If you were starting a church completely from scratch, how would you do it in a culturally sensitive and culturally relevant way so that people won't find it weird as soon as they step in the front door?

A few areas that have occurred to me:

• worship style
• sermon style
• language spoken in church
• structure of service
• Is there a central meeting place, or would the church facility be discarded as outdated for a postmodern culture?
• use of visual and performing arts
• sermon topics
• personal appearance/clothing
• areas of ministry

Let me give you an example. If I were starting a church explicity to reach Arab Americans, I would try to structure the church service to be like a mosque. No musical instruments. People leave their shoes at the door. Up front would be a copy of the Scriptures in their original languages. Pastor would be called an imam, and we would use Arabic names like Allah, Isa, Musa and so on. And of course we would try to tap a core group of Arab Christians to help us launch the church.

That's the basic missions approach -- you design your church so it is as nonalien to the nonbeliever as it can be.

So how would you tailor a church to our contemporary culture? I await your thoughts.