Beech Tree News Network

Northwest Arkansas is probably not a place you imagine as a hotbed of church innovation and progressive Christian theology and practice. And you’ve probably never heard of Vintage Fellowship in Fayetteville. The same goes for Morgantown, Kentucky, and Morgantown Com­munity Church. But at both Vintage and MCC something quietly remarkable and promising is going on.

“Demographically and statistically, we should not exist,” said MCC pastor Josh Scott. “We’re a deep purple dot in a deeply red state.”

Morgantown Community Church started as a seeker-sensitive congregation, drawing on the church growth movement of the 1990s. Since Scott became pastor there 12 years ago, his own faith has gone through what he calls an “intensive deconstruction process.” It’s led him to different conclusions about what the Bible is, what it means to be part of a Christian community, and how Christians should engage the world. His church has joined him on that journey.

When a graduate student visited MCC recently as part of a study of people who are moving from a conservative to a progressive faith, “he expected to find an enclave of hipsters,” said Scott—“that somehow we had tapped into a trendy undercurrent in Morgantown. “But that clearly wasn’t the case. The student met exactly the kinds of people you’d expect to meet in small communities in America’s heartland: hog farmers and schoolteachers, mechanics and grocery store managers. Not hipsters.

“The people who’ve found their home with us aren’t the typical image that pops into the mind when you imagine a progressive person,” said Scott.

A church that goes against the grain in a politically and socially conservative area has three main options. It can be a community for liberal refugees, a place for the political or social minority to gather with kindred spirits. Or it can be a bridge-building community, seeking to bring together people who see things differently, helping them understand and perhaps influence each other. Or it can be an activist community, seeking to change the social and political climate of the region in a progressive direction. I asked the pastors of MCC and Vintage which of these three paths best describes their congregation.

“MCC is definitely a refuge for the progressive Christians (and some non-Christians who want to be connected in a community) in an extremely conservative region,” said Scott. “There’s a growing segment of our community who need no convincing about how urgent it is that we reimagine—migrate, if you will, to a more just and generous faith.” He recalls a fortysomething progressive Christian who remarked, “I can’t believe this church exists in my town.”

To continue reading this article, please refer to the link below from Christian Century.