{"id":58729,"date":"2025-07-23T10:22:41","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T14:22:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/?p=58729"},"modified":"2025-07-25T12:18:39","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T16:18:39","slug":"church-for-everyone-else","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/church-for-everyone-else\/","title":{"rendered":"Church for Everyone Else"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was written by Steve Holt and originally published in the 2025 issue of <\/em>focus<\/span><\/a> magazine, the annual publication of the BU School of Theology. This article can be found on page 20.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Amid dropping church attendance and rising religious trauma, two services\u2014one in person and one virtual\u2014welcome those who\u2019ve been hurt by religion. They\u2019re also redefining what a worshipping community looks like.<\/h3>\n
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Thursday Night Church is co-led by Associate Pastor Rachel Barton (\u201923) and Audrey Woodhams (\u201926), the creative director (below).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Boston\u2019s Old South Church traces its roots to Puritans in 1669, more than a century before the birth of the United States. For 150 years, the congregation\u2014which had split from Boston\u2019s Puritans over a dispute about baptism\u2014gathered in the Old South Meeting House, best known as the site where Samuel Adams riled up would-be revolutionaries against British occupation. The church moved to its current location at Dartmouth and Boylston Streets in 1875, and today its gothic stone campanile soars above Copley Square. To whatever degree Boston has a religious \u201cestablishment,\u201d 356-year-old Old South Church is it. But behind those old stones exists a Christian community extending a hand to those who\u2019ve perhaps been wounded by established religion. For decades, the United Church of Christ congregation has had progressive theology and an open posture to all comers\u2014LGBTQIA+, doubting, unhoused, or undocumented. A new Thursday evening service, however, packages those fundamentals in a slightly more contemporary way. The candlelit service is in Old South\u2019s stunning Gordon Chapel, which is largely stripped of trappings like organs and clerical vestments and is centered on community, simplicity, and the table\u2014both a communion table during the service and a shared meal afterward. A small band, led by Audrey Woodhams (\u201926), Thursday Night Church\u2019s creative director, plays music that is acoustic and radio friendly. (Recent services have featured songs by Coldplay and Teddy Swims.) A reflection from one of the ministers (not a sermon) is uplifting, practical, and theological. Prayer requests are spoken aloud into a mic that is passed between worshippers. Queer attendees are always specifically welcomed and affirmed from the front of the chapel. A website describing Thursday Night Church, which the congregation launched in the spring of 2024, says the service is for \u201cthose hurt by closed minds and closed doors.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Plans for the revamped service began in late 2023, spearheaded by ministers Ashley Popperson (\u201914, SSW\u201914) and Rachel Barton (\u201923). \u201cWe spent a lot of time in prayer and conversation to try and discern the needs of the city,\u201d Barton says of those early planning meetings. \u201cThe things we came up with were around longing to create spaces for vulnerability in community. We talked a lot about the epidemic of loneliness, particularly for younger folks. I think the pandemic tore up a bunch of ways that people knew how to connect with and relate to one another, and we really wanted to cultivate the opposite of that and make space where people could feel safe to be themselves together.\u201d With church attendance plummeting nationwide and some queer or doubting Christians in search of a community where they are fully embraced, communities like Old South are breaking free of traditional and theological confines to extend radical welcome to seekers and saints alike. It\u2019s a welcome embodied by the first few lines of \u201cSeat at the Table,\u201d the Common Hymnal tune Woodhams leads at the beginning of each Thursday service:<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t it feel good to know you\u2019ve always got a place, yeah
\n<\/em>A seat at the table that no one can take
\nI know that this road can be long
\nBut, loved one, we welcome you home.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Ashley Popperson (\u201914, SSW\u201914), who began casting a vision for Thursday Night Church in 2023, leads a prayer before communion.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Virtual formation<\/h5>\n

The sanctuary at Church of the Young Prophets looks like others I\u2019ve sat in: a large chancel, bordered by green plants, in the center of which is a table with communion bread and wine. A place for prayer is off to the side, and pride flags flank a circular stained-glass window at the center front of the room. Instead of pews or rows of chairs, couches are arranged in six semicircles around coffee tables, which hold more communion elements. On a Saturday in October, Rev. J.J. Warren approaches the lectern and greets those who have gathered for church. \u201cWe welcome you in the fullness of all of who you are,\u201d says Warren (\u201922). \u201cAll of who you are is celebrated and welcomed and affirmed in this community.\u201d He continues with several instructions for how to engage during the service. \u201cWe invite you, if you are in Gather.Town, to use the emoji bar at the bottom of your screen to let us know how you are approaching this time of worship. What are you feeling as you come into this space? In the chat, let us know where in the world you are, and who you are with as you worship with us today.\u201d Emojis pop into the bottom left of my screen indicating feelings of anxiety, happiness, silliness. Members report in the chat that they are logging on from Oklahoma, Illinois, and elsewhere. Warren signed in from Vienna, Austria, where he lives with his husband and is pursuing a PhD. That\u2019s right: Church of the Young Prophets is not built with bricks and mortar, but pixels and bytes. Members assemble each Saturday from seven countries using Gather.Town, a virtual meeting space that allows groups to customize it to their own needs and greet each other using avatars they control with their keyboard arrows. A Zoom-like video chat window shows each person\u2019s face, unless they choose to remain off camera. Today, we\u2019re in the sanctuary, but during the week church members and volunteers meet privately with Warren in his virtual office, sit around a shared table, walk the prayer labyrinth, or sing karaoke on the church\u2019s rooftop lounge. A congregational channel on the gaming app Discord keeps the conversation and prayers going throughout the week\u2014especially for Australian members who are asleep when the church is holding its Saturday church service.<\/p>\n

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Church of the Young Prophets uses the online platform Gather.Town for its weekly church services, which include prayers, songs, readings, communion, and a sermon.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re still here\u201d<\/h5>\n

Church of the Young Prophets was born following a speech Warren delivered advocating for LGBTQIA+ inclusion at the United Methodist Church\u2019s 2019 General Conference, where the denomination reasserted its restrictions on queer members and clergy. LGBTQIA+ Methodists from around the world began to reach out to Warren, who was still working on an MDiv at STH, to express their concerns and hopes. To feel less alone. \u201cI really felt this calling to create a space for us as our denomination was furthering harm against LGBTQ people, to create a space where young queer people could gather and say, \u2018We\u2019re still here,\u2019\u201d Warren tells me in an interview. They called themselves the Young Prophets Collective and initially gathered monthly on Zoom as something of a support group, facilitated by Warren and cocreator Alyssa Kuebler (\u201922). Over time, the group turned into a yearlong, global cohort of queer activists and ministry leaders working to \u201cempower the people who were being disempowered by the church.\u201d \u201cWe would work together for a year, and they would identify an injustice in their community, and then we\u2019d work together to say, \u2018How might you meet that need?\u2019\u201d Warren says. It was an opportunity to take theories Warren and Kuebler were learning at STH, like asset-based community development and liberation theologies, \u201cdistilling them into an accessible way for mostly lay leadership,\u201d Warren says. UMC bishops have since voted to reverse course and formally embraced the queer community; the Young Prophets Collective is supported financially by the UMC\u2019s New England Conference. But the virtual congregation remains vital to its members\u2014a few of whom are in countries where living openly as queer persons is dangerous or illegal. This is why Warren makes a point of limiting who can attend to those who affirm LGBTQIA+ people and beginning each service with a statement celebrating the queerness in the room. \u201cAt a lot of churches, especially for queer people, you experience shame when you walk in,\u201d Warren says. \u201cEven the act of walking into a church can be triggering, so we are very explicit in the fact that we start every service with, \u2018All of who you are is celebrated.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI really felt this calling to create a space for us as our denomination was furthering harm against LGBTQ people, to create a space where young queer people could gather and say, \u2018We\u2019re still here.\u2019\u201d \u2014J.J. Warren<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Designing a space of welcome<\/h5>\n

In thinking about what the respective services would look and feel like, leaders of both Thursday Night Church and Church of the Young Prophets say they started with a vision of the people they wanted to serve. Old South\u2019s Thursday Night Church was born out of Jazz Worship, a vibrant, music-forward expression that drew a different crowd than those who showed up for one of two Sunday morning services. When longtime musician Willie Sordillo announced in 2023 that he would be moving on from leading the Thursday service, Old South leaders assembled a \u201cdreaming team,\u201d which began to imagine a format change. Barton joined the ministry staff just as Popperson began holding visioning meetings for the future of Thursday worship. \u201cWe spent a lot of time in discernment and got to a strong sense that there was a community of people who likely had grown up in the church\u2014either the Evangelical or the Catholic Church\u2014and that those folks had not been able to find a place that they could call home, be themselves, and be welcome, but also deeply resonate with the music and the shape of the service,\u201d Barton says. To shape that service, Old South tapped Woodhams\u2014a Nashville-trained songwriter and worship leader who is pursuing an MDiv at STH. About a year into the revamped service, Barton says, around 60 percent of those attending are new faces and \u201clargely exactly the people we were hoping to make a service for: younger folks, queer folks, young professionals, students coming into the city.\u201d Like the leaders of Old South Church, Warren sought input from the community instead of building the church on his own preconceived notions of what it should be. He describes the Church of the Young Prophets as cocreated. One virtual service led to a four-week test run, after which Warren elicited feedback, which has led to a weekly service (and numerous other gatherings throughout the week) for two years. Services include prayers written by church members, both traditional hymns and contemporary worship songs, scripture readings, Warren\u2019s mini-sermon, and conversation around the couches. \u201cWe\u2019re constantly trying to reclaim different parts of the Christian tradition a little bit,\u201d Warren says. He firmly believes their space is every bit as much a church\u2014in all its pixelated glory\u2014as the one with a steeple in the center of town. \u201cJesus says, \u2018Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am among them,\u2019\u201d Warren says. \u201cIf we say, \u2018Yeah, this meant something 2,000 years ago,\u2019 how could we possibly say Jesus is not present here? Who are we to put a box on God and say that God could not be present through the media that we\u2019re encountering here?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article was written by Steve Holt and originally published in the 2025 issue of focus magazine, the annual publication of the BU School of Theology. This article can be found on page 20.\u00a0 Amid dropping church attendance and rising religious trauma, two services\u2014one in person and one virtual\u2014welcome those who\u2019ve been hurt by religion. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12612,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[200,211,202,203],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58729"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12612"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58729"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58736,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58729\/revisions\/58736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}