A Christ Crossed Culture: Fishtown’s Christian Liberti-nes

The bleak landscape between Liberti Church and the Berks stop on the Frankford El calls to mind some displaced, anachronistic western. 

Trash bags blow through the empty streets and the occasional tenant sits on his stoop, waiting for nothing in particular.  Patrons pile into the local saloon as the sun sets on Northeast Philly.  “Beware of Dog” signs decorate one particularly weathered looking chain-link fence.  And amid the desolation of Philadelphia’s impoverished Kensington neighborhood, a crowd gathers to hear Steve Huber, Liberti’s scruffy, roguish pastor, recount outlandish tales of a renegade striding into town with his posse, ready for a fight.

“Imagine,” says Huber, “Jesus and his disciples get off the boat and there’s this naked crazy demon guy.”

On this particular Sunday afternoon, Huber is giving his interpretation of Mark 5:1-20, the story of Jesus healing the Gerasene Demoniac, as he is known to Bible scholars, or “that naked crazy demon guy,” in Huberese.  Huber’s preaching peppers straightforward Biblical exposition with hip phrasing and pop culture references.  Even as he deftly breaks down convoluted issues in the text (How is it ethical for Jesus to have killed two thousand pigs when he drove the demons into the herd?), he maintains a wry, deadpan wit. (Where was the local PETA chapter when those pigs were killed?)  He is equally comfortable invoking the wisdom of Biblical scholars as he is using the “Dark Knight” as a spiritual metaphor.

The easy transitions from the antediluvian to the postmodern jibe with the eclectic, seemingly contradictory viewpoints of Huber’s audience.

Mostly young, white, and culturally savvy, they are comfortable sitting in austere wooden pews, reciting the Lord’s Prayer and singing traditional hymns.  Worship at Liberti, however, updates all the awkward King James-isms and replaces the traditional pipe organ with a four-piece rock ensemble.  Huber recognizes the acute attention his audience pays to aesthetics, and he speaks their language.  “Where sin disfigures, Jesus beautifies,” he says.

Huber and his congregation know a thing or two about disfigurement.  The area in which his church has temporarily bunkered down, on Dauphin Street east of Frankford, is a portrait of urban blight.  All around are vacant lots that serve as repositories for obscene amounts of waste.  Tacked to one of the many abandoned buildings there is a hand-drawn poster that depicts two giggling girls playing the “guess who” game, except the girl whose eyes are being covered is screaming, “Get your disgusting hands off me!”  

The black humor is representative of a neighborhood that does not readily identify with the packaged for mass consumer appeal, Costco Jesus represented by megachurch pastors like Houston’s Joel Osteen.  The author of books with titles like “Your Best Life Now” and “Become a Better You,” Osteen often sounds more like a self-help guru than a spiritual leader.  Overseeing a congregation with a weekly attendance of over 43,000, the largest in the country by far, Osteen has become the face of an evangelical movement in America that is every bit as much a cultural movement as a religious one.  Men like Osteen preach a gospel that equates spiritual happiness with financial security, and it can be difficult to find anything more in his spiritual teachings than a liturgical facsimile of the American dream.  A dream that has forgotten about Kensington.

“I had become a believer in the importance of starting new churches, says Huber, “especially where there aren’t churches.  And I noticed this huge tribe of people I identified with, the young, artistic urban profession.  All these people the artistic world, the business world, they’re the least likely people in Philadelphia to go to church, the cynics.” 

“I just really fell in love with the neighborhood,” he continues.  I sold my house and bought a smaller more expensive house in a more dangerous neighborhood with no public school, at that time.  There’s a good school there now.  I just love Philly, I tried to learn as much as I can about the area.  I never really lived anywhere right near Center City but I moved here and I’m really the only pastor in the neighborhood.  There’s a couple other guys who speak Ukranian, mostly, in Northern Liberties.”

Where many churches like Osteen’s equate their effectiveness with membership numbers, Liberti strives to become more neighborhood-centric.

“The people who come to our gatherings include some who may have a skeptical side about church or religion or who doubt what they hear from so-called Christian sources,” says Liberti member Jeremy Stevenson.  “Liberti welcomes those who want to seek the truth about God, or even His existence.  I think the younger people in our culture are drawn toward churches that are humble and that are willing to get to know them as individuals and help them figure out how the Bible's gospel is applicable to their lives.”

David Rice, another Liberti member, agrees.  “To understand Liberti you have to understand that a lot of the people who go to Liberti came out of evangelical backgrounds and they’re kind of disaffected from that whole evangelical culture.  “I think there’s two things going on: on one level there’s a response to…what they perceive [about] how people think of Christians.  So there’s a concern that people will think that Christians don’t think critically about their faith.  The other element is responding to the culture they grew up in, in which doubts were not looked on as a positive thing at all, so there’s a lot of reasons why they want to avoid that.”

“Evangelical Christianity,” he asserts, “is both a cultural and a theological perspective, [and] people are dissatisfied with what they see as the alternative identity.”

Rice, a University of Pennsylvania student, grew up a pastor’s kid.  After a period of spiritual tumult (in which he left school and fled cross-country to Chicago only to turn around after hearing God speak to him on a train), Rice scaled back his strenuous Wharton school course load in order to make time to study Latin and biblical Hebrew; he had decided to become a pastor himself.  Rice in many ways embodies all of Liberti’s superficial contradictions: he’s a highly skeptical religious conservative.  He maintains a laissez-faire attitude towards his thrift store wardrobe and unkempt tangle of knotted blonde hair.  These hallmarks of his personal appearance clash with his austere views on Reformed theology, a perspective that is in accordance with Liberti’s leadership and denominational tradition.

It’s exactly those sorts of contradictions that makes Liberti such an oddity; it’s too hip for a lot of the traditional Christian establishment, and too established in Christian tradition for most hipsters.  It’s enough of a paradigm shift just to see the Liberti crowd in the sanctuary dolled up in their Sunday best.  Girls sport American Apparel hoodies and pink-streaked Pixie cuts.  The dudes display shaggy beards and skinny paint-stained jeans.  These are stylistic hallmarks of a youth culture that holds up irony and personal freedom as its absolute ideals.  In other words, these aren’t the sort of people you’d expect to be lining up to embrace a faith that spawned W.W.J.D. bracelets, George W. Bush, and Creed.  

But Liberti’s affiliation with the Presbyterian Church of America (P.C.A.) is perhaps the most surprising aspect of the church.  The P.C.A. is rooted in a “Reformed” theological tradition that stems back to 16th century  theologian John Calvin, best known for his “five points,” which include the doctrine of predestination.  Even the most disciplined adherents of the Christian faith have trouble wrapping their heads around a philosophy that considers you “elect” (ordained to heaven) or “not elect” (damned to hell) before you’re so much as an embryo.  And somehow, at the same time you’re judged for all of your actions.  It’s something that’s easier to swallow, perhaps, if you believe that you stand on the right side of the line.

When David talks about what draws him to Liberti, however, the appeal has more to do with personal connections than scenester agendas or lofty dogmas.

“People are tired of commercialized Christianity,” says David, “and they see Liberti as more real, more authentic.  Part of it’s the historicalness, part of it’s just the attitude of people there.  And that, when I went there, is one of the first things that I was really interested in, is that it was real.  It didn’t seem to be a show, but it seemed to be people honestly concerned with the gospel and being humbly changed by God.  And that’s something that’s been confirmed by getting to know them.  And now I’m not part of the Liberti community so much for the hipster ideal or anything like that, but because I have people there that I know and respect, even if I don’t agree with everyone.”

So how did this cynical, diverse, and church-averse neighborhood  come to host one of the most vibrant spiritual communities in the city?  Are these bearded hipster manchildren really flocking in droves to a church that subscribes to one of America’s oldest and most rigid Protestant theological traditions? 

The answer, improbably, is yes.  And a great deal of the reason is Huber, a large man with bouncing curls, a bristly beard and an omnipresent half smirk.  Delivering the bulk of his sermons in a casual button-down shirt and worn jeans, he often looks more like a lumberjack than a preacher.  A self proclaimed doubter and cynic, he knows as well as anyone the hurdles involved in establishing a church community in this neighborhood.

“There can be some resentment,” he said.  “[It’s like] Hey, we got a lot of church buildings in this neighborhood but there’s nothing good coming out of it, no love, nothing lived out.’  We were doing some service projects in Kensington and there was this lady who lives on the block of one of our members and said, ‘Churches around here don’t do nothing.’ And she was almost spitting while she said it.  And you know, she was right. 

"It was awesome we were helping a friend of hers,” he continues.  “It was cool, that wasn’t what was happening that day.  In an unchurched area there are a lot of preconceptions you have to get past, but there can be at the same time a new openness.”

Steve arrives to talk on a wintry afternoon at the Abbaye, a restaurant in Northern Liberties.   “No Libs,” as it’s commonly referred to by the locals, is an up-and-coming neighborhood , a trendy suburb sandwiched between Center City and Fishtown.  A run-down area in the Eighties, it’s become increasingly gentrified by young professionals and creative types.  Its nickname is also a bit of an ironic misnomer considering the self-consciously progressive politics of most of its residents. 

The Abbaye is Steve’s suggestion, and he notes the happy hour specials in his email with enthusiastic punctuation.  The bar is typical of a lot of trendier taverns around town: an even mix of local brews and imports, with Belgian style cuisine (the frites are some of the best in the city.)  A yellow sign above the door reads “Danger: Beer Snob,” just one of the many notes indicating a beer-swilling city that’s trying to turn its blue collar image into a mark of distinguished taste.  The annual “Beer Week” event, held in early March and organized by a former Daily News journalist dubbed “Joe Sixpack,” carries the tagline “America’s Best Beer Drinking City.”  Refined or not, the Abbaye helps Philly live up to that title.

As does Huber himself.  The Abbaye is one of his favorite hangouts; he’s been a Northern Liberties resident since co-launching Liberti’s Fishtown meeting in the summer of 2002.  Walking in wearing a skullcap and a T-shirt from Yard’s, a local brewery, Huber looks as at home here as he does on Sundays.  In a country where the megachurches, televangelists and glossy Jesus-pop bands often have  more in common with Walt Disney than John Wesley, a pastor who jettisons all the glitz and clichéd rhetoric  of contemporary Christianity is refreshing. 

Undoubtedly, this is part of his appeal to the crowd that Rice and Stevenson represent, hungry for a faith that’s more substance and less sheen.

“The change that needs to be worked by Christ in a person is not an outward, like, will I cease wearing beer t-shirts?” Huber says.  “But there’s an inward, will I love people?  And this is the challenge for every Christian, if you look at my life top to bottom, how I love my wife and my kids, do I give money away or just hoard it all for myself, do I live in a way that shows that I treasure Jesus?  That’s what people need to see, not the outward show and display.”

Loving people Huber-style involves more than throwing money around and giving out hugs on the sidewalk.  It involves calling people to think; in Huber’s words “to stop listening to yourself and start talking to yourself.”  In other words studying and living out the lessons that, in his opinion, God wants to impart.  This is a philosophy that flies in the face of American individualism and the American dream, the belief that our lives are purely what we make of them.

And this is where the Reformed viewpoint comes in: the idea that there is a cosmic being that decides your fate before you are born is, in addition to being terrifying, quite humbling.  And it is a humility of this sort that Huber wishes to impart on his congregation.  To get it into their heads that God is the center of the universe and it is He, not they, who makes the rules.  It’s not the “ism” of Presbyterianism that he wishes to advertise, but the message that we may not really be as awesome or powerful as we think we are.  Huber wishes to create a community of brokenness, where respect is gleaned through the open recognition of one’s own shortcomings and a mutual desire to have those blemishes healed. 

 “We don’t celebrate the labels a lot,” says Huber.  “We’re not waving a flag for reformed theology…we just teach the Bible.  We’re part of a theological tradition but we don’t wave the labels, because people really don’t care about the labels.  Technically we’re a Presbyterian church, but we like to joke that we wear that card in our wallet, we don’t wear it on our forehead.  Because the truth is no one cares.  They’re not saying like, wow, when I go into a church let me find the right flavor I want, is it going to be Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, you know…people who aren’t into Jesus aren’t into Jesus at all.  So it’s a pointless distinction to make.  There’s enough isms out there.”

Perhaps in an ideal world, superficial image would matter this little.  To him and his flock, it seems that they don’t.  But the truth is, people do care about labels.  People have been burned at the stake over the ideologies that lie behind these seemingly trivial discrepancies.  People are brought up a certain way, and those labels, whether or not they really matter, matter to them.  For something as pervasive in the childhood of many as church culture, this is especially true.  And, as it happens, if as the freethinking flannels feel threatened by the stuffy suits, the feeling is quite mutual.

************************************************************************

In every measurable sense, Tenth Presbyterian church, in Center City’s chic Rittenhouse district, is much farther away from Liberti than a 10-minute trip on the El.  Its 180 year old building, (owned by the church, unlike Liberti’s rented space) towers over the 1700 block of Spruce Street.  Stone gargoyles grimace downwards, and much of the façade is coated in barely visible wire netting, as if in an attempt to support its own antiquity.  The sign out front reads, “All Are Welcome,” but the intimidating architecture asks the attendees to check their egos at the door.  Everything is set up to engage the fearful imaginations of the Sunday-goers.  Imagine what an Almighty God can do, the building seems to bellow, when mere mortals can construct something this imposing.

The head and associate pastors, also listed on the welcome sign, both hold doctorates of divinity, and they prominently display this fact, wearing their salutations (and their middle initials) like badges of honor.  The evening sermon will be delivered by Dr. Paul D. Tripp.

The youth in the crowd is surprising, considering the venerability that the place exudes.   There is at least one college student or conservatively dressed young couple (some with young children) for every retiree or middle aged professional.  The average age is probably somewhere around 35.  Lining the sanctuary are perhaps 50 rows of unadorned wooden benches, cushioned in green velvet.  Marble columns rise up to support the vaulted ceilings, decorated with ornate golden weaves.  Balconies extend on either side.  They are sparsely occupied, but the pews on the floor have little room to spare. 

The sermon, on wisdom, is full of fiery rhetoric.  “There is no sadder reality than someone holding the Word of God and believing it nonsense,” Tripp declaims.  His speaking style is halting and dramatic, the pace of his vice accelerates and rises in pitch to tip off the congregation that he has arrived at an important point.  “Truth can only be revealed through the Spirit!” he thunders, his face flushing, his well-coiffed gray hair disturbed ever so slightly.  Whenever he follows a revelation with a dramatic pause, an African-American man in the back (one of the few in attendance) responds with a booming “AMEN!” 

From the far rear of the church, evocative eruptions from the organ and the deafening roar of the unseen choir punctuate from on high Tripp’s heady sermon.  Andrew Lloyd Webber-type theatrics overwhelm the senses and invoke a state of ecstatic contemplation.  Aside from the mandated communal prayer times, there is hardly a moment to stop and breathe, let alone digest the sensory overload that has just swept over the room.

This entire production is for the most lightly attended service of the day, at 6:30 PM.  Tenth’s theological-giant-in-residence, Dr. Phillip G. Ryken, appears only to preside over the ceremony at the beginning to admit new members, and then surveys the rest of the service from a raised podium in the back.  While Steve Huber talks about his insistence on a hierarchy of elders, here that hierarchy is undeniable. 

Historical self-awareness lies at the heart of every Tenth service.  A drawing of the building’s entryway graces the cover of every Sunday bulletin.  The tenth pulpit carries a certain mystique as well, like the throne room of a gilded castle.  Head pastor Ryken boasts a list of published works that spills into the second page of a Word document (the attachment is prominently displayed on Tenth’s website).  Though he attended the same seminary, Westminster Theological, as Steve Huber, their profiles in the “greater Christian community” are worlds apart.  Ryken’s is a widely known name. He’s hosted a nationally syndicated radio program, “Every Last Word,” that’s been running for decades, while Huber’s celebrity is for the most part confined to a small pocket of Northern Philadelphia. 

Tenth’s leadership understands that this sense of stability and tradition is what draws people to the church from areas all around the city.  “Tenth is a regional church both because of its senior minister’s profile,” says Jonathan Olsen, Tenth’s Minster for City Outreach, “and probably merely it’s the pulpit.  That’s what happens in a teaching ministry, although there are many people who self-consciously like the so-called [here he makes the air-quote gesture] “excellence” of our worship.  There are people who have a self-conscious desire for that kind of worship.  Those are two of the main reasons people go to Tenth; it’s a safe place where you know you’re going to get good Bible teaching.”

Robert Polen, Tenth’s director of City College and Career ministries, estimates that of the eighteen hundred people who attend Tenth regularly, only three hundred reside between the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers and south of Spring Garden, a broad swath of Philly that roughly designates the Center City area.  Another four to five hundred commute in from New Jersey.  Despite Tenth’s status as a Rittenhouse mainstay, it’s hard to identify Tenth as a distinctly Center City church in the same way that Huber’s Liberti congregation is a Fishtown and Kensington Church.  (It’s worth noting that Liberti has launched three other branches, known as church “plants,” in Roxborough, Fairmount, and South Philadelphia.)

Polen, Olsen, and Anne Davies, the personal assistant to Pastor Ryken, choose La Citadele, a coffeehouse on 16th and Pine, as their meeting place.  Polen, a stout, curly-haired man of about thirty, arrives early to the 10 AM meeting, typing away at his laptop with a stack of books by his side.  Olsen arrives soon after with Davies.  Both appear to be about the same age as Polen, if not a bit younger.  Olsen is dressed crisply in a striped dress shirt and tan jacket, and Davies equally so in a red sweater and skirt of modest length.  When attempting to set this interview up, the possibility of Ryken’s attendance was quickly dismissed. 

The discussion begins with a cerebral discourse on the divinity of Christ.  Seminary phrases like “substitutionary sacrifice” and “second person of the trinity incarnate” are tossed out as reflexively as Huber’s wry colloquialisms.  Their responses to their faith, while precise and articulate.

“What has Jesus meant to me?” Polen repeats the question.  “Well, I think that reality is so much more life forming than…well I’d say it’s that reality which is life forming.  The reason I sort of dislike the “to me” aspect is I think that the emphasis tends to be on how has Jesus been molded to a thing that comforts me and gives me value and meaning? And I think it’s absolutely the reverse, how am I molded and shaped on the basis of Jesus’ identity?  I think that reverses the priority.  Which isn’t to say I don’t get the question about Christ’s significance in my life, but I think it’s Christ’s significance in history independent of me, which then shapes me.  That’s how I tend to think about that question but maybe I am being sort of hypertechnical.”

There is a constant reiteration from Polen and Olsen about Tenth’s desire to connect itself to a tradition that lies rooted in the past, one that is greater than any of its congregants, clergy, or the church itself.  While Huber and Rice both mention this as being important as well, the difference lies in the way that Tenth plays the card that Huber insists on keeping tucked in his wallet.  There is a clear demographic for Tenth folk: older, conservative people and the children of those people who did not have the same alienating experiences as the Liberti crowd, and who continue to associate the affectations of tradition with spiritual robustness. 

 “I play on a city basketball team,” says Davies, “and one of the girls found out that some of us some of us on the team know each other from church.  She was like, ‘Oh, I want to come see your church.  My New Year’s resolution was to go to a new church every week until I found one.  I’ve only been to one, it’s called like Liberti or something.   I grew up Catholic, and I went to a Catholic church and it didn’t really feel like church.’ And was like, well, ours would feel more like what you’re used to.”

But for all those would-be churchgoers who are reassured by pipe organs and vast sanctuaries, there are plenty of people, often estranged by the church, who want to break down that old sacred-secular dichotomy and hash out their spiritual views over a pint and some fries.

*********************************************************************

“Any questions about Jesus we gotta talk about before we start here?” Steve Huber inquires over the microphone, ceding the floor to questions.

“How was the New Testament chosen?” asks a man close by.

“What about the book of Enoch?” asks another, referring to one of the many apocryphal works that evaded Biblical canonization.

The Abbaye is packed for a Monday evening.  It’s a standing room crowd at Liberti’s monthly “Doubt Night.”   It’s hosted at a different (generally non church-affiliated) location every month.  Huber’s idea is to openly discuss the matters of faith that are bothering his congregation.  Along with their non-Christian friends, he encourages Liberti attendees to make like Thomas and let the doubts fly.

“People imagine that they’re completely neutral when they evaluate Jesus,” says Huber, “but no one’s neutral!  Everybody has an axe to grind.  And there are some different people that have admitted that.  Madalyn Murray, a famous atheist in America, admitted that [she] had an axe to grind, [she] didn’t want this to be true.  Aldous Huxley, another famous atheist, admitted that openly, I think in a helpful way, saying ‘I want sexual and political liberation.  I’m attracted to that, that’s my inward desire.’  And that’s part of the sociology of belief, like what belief system are you attracted to.  And that could be the people that you’re with, what are you drawn to?  That’s your axe to grind.” 

“With the Doubt Night stuff,” he continues, “I want to encourage healthy doubt, which is to say to Christians, do you know why you believe what you believe?  Let’s ask the hard questions and wrestle with your doubts and to the people who don’t believe I want to say, hey, will you be an open doubter? Will you doubt even your doubts?  Say, hey, I kind of have a predisposition to say that Christianity is kind of BS, and there’s no God out there who can make a claim on my life.  And you know what, maybe isn’t it more intellectually credible to suspend that belief, and say maybe I should really look at that?”

The subject of doubt is mentioned several times in the New Testament.  James 1:6 says, “ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.”  Jude 1:22, on the other hand, asks us to “have mercy on some, who are doubting.”  The Bible’s relationship with doubt is a complicated one.

“Whatever people's assumptions are about Liberti,” says Stevenson, “I hope they see it as a place where they are allowed to explore Christianity by feeling free to ask hard questions.”

In a generation where the life of a politician or celebrity can be dragged through the muddy expanse of the internet, it’s nearly impossible to idolize anyone in the same way as before, to believe in superheroes, men and women without flaws.  One little slipup can be viewed over and over again.  As much as that may be a good thing in certain ways, it’s made us full of skeptical, and full of doubt. 

The night continues with a presentation from a preacher from Village Church in New York City’s Greenwich Village.  Pastor Sam Andreades, bespectacled, bearded and balding, takes the next hour to attempt to debunk the claim of professional curmudgeon Christopher Hitchens that, aside from the New Testament, there is little to no evidence that Jesus even existed, much less that he was the son of God.  Sam then takes the non-Biblical writings of ancient Jewish scholars and Roman historians like Josephus to piece together a ramshackle version of the Nicene Creed, a confession that constitutes the most central beliefs of the Christian faith.

He stumbles only when questioning starts and some of his scholarship is called into suspicion by a knowledgeable man in the back.  Nevertheless, this marks that Huber is accomplishing what he set out to do: encourage dialogue and cause even his own guest speaker to admit that he must refine some of his research on the subject. 

Most of those in attendance fit the Liberti profile, and were not necessarily the sort of people you’d be surprised to see in the Abbaye on a Monday night anyway.  That’s fine with Huber.  By introducing a culturally atypical subject into a hipster hangout, he has managed to embrace his community while refusing to distill his message.

“In every age there’s a powerful allure to just cave in and say what everyone else is saying,” says Huber.   “Because the newspapers, the writers, the influential thinkers will be saying, ‘This is the way the world works, this is what any sensible person would say.’  In every age of history you can see where people accommodate to the culture. 

“An ancient example of this is the ancient Catholic Church deciding priests couldn’t get married and that sex somehow is very carnal in and of itself, within marriage,” he goes on.  “That didn’t come from the Bible per se, but from Aristotle.  The ancient world was so Aristotelian in its thinking, saying that matter is bad, the spirit, the ideal is pure.  The church didn’t just come up with this lame teaching on its own, but caved in to the culture.  They said, ‘Yeah you’re right, matter is bad, if we’re going to have spiritual leaders they need to not be married, not be engaging in sex.’  So, yeah, there are churches that sell out, just cave in and say what everyone else is saying.

People within Liberti will figure out that this church is different than these other local Philly movements,” he concludes.  “Does it just mean being socially liberal?  I was socially liberal before, you haven’t challenged me.  You’ve just put a Jesus tag on my previously held hipster agenda.”

*******************************************************************

On a rainy afternoon, a block down the street from Liberti, Pastor Joshua Grace is hanging out in his office on the second floor of Circle of Hope Church, discussing sex positions and adult novelties.

“In Texas there’s some huge church that the pastor bought like a twenty foot bed, this like celebrity pastor, you know?” Grace begins. “Everybody’s coming in and he’s in the front of their gigantuous building, and he’s laying on the bed saying forty days of sex was their theme, just challenging married couples to have sex every day for forty days.  And it’s sort of twisted because on their website there’s a Q&A by the pastor about like, are sexual toys okay, is doggy style okay?”

“You’re still thinking in this old paradigm about what is prohibited and what is not, what’s the rule because I don’t want to break the rule.”

Following rules and conventions is not a major concern for Pastor Grace.  It’s hard to imagine that the guy’s ever owned a suit in his life.  His brown flannel shirt and jeans hide an emerging gut, and it looks like he decided to give himself a crew cut with kitchen scissors and gave up halfway, focusing his attention instead on the grooming and maintenance of his foot long straw colored beard.  His soft speech and calm eyes belie his wild appearance and radical opinions.

In his sermon earlier that week to kick of the Lenten season, Grace delivered his talk from behind a podium, calling attention to that fact thfat he’d never done this before.

“We’re not necessarily podium people, I know,” says Grace addressing the crowd.  “But it’s Lent, why not?  I think Lent is a ‘why not’ season.”

Why not, indeed.  Though Grace’s name could hardly be more pastoral, he took an unorthodox route to the pulpit, if this wooden music stand he calls a podium could be considered as such.  A former bike messenger, he was trained by Circle of Hope to lead from within, when their attempts to bring in leaders from outside the community failed.

It seems that people at Circle of Hope don’t take the traditional route to anything.  There’s no program, no hymnal, and no one holds a Bible.  The worship is led by a five man band, and the melodies are lush and complex with rousing vocal harmonies.  The songs are sung in at least four different languages.  Their website advertises a safe place to worship, but it is obvious that evangelical tropes and simple “Jesus Loves Me” ditties are not so welcome.

“Artists don’t like to do cheesy pop or worship for mass consumption, it’s beneath us, its beneath God,” Grace says privately, with quiet vehemence.   “God created the earth and the universe and Jesus’ followers music sucks, and that to me is one of the most egregious sins of the world.”

That customary is considered superfluous.  Grace claims that he wants to worship in the stripped down style of the “early church."

“I want to pray this week not that your theology gets tweaked or your theology changed, but that you’d get to see Jesus,” says Grace.  “Kinda being there with Jesus, that’s what Lent means in a lot of ways.  It’s ridiculous to sing about this thirsting for God nonsense and then ignoring the people next to us.”

This “thirsting for God nonsense” appears to be what Grace’s entire platform is built on, however.  When pressed in his office about his stance on controversial positions like premarital sex and homosexuality, Grace insists that he has no policy.

“You’ve got to go to Jesus, and we discern that together,” says Grace.  “If you want to have a conversation about your preferences, about your rights, then you can have that in the court of law.  But with the Holy Spirit, is that what we’re talking about? I thought we were talking about being dead to that and being alive with Jesus.  You’ve got to come in contact with God and connections with other people, and just work it out.”

With Grace it is unclear where the line ends between consulting one’s friends and consulting the divine.  His message of dialogue and community involvement is admirable.  Through enterprises like Circle Thrift, the church’s second hand clothing store designed to raise funds, provide inexpensive clothing, and create jobs, and Circle Venture, Circle of Hope’s missions program to aid the poor at home and abroad.  At times, however, it can be difficult to differentiate between Grace’s rhetoric and that of any charismatic left-wing  personality.

"I think Circle of Hope does an excellent job serving the community and showing love toward others in their actions,” says Laura Winchell, a Liberti member who used to attend Circle of Hope.  “They engage culture well and are humble in the way they relate to others, but they fail to incorporate consistent study of the Bible into their activities.  The cell group I went to was primarily geared toward fellowship, and while the sermons expounded on ideas of morality that were vaguely Biblically based, or were taken from a passage in the Bible, the purpose never seemed to be to know the Bible better or to examine its relevance to today's culture.  Because they don't spend much time examining the Bible or using it as a culturally relevant resource and a foundation of doctrine and knowledge about God, their theology is loose at best.”

*********************************************************************

“Who is Jesus?” asks Huber.  “I think that’s a great question to pose to people just because Jesus breaks all categories.  He breaks categories people usually try to put him in.  Everyone wants to get a piece of Jesus sort of…they want to respect Jesus as a teacher, but his other claims don’t allow you to do that.  You’ve heard someone says something about someone like, ‘He’s a good guy…he talks a little bit too much,’ or ‘He’s a good guy, but once in a while he’ll get mad and want to fight somebody.’  You can’t say that about Jesus.  ‘Hey, he’s a good guy, but he thinks he’s the meaning of life.’  When you get over the fact that it just doesn’t work, it ceases to become intellectually credible.  And that’s an argument that’s been made by people throughout history.

“But yeah man, I think Jesus is the Son of God.  He’s the son of God and the Savior of the world.  He’s the Messiah that the whole Bible is centered around, that the Old Testament looks to.  The New Testament explains the meaning of his life, death, and resurrection.  He’s the hope of the world.  And I’m often asked why I do what I do and it’s a personal thing.  I believe Jesus is who he says he is.”

When Huber starts talking about Jesus his voice, which typically carries a tone that is sharp, direct, and a bit snarky, softens in a way that leaves no room for his characteristic dry humor. 

And besides that he lives it.  He lives in a neighborhood right by his church, serving the community.  Through programs like the CARE team, Huber and Liberti reach out to church members and church haters alike in the neighborhood by responding to requests for help with housing, rent, utilities, food, medical attention, insurance, transportation, counseling, and childcare.

As a scholar of both the Bible and popular culture, Huber is able to provide Biblical analogies that are hipster-friendly while attempting to remain true to the text.  For now, what he offers is both traditional and relevant.  He avoids the stuffiness that ostracizes youth culture on the one hand while refusing to “cave in” to it on the other. 

Perhaps in fifty years, if Liberti is still around, it will have become the new Tenth.  The hipsters will age and their values will seem stodgy to a new generation, and a new spokesman will arise to attempt to demonstrate the gospel’s transcendence through time and cultural mutation.  But for now, Huber himself is constantly evolving and trying to communicate what he believes in a way that will force others to listen.  And he recognizes that while he’s come a long way in his ability to do that, there’s still plenty of room for growth.

“This is the paradox, theologians call it the already/not yet,” says Huber.  “I’m already different, it’s true.  I’m a different person than I would be without Jesus.  But I’m not yet who I’m called to be.”

Steven Waye is a senior Creative Writing major.