The Portico, Charlotte, North Carolina

The Portico New Church Development in Charlotte, North Carolina, describes itself as “both Presbyterian and Emerging.” Many people have heard terms like “emerging church” or “emergent conversation.” But what does it really mean for a PC(USA) church to use terms like “emerging” or “emergent” as part of their developing identity?

An analogy might be helpful. The Rev. Rodger Sellers, the organizing pastor of The Portico, has a favorite: “Imagine a large picture frame with a blank canvas sitting in it. The existing frame represents our Presbyterian/Reformed heritage. The blank canvas represents a new context where we begin answering questions like how can we engage a post-modern world? Our theology grounds us to our past. Our willingness to engage an emerging culture in faithful and relevant ways insists we begin to paint new pictures that speak to a new reality.”

Sellers continues, “This is one way of honoring our identity as the church reformed and always being reformed. The Portico is an attempt to live in two worlds: One that values our traditions while working to create new and vital expressions that reflect our diversity.”

One place The Portico lives in the tension between old and new is in the “emerging worship” that happens every Sunday evening at 5 p.m. The Portico’s worship space is a basement rented from an established church. The worship space looks more like a coffeehouse than a traditional sanctuary. Worshipers sit on recycled sofas or stuffed chairs with subtle theater lighting and candles providing most of the illumination. Three screens display the worship liturgy projected during worship. Worship happens in the round, where most members look at each other. A recycled wood communion table occupies the focal center of the space. All music for worship is designed to be participatory and in fact, many songs are original compositions. Pastor Sellers remarks, “As good as the Presbyterian Hymnal is for choral music, it was never intended to be accompanied by guitars. Almost every hymn we sing is re-arranged to be as meaningful as possible with the resources we have. In addition to writing much of our own music, we also make sure it always includes everyone. We don’t want people in worship listening while others sing for them. We want worship to be something everyone helps create.” To that end, several coffee tables have boxes of percussion instruments on them. Most Sundays, as people gather, folks help themselves as they arrive, preparing to play their part in creating the community’s worship music. Several folks regularly bring their own hand drums to worship.

Sermons at The Portico are not traditional. Regular use of “progressional dialogue” occurs during each week’s message. It’s been described this way: “You don’t have to sit passively for 20 minutes and just take it. If God speaks to you through the sermon, we want (and expect) you to share that with the entire community. You might be the one God chooses to use that week to speak to all of us.”

The participatory nature of The Portico’s worship even extends to the words describing it. “We don’t use the word ‘service.’ We don’t want anyone to mistake what we are doing together for some kind of service or product they receive. Our audience is God, worship is a verb, and we are the ‘doers’ every time we gather. The church is not some type of religious service station where we fill up our spiritual tanks to get through the week. It’s a place where we gather to create an offering of praise to the One who calls us into community and kingdom together.”

Almost every time The Portico worships, the sacrament of Holy Communion is celebrated. Reclaiming the Eucharistic nature of worship is as important as any other aspect. While this may seem quite “untraditional” in the cultural sense, it is reformed in the theological sense. And that provides a major key to understanding the worship canvas this NCD has been painting for the past year and one half.

“It’s not just about style,” Sellers explains. “Every aspect of our worship, from the music to the room layout, to prayer stations, to the participatory nature of how we gather as a community of faith, is a testimony to the theological underpinnings that have guided its development. We don’t use candles in our liturgy simply because they are in vogue. We use them for clearly thought out theological reasons. We take seriously our call to be a theology-generating community, and no where is that more evident than in the way we have developed worship that is reformed and also contextually meaningful to us.”

Worship at The Portico perhaps can be summarized with words from the Office of Theology and Worship’s “Emerging Worship” initiative outlined in 2003: “Emerging worship is a way of recognizing, articulating, and developing worship that seeks to be authentic to our ancient faith while being appropriate to our current context.” The Portico took that idea to heart and began developing worship that makes sense for their community, at this time, in their place, while recognizing that its development will never be finished or perfect.