Crosswalk Church: the 2024 Experience Conference, Part 1
by Jim Walters | 26 April 2024 |
Crosswalk Church is now a global network. Accordingly, 200 conference attendees descended last Friday, April 19, on their mother church in Redlands, California. Conferees flew in from Costa Rica, Australia, and Indonesia, plus from all regions of the United States.
The 2024 Crosswalk Experience Conference began with Sutarsa Tanu, the Adventist Djakarta businessman who seven weeks earlier held his first Crosswalk church service in a downtown 5th-floor hall, at $5,000/service, where 350 attendees are meeting—with a projected 1,000 within a year.
Crosswalk leaders know of about 10 active groups around the world and expect 15 within the next year.
Please note the word “experience”: it’s not just the theme of the three-day conference. Conference leaders designed the weekend so attendees would personally experience what Crosswalk offers everyone who ventures through its doors: an experience of God, and experience with others—the two integrally connected at Crosswalk.
“The church exists to connect people to each other and to their God,” asserted lead pastor Tim Gillespie, in his welcoming address. “It isn’t just to pass on church truths.”
At the Crosswalk Redlands Seventh-day Adventist Church (meeting in three adjacent office buildings on Corporate Drive, close to Loma Linda city limits), the experience begins when a smiling young volunteer warmly welcomes you into the bustling entry dominated by a huge bar serving varieties of excellent, freshly brewed coffees. (AT’s “Happy Sabbath! How would you take your coffee?” is relevant here. )
And likely you hear—even through the closed doors to the 580-seat auditorium—the beating drum set, electric guitars, and a half-dozen stage singers praising God.
Crosswalk isn’t your typical Adventist church service—by design.
“If a visitor gets turned off by what’s in our lobby, that person should probably not enter the sanctuary but go to another area Adventist church,” says executive pastor Ron Aguilera. The Crosswalk experience is consciously designed to focus on the Gospel of Jesus and live this Good News through the everyday culture of contemporary young adults.
Our traditional Adventism “makes yesterday [not Jesus] sacred,” asserts Dave Ferguson, lead pastor at Crosswalk Chattanooga. Crosswalk seeks to put Jesus first, leaving yesterday behind whenever appropriate. Repeatedly at the conference, the Redlands, Chattanooga, and Portland pastors (the primary conference presenters) referred to former Adventists—who “hadn’t been to church in 20 to 30 years” as the audience they are seeking. “It’s a big deal to go back to the Seventh-day Adventist church,” asserted Paddy McCoy, Crosswalk Portland lead pastor. Many of the former Adventists now attending Crosswalk churches were turned off by the legalism and emotional coldness in much of their tradition.
Ferguson and McCoy joined Gillespie in one of 18 breakout groups during the conference, the trio’s focus being “Crosswalk Fundamentals.” Gillespie built on McCoy’s allusion to traditional religion’s turn-off, adding that producing an experiential Adventism “isn’t jet science,” because old church has been “a low bar for a long time.” Hence, Crosswalk’s appeal seems to be “doubling and tripling.”
Gillespie says, “We know that every person who attends our church is special, and we know who God is calling us to uplift: Jesus.” Gillespie senses God’s continual leading, with followers merely needing to “say yes!” Some ideas don’t work out, and that’s OK. But “God calls us to move continually.”
It’s not coincidental that one of Crosswalk’s three values is momentum.
Crosswalk’s focus on experience may begin in the coffee café, but it continues inside the doors, on the huge, loud acoustic stage. A clear jar of orange, fluorescent ear-plugs is prominent on a lobby table.
The conference’s Friday night was billed Worship Night. I imagined that a sermon would be preceded by some 30 minutes of praise music—as usual, led by thirty-somethings with drums, keyboard, and guitars, accompanied by words flashed on the 15’ x 30’ screen backing the stage—to say nothing of the bright strobe-spotlights probing around the high, blackened industrial-looking church ceiling.
But the music continued—45 minutes, and a few worshipers near me left the huge audience of over 500. And after about an hour of moving music, the question of whether the audience wanted another song was raised, and at least two more were enthusiastically sung. Praising God en masse, with 95% of the audience spontaneously standing throughout the hour, constituted Worship Night.
What a surprise for this pipe-organ-loving, hymn-singing old Adventist!
Gone are the old days of simple, two-phrase melodic lines endlessly repeated. One of the pop/rock songs featured on Worship Night was 40-year-old Phil Wickham’s award-winning “Living Hope.” Phil, San Diego-born and based, has been married for 16 years and has four children. Regarding “Living Hope,” he expresses the hope for those who hear it “not only to sing along, but for their hearts to cling to it as well.” His six verses travel from great chasm and desperation to buried body, beautiful Savior, and of course, “Living Hope.” The chorus captures it all:
Hallelujah
Praise the One who set me free
Hallelujah
Death has lost its grip on me
And You have broken every chain
There’s salvation in Your name
Jesus Christ, my living hope
Jesus Christ, my living hope
At Crosswalk, music is not a prelude or a filler. It’s the main dish on the Sabbath morning table. Worship planners were urged at the conference to study the background of the contemplated music. Check it out on Google, on YouTube. Know the music so the Crosswalk performers’ hearts are in it. Yo-Yo Ma’s statement was cited: “I practice so I can transcend [the practice].”
At Crosswalk, music isn’t simple singing. It involves coordination, amplification, huge projected graphic illustration, and integration into the overall worship experience. Hence, at evolving Crosswalk it was announced last weekend that hereafter the behind-the-scenes production team and the up-front music team would unite as one worship team, because for the experience of worship both functions are equally important.
Production is so vital at Crosswalk that Pastor Aguilera held that worship and production might require their first paid position.
Crosswalk’s three-day Experience Conference wasn’t for spectators. Experience was a working conference. There were two breakout sessions on coffee and two on music and worship production.
It takes work to design an experience of Jesus in lieu of doctrinaire Adventism. In his initial teaching session, Gillespie asserted, “Great experience takes great work.” Later he concluded: “A great experience stays forever.”
My second report on the Crosswalk conference will focus on Crosswalk’s relationship to the organized Seventh-day Adventist Church, types of Crosswalk groups, Crosswalk community involvement, and Crosswalk’s evangelism—or lack thereof.
James W. Walters is professor emeritus of ethics at Loma Linda University
