Crosswalk Church: the 2024 Experience Conference, part 2

by Jim Walters | 2 May 2024 |

(Read part 1 here.)

“Is Crosswalk Adventist?”

That’s the most frequent question he hears, says Tim Gillespie, lead pastor of the Crosswalk Global Network of Churches. “Yes” is his unequivocal answer. “We are one of the most Adventist churches there is!” Gillespie asserted two weeks ago at the Experience Conference, attended by 200 registered guests from across the nation and four other countries.

Crosswalk Church of Seventh-day Adventists in Redlands, California, is unabashedly Adventist in many ways: for example, the Sabbath, the Bible, and church organization.

Sabbath

Crosswalk churches celebrate the weekly Sabbath. Crosswalk Redlands has three worship services on Sabbath mornings. Additionally, there are the usual Sabbath School classes for toddlers, kindergarteners, juniors, teens, young adults and older folk.

On average over 1,600 weekly attend Crosswalk Redlands. Chattanooga comes in next at 1,100 and Portland at 260. These three major churches’ lead pastors preach on the same theme, mutually agreed upon, previously discussed and available on the website’s Sacred Echo podcasts.

Smaller Crosswalk groups view the Redlands service live, or in advance, depending on location.

Bible

Although contemporary music is Crosswalk’s best-known component, few Adventist churches match its use of the Bible.

But it’s not merely proof-texting old Adventist emphases. Take the recent five-week series Un/Broken, about mental health. The Bible is significantly cited throughout, along with leading psychologists. This series, like all sermon series, has a daily study guide: six to eight-paragraph meditations are written by Gillespie, or by one of the other three lead pastors, and they are as thought-provoking as they are practical. They prepare attendees for the following Sabbath’s sermon—besides encouraging daily Bible study.

Seventh-day Adventist conference-related

Every Crosswalk pastor is credentialed by the local Adventist conference, and receives a salary from the conference. The Crosswalk churches are part of the sisterhood of conference churches, which means they fall under the General Conference as well. This interconnection is most evident in the Crosswalk website’s link “Giving” options, which lists local church, conference, and world church.

Two years ago the nine-year president of the Illinois Conference, Ron Aguilera, joined Crosswalk as its Executive Pastor. When a Crosswalk group—usually beginning as interested Adventists meeting in a home—reaches some four dozen members, Aguilera typically contacts the local conference, employing “conference speak” to make the case for conference acceptance. Aguilera is rarely turned down when he asks: “Would you accept a new church of 50 dedicated members into your conference?”

Crosswalk is essentially Seventh-day Adventist, but it’s not your mother’s Adventist church. Although Crosswalk is thoroughly Adventist, it’s Adventist in a different key.

Take Language and Dress

Aguilera says Crosswalk doesn’t use “traditional” Adventist language. During the whole conference weekend, I don’t recall hearing “brother,” “sister,” or “elder.” There was abundant talk about Jesus, grace, and acceptance. In Gillespie’s opening address (clad in army-green cargo pants, dark tee-shirt, and denim coat with rolled sleeves), he reflected on his early years of churchgoing: it “sucked.” He clarified that it wasn’t church itself, but the experience of church that sucked.

By design, the coffee-bar, warm welcome, and the up-beat music make for a different experience. McCoy asserts: “Especially church can’t suck on Sabbath.”

(True confession: in this writer’s early upbringing, Sabbath so “sucked” that he hated to see Friday, as it meant a do-nothing Sabbath was only hours away.)

Candor and Authenticity

Crosswalk has a pervasive air of authenticity, from the straightforward format of music and sermon (no offering taken), to the extemporaneously delivered, well-thought-out sermon, to the candor on mental health that doesn’t shy away from tackling even such difficult topics as suicide. McCoy, who preached a sermon on suicide at his Crosswalk Portland church, also wrote five of the Crosswalk website’s 33 daily study guides on the topic—besides alluding at the conference to his own mental health struggles when he was younger.

Church Growth

Crosswalk Chattanooga’s Ferguson, when asked by his Georgia Cumberland Conference leaders about his evangelism, said, “I don’t have time to do evangelism, because I’d have to stop baptizing.” (One twenty-something was baptized during a Sabbath worship service at the Experience Conference.) “Reclamation is a vital part of our ministry,” observes Gillespie.

Typically, Crosswalk’s growth occurs more spontaneously than by a comprehensive, grand design. When conference leadership asked Gillespie about his evangelistic plan, he confessed to not having one. “It’s as random as it gets,” he told conference attendees.

Executive pastor Aguilera admits, “We’re making it up as we go along.” Typically, a Crosswalk group begins meeting in a home to view Crosswalk Redlands’ Sabbath service; then the growing group meets in rented quarters and invites Crosswalk Redlands for help.

Sometimes this development reaches concerned local conference officials, who call Crosswalk Redlands, asking why Crosswalk is in their territory. Crosswalk responds: “We were invited.”

Jesus for Today

Jesus was front and center at the Experience Conference, as he is continuously at Crosswalk. McCoy confessed that he’s “number-one, a follower of Jesus…in the Adventist tradition.” Aguilera proclaimed that “all [Crosswalk] theology comes through the Jesus lens.”

Gillespie noted that most Adventists get a “pin-hole view of Jesus through Ellen White,” and Crosswalk wants to reverse this through a focus on the biblical Jesus.

Accordingly, the recurrent touchstone phrase “Lovewell” interlaces with much of Crosswalk’s language and programming, as does Jesus’ great commandment to love God wholeheartedly and the other as oneself. One of the most moving praise songs of the conference at the hour-long worship night featured the refrain, “Jesus Christ, My Living Hope.”

“You have broken every chain / There’s salvation in your name.”

Aguilera said Crosswalk is sometimes accused of being “a mile wide and an inch deep.” But Gillespie’s Sabbath morning sermon, on apostolic miracles in Acts, suggested a sophistication uncharacteristic for Adventists. Gillespie grappled with the nature of “miracle,” in an accessible, non-academic manner. He told of a seminary class on “Signs and Wonders” where the teacher began by asking whether class members believed God still does miracles. Gillespie admits that he answered in his own mind: “I spent the last 50 minutes of class denying their reality.”

Gillespie subsequently saw the light, and now confidently affirms the power of God working today, telling his audience: “You are as much a miracle for someone as Peter was in healing the lame man.” Further, “Every time we love, that’s a miracle.”

Crosswalk’s three teaching pastors embrace contemporary medicine and psychology, not seeing these societal advances as contrary to God’s active presence in today’s believers. Miracles then are different from miracles now, said Gillespie; we live between the times—in “interstitial” times.

Crosswalk at 21

Crosswalk’s contemporary mode and Jesus-focus has a recent Adventist history. The 21-year-old church began on Wednesday nights as a “Young and Restless” gathering of young adults at the Azure Hills Church, six miles from its current location. The Azure Hills’ lead pastor, Morris Venden (known for his anti-legalist righteousness by faith emphasis),^[1] suggested that the group organize, and the 225-member Crosswalk Church was formed, meeting in its current location.

For its first year or two, evidently Crosswalk was viewed as an outreach of the parent Azure Hills Church. Crosswalk’s first pastor, Michael Knecht, desired to establish a network of similar Crosswalk groups across the nation, but his dream was never accomplished. Gillespie, joining Crosswalk ten years ago, appears to be fulfilling the original dream—if the Experience Conference of two weeks ago is any indication.

1. See Morris L. Venden’s book, 95 Theses on Righteousness by Faith (1987), or his 20-sermon series: t.ly/tMNbM ↑