I live pretty close to Brian McLaren’s home church, Cedar Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, Maryland. I’ve been there a few times with friends, and I know some people who go there. I haven’t met Brian McLaren, but I’ve listened to some of his sermons on the Web and have one of his books.
In the Washington, D.C., area McLaren’s church actually does not have a very high profile, even though he’s very well known through his books and his appearance in Time magazine. (The most well known church around here is McLean Bible Church; it looks like a Christian airport.) Cedar Ridge is on a nice piece of farmland out in the suburbs about fifteen miles northeast of Washington. It has two main buildings, the worship taking place in a rather modestly sized structure meant to resemble a barn.
The first time I ever visited Cedar Ridge was with my friend Matt, who lived less than a mile away on the same road as the church. He invited me to a Sunday night event where they were showing the movie Gattaca in the sanctuary. Matt liked science fiction, so to me that seemed like his main motive in going. But I went along. There were about a dozen of us there—all of us, I think, were believers. We matched the movie up on a projector screen. Afterwards one of the leaders at the church led a small group discussion of the religious symbolism of the movie. The leader asked me what I thought of the movie, and I said that “it wasn’t bad for science fiction” (I don’t like sci-fi very much). After that discussion was over, I remember that the leader remarked to my friend that they were going to be starting a class on “Theology 101.”
The next time I visited was for a church picnic, again with my friend Matt. Not much to report there except that I remember one of the kids in the church started playing some Eminem on the stereo and one of the church leaders came up midway through the song and made the kid change the CD.
The third time was for a Stations of the Cross event around Easter. This was memorable because I’d never been to anything like it. It was probably vintage Emergent Church. They had all of the different stations set up in the sanctuary, and really dim lighting. You went around and there was a place where you could wash your hands in a bowl like Pontius Pilate, and another place where you could hammer a nail. The thing that struck me the most, though, was that at each station they had a cartoon picture of an African tribal man being crucified by other Africans. I guess they (Cedar Ridge) were making a statement about how Jesus wasn’t the Aryan hero that some in the West have made him out to be. My thought, however, was that Jesus’ jewishness was very important. It was prophesied that the Messiah would come from the tribe of Judah, through David. I guess the pictures did a good job of defamiliarizing the passion narrative; but at the same time it didn’t settle well with me. (The fact that it was a rather poorly drawn cartoon may also have had something to do with it, since I consider myself to be something of an artist.)
At the end of the stations you could light a candle and then there was a prayer wall. The two friends that I had come with found the whole thing very moving, but something didn’t sit right with me and so I waited for them outside in the parking lot. My friends did find it to be very significant to them, but my opinion was that the whole thing felt contrived. Of course I was pretty cynical at that stage in my life. To me, it would have been much more helpful to my spiritual growth to have attended a lecture where the historical proofs for Christ’s resurrection were presented, rather than trying to mystically connect with the deep past through images, etc., that, to me, said very little as to whether the event they commemorate ever actually happened.
So these are my personal experiences with Cedar Ridge. I thought that maybe some people who knew of Brian McLaren but hadn’t visited his church might find this useful in some (infinitely) small way.
Re: Personal Impressions of Brian McLaren's Church