Revival in Darebin?

I think I've always had a fairly trendy, underground sense of how an "Emerging Church" would look. Down-to-earth, organic ministry has always had something of a Northcote, Bohemian feel to it in my mind, and it's interesting to think about whether or not that's always the most appropriate form of ministry. Sometimes I suspect we break so far away from the "mainstream", Christendom model of church that we assume "our" style of church is somehow more natural, more relevant and, well, more Christian.

I've finally gotten around to reading my brother's copy of Tom Sine's "Mustard Seed vs. McWorld", which I've had on my shelf for a good three and a half years. I've only just started it, but something has really stood out for me in what I've read so far. Very early on in the book, Sine has this to say about the "postmodern" or 21st century church: "Unlike many of the successful boomer churches of the nineties, post-modern churches are not interested in highly programmatic, user-friendly models that can be replicated. These young leaders are creating models that are much more relational and that are unique to each situation" (my emphasis).

Here's why this stands out to me: I'm not sure that this is any way a fault of the emerging church as much as a fault of my understanding of it, but I know that sometimes my idea of how to do "postmodern church" is itself a little "programmatic": put together some musical artistes playing something that sounds like a Sufjan Stevens and Marc Byrd collaboration, drink Fair Trade coffee during worship, followed by a visually engaging (and interactive) sermon on renewing the city for the kingdom. Now, this all sounds quite cool to me, but the question is, will this approach to ministry be "organic" (natural and symbiotic) in all communities? Well, if I were to find a church two suburbs to the south-east of where I currently live, yes, I have a feeling we'd fit right in. But in Thornbury or Preston? No, to do organic ministry there, you do need to reach out to families, to a variety of ethnicities; and has anyone thought of reaching out to the massive Koori community (the largest in Melbourne, apparently)? Is it possible for one church to minister to all these groups?

Last week I started checking out a very small, evangelical congregation in Thornbury - mostly elderly people, the second largest group being young families. Not my demographic at all, but does that mean I shouldn't try to serve there? The teaching is very engaging and interactive (although not technological - not necessarily a bad thing, disappointed as Rob Bell would be), and they do community very well. Small churches put almost everyone else to shame on this front. I've been welcomed with open arms, even though there's no-one else quite like me there. And so I suppose I'm realising that, while my idea of urban mission would not go down brilliantly in this church, that doesn't mean we can't find unique ways there, as we can anywhere else, of engaging the locals in an active, organic sense of what it is to live out the Gospel in the City of Darebin. I'm a far way from knowing what a potential revival in Darebin could look like, and I want to avoid even suggesting that revival is needed. Sure, the church looks nothing here like it does in the Bible Belt, or the inner-eastern suburbs, but is that a problem? I'd like to see it grow, but I think that first we need to start by encouraging what's already here - renovating, perhaps, instead of revolutionising.

More questions at the moment, but it's a good place to start, I think, asking questions, instead of pretending you have the answers.