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Hip New Churches Pray to a Different Drummer
MINNEAPOLIS — It was "alt.worship" night at Bluer on a recent Saturday, and as a crowd of about 50 people, mostly in their 20's and 30's, milled around an open loft space filled with couches and candles, John Musick, the pastor, sat behind a drum set, accompanied by three other members of the musical "ministry team." Light fixtures dangled from exposed pipes; slides and videos of old stone crosses or statues flashed on two screens.

Mr. Musick, 37, wore a faded T-shirt and blue jeans and had mussed hair and a soul patch beneath his lower lip. Instead of his weekly sermon, he directed the congregants to make their way among three makeshift altars, each with a stack of cards carrying a prayer and a list of topics to think about.

"You're going to be put in a position where you have to think about your relationship with God," Mr. Musick said.

Bluer, which began four years ago as a young adult ministry at a more conventional church, is one of several hundred small evangelical congregations that have formed around the country in recent years to pursue an alternative idea of how to do church.

Called "emerging" or "postmodern" churches, they are diverse in theology and method, linked loosely by Internet sites, Web logs, conferences and a growing stack of hip-looking paperbacks. Some religious historians believe the churches represent the next wave of evangelical worship, after the boom in megachurches in the 1980's and 1990's.

The label "emerging church" refers to the emergence of a generation with little or no formal attachment to church. The congregations vary in denomination, but most are from the evangelical side of Protestantism and some are sponsored by traditional churches. Brian McLaren, 48, pastor at Cedar Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, Md., and one of the architects of the fledgling movement, compared the churches to foreign missions, using the local language and culture, only directed at the vast unchurched population of young America....