Office: (907) 457-4673
Fax: (907) 479-3613
E-Mail: door@polarnet.com
QUICK LOOK (On a scale of 5):
Piety: ** (belabored ebullience)
Location: **1/2 (convenient north-end access)
Music: ***1/2 (pop spectacular)
Decor: *** (tasteful, Spartan grandiosity)
Dress: Informal
Unabashedly non-traditional, the Door of Hope church is one example of a modern, Protestant-derived nondenominational Christian collective. Collective is, admittedly, the wrong word, but it describes the intense involvement the congregation has in every aspect of the church's operation. When attending the Sunday afternoon service, I initially had some trouble making sense from the busy beehive of activity taking place. The first of three services had apparently just gotten out and people were everywhere coming and going. Who's running this place! I thought. My program listed seven pastors, plus assorted missionaries and pastoral counselors. In these enlightened times we don't put as much emphasis on dressing up in elaborate church costumes... a worthy gesture, but one that can make difficult the task of figuring out who's closest to God. Fortunately, the staff at Door of Hope wear lapel pins.
The flock is solidly baby-boomer. Although the church has been in existence a long time, the crowd is quite young. Though I didn't see anyone my own specific age, this is a hotbed of primarily anglo thirty- and fortysomethings and their kids. The kids! Hordes! It was like a scene out of Kindergarten Cop. Door of Hope has more youngsters per pew than I've ever seen on a Sunday. They offer an extensive array of classes and programs. There are Youth Cells with their own places during the service. A program called Youth Zone offers spiritual mentorship and guidance, with its own "S.W.A.T. Youth Zone Pastor," Shannon Woods. There is a nursery available. My church program had a "Children's Worship Bulletin," with a word puzzle and a talking camel encouraging kids to draw "...a picture of a child who has Jesus in his or her heart."
A moderately upscale, technologically-informed Christian attitude prevails. The church program was not printed in shiny color, nor was it ornately decorated, but it was cleverly designed. Bulging with inserts like a Sunday paper, tasteful use of fonts, headers, bullets, splashes, and even a foldover, this was clearly the product of someone who knows his or her PageMaker. The church, or "Worship Center" as they call it, is located off the Steese, near Birch Hill cemetery, in a large warehouse-like building. The tabernacle is in a humongous renovated gymnasium. The old scoreboards remain. I thought it would have been a nice touch if they said "Satan vs. God" instead of "Visitor vs. Home." The carpeting and chairs reveal an intelligent sense of color and light. At first I thought that the service was poorly attended because there were so many empty chairs. Then I counted and realized there were more than 150 people; the size of the place had fooled me. I'm told that the early services are packed.
The main feature of the worship center has to be the fully-decked bandstand. Door of Hope's musical accompaniment leads the Fairbanks scene in Contemporary Christian pop gospel. The combo has a complete set-up, including a music leader on acoustic guitar/vox, a saxophonist, a bassist, two percussionists (one on a drum kit, one on cherry-red congas), and a gaggle of backup singers. The first forty minutes of the service and the end were spent in a musical blow-out. People were dancing in the aisles, swaying their hands in the air. With all the kids and boomers it reminded me a little of a Dead show. The words to the snappy Jehovite jingles were projected on a rear screen so all could see. A representative sample:
It's a kingdom celebration!
Let his high praises sing!
We will sing for all creation
The praises of our king!
Alleluia, (ma-ma-ma)!
Alleluia, Ay-oh! [repeat]
In addition to providing Fairbanks Christians with a nondenominational pop bonanza for Jesus, there is a strong missionary emphasis. The walls are decked with about fifteen flags of foreign countries, ranging from Mexico to Swaziland, plus the banners of USA and AK. With such a global mix, the Alaska flag seems almost like an afterthought. After the musical blowout, the first item of business was the presentation of a team of missionaries about to head off to central China. This was an exciting prospect, due to the fact that one of the goals of this mission was to deliver the spirit to the Uigher, whose ethnic group have had very little contact with the redeeming word of Christ. There was some concern that the missionary team, who were carrying as many New Testaments and tracts as possible, would have trouble with the Chinese customs. Everyone was asked to pray for a smooth passage through customs and that no drug/pornography peddlers would intercede with the luggage of the Lord's messengers.
The sermon was delivered in straight-up fashion by Jack Benson, identified as a "missionary" in the church program. Benson started out asking how many in the audience remembered the flood of '67. By my count eight hands went up. This was his intro to his goal of raising the "spiritual tidewaters" of the assembled flock with the sermon, which proceeded with a crunchy Pentecostal sensibility. The testimonial addressed several key devotional highlights, moving smoothly from the importance of worship to the need of speaking out on behalf of the spirit. I was impressed with some of Benson's non-PC nuggets, including his emphasis on God's active desire for worship (e.g., "...He's seeking saints... and that's us!"). Benson also firmly embodies the nontraditional stance of the church, bucking the rigid strictures of other churches that, for DOH members at least, hampers the religious experience. Consider the following gem: "I'll be so bold as to say, a lot of other churches have a donkey-style of worship!" Whoo-hoo! We're courting a jihad here.
Of course, DOH members are really too decent to go around picking fights, preferring to accrue the unchosen gradually, friendly-like, through assimilation and commerce. They offer a great selection of CCM (contemporary Christian music) in their information room (I'll have to go back) and they sell tapes of the services for $2 a pop. Of course, lest I give the impression of largess here, I would speculate that the church has a high overhead, what with providing so many youth and outreach services. For example, there is spot in the church program emphasizing the $60,000 needed for an office remodel. Not to worry, though, because $21,000 in tithes and offerings had already been raised in June (and this was on the 8th of the month). Faith does indeed make blessed. This reinforces for me the solidarity of the church community. For instance, there was another notice about a "financial emergency" whose aim was raising badly needed money to help cover the hospital bills of a church member who was in a car accident. This call for benevolence included detailed instructions on how to aid the fallen, appealing to the Samaritan in us all (along with guidelines for receiving tax credit).
The Door of Hope church is a modern-day admixture of the currents and tides of contemporary Christianity. The services mix together worship styles of multiple Protestant flavas, melding Baptist, Unitarian, Nazarene, charismatic, Pentecostal and others. This is the solid delivery of beats and samples from the televangelist empire, a remix digitally remastered for the faithful who can front the spirit, brought together under one nation by DJ Christ. This is the revival of a messiah lost to a thousand dead sea scrolls, brought back in high fidelity through the miracle of technology, and brother, you'd better believe that you can dance to it.
©1997 Sundown Stauffer
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