Mass for the masses

It’s Easter Sunday at the new Urban Village Church downtown, and pastor Christian Coon is talking about reality TV. After name-dropping his wife’s favorite shows— Divine Design, Project Runway (“Anthony was kicked off,” he says. “I just can’t believe it!”)—Coon focuses on TLC’s What Not to Wear. “It’s one of those before-and-after shows,” he says. The wiry 42-year-old, wearing a green plaid button-up and khaki slacks, is addressing about 150 members of his flock, a multi-culti group mostly in their midthirties. In late March, they started meeting Sunday mornings in the Feinberg Theater at the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies. “As the show starts, the woman is kind of slumping,” Coon continues. “But by the end, the person is doing all these confident model poses. It’s a magical transformation!”

Trey Hall, the other pastor at Urban Village Church, pipes in, as is the rhythm of the tag-team-style service. “It’s not just women on What Not to Wear,” says Hall, 34, an openly gay former pastor at the Holy Covenant United Methodist Church in Lincoln Park. Lean and tan, he sports a casual green zip-up sweater. “If you read Men’s Health, they detail how some scruffy, smelly bachelor who eats pizza for every meal and plays video games 24-7 is transformed through a simple regimen into a man who has the important things, which usually begins with abs.” The parish erupts in laughter.

Eventually, Coon and Hall steer the sermon to Mary Magdalene. The basic message: What Not to Wear’s gods, Stacy and Clinton, can give you a makeover, but only Jesus can make over your soul.

In their sermons, the dynamic pastor duo are as inclined to rave about new episodes of HBO’s In Treatment (Hall is a big fan) as they are to quote the New Testament. Coon, previously a pastor at the Christ United Methodist Church of Deerfield, is a Simpsons acolyte: One of his favorite tomes, besides the Good Book, is The Gospel According to the Simpsons.

Coon and Hall became friends ten years ago at a Methodist pastors’ conference. As they saw condos rising in the South Loop, but no churches, the two began gleaning “church planting” tips (fund-raising, membership) from Launch, a book by evangelical pastors who founded a Manhattan church. “We looked at evangelicals,” Hall says, “because they’ve been the most prolific at starting churches.”

Though Urban Village is Methodist, the two pastors stress their progressive intentions: to make the church accessible and inclusive to people of any denomination who may have been bored or burned by religion. To that end, the Spertus space is key, Hall says: “Crossing the threshold of an established church is just something they’re never going to do because there are all of these preconceptions.? So we’re doing church in a place that’s not a church.” Urban Village’s marketing slogan brings together seemingly opposed groups: “We love…gay people, straight people, Cubs fans, Sox fans, Democrats, Republicans.” On Easter Sunday, several in attendance tell us they’ve been estranged from worship for as long as 20 years. Darius James, 27, the out son of a West Side Baptist minister, says he followed in his father’s footsteps until the church’s dogmatic stance on homosexuality drove him away.

Coon and Hall make the liturgy as relaxed as the dress code. “Many churches feel like they’re going to help you by bringing you into their language,” Hall says. “But we believe that part of that journey is using people’s own language, metaphors and stories.”

“That’s what Jesus did!” Coon interjects.

“The Bible is filled with images of sheep and farming,” Hall continues, “which I guess would’ve been the first-century Project Runway.”

The next Urban Village Church (newchicagochurch.com, 312-268-5300) service takes place Sunday 18 at 10:15am in the Feinberg Theater at the Spertus Institute (610 S Michigan Ave).

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