On a recent trip to Minneapolis I had the opportunity to take a look at two creative Presbyterian churches. The two couldn’t be more different from each other, yet they are remarkable in the zealous pursuit of their visions.

Christ Presbyterian Church in Edina, a western suburb of Minneapolis, already a huge church with a solidly biblical stance, in the last five years has doubled its overall attendance with a creative worship service called the Upper Room.

On Sundays at 5:00 p.m. and again at 7:00 p.m., the sanctuary is transformed into an intimate setting, using large drapes, candles and focused lighting, so that the1,000 or so who attend feel like they are being invited into a cozy space.

Each week there is opportunity for worshipers to express their faith experientially. One week they place their prayers, written on rolled slips of paper, into the crevices of a stone wall, like the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Another week they add their palm prints to a large sheet to affirm, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

On Tuesdays during the summer, fifty of those who attend the Upper Room meet for a stimulating evening of discussion led by a guest speaker from another church in Minneapolis. The Tuesday I attended, the speaker was Jin Kim, pastor of Church of All Nations, a five year-old Presbyterian church in another suburb of the city.

Looking out over the sea of white faces, Jin Kim challenged the listeners from Edina with a different model of church. If the Upper Room participants thought they were on the cutting edge of God’s new way of reaching the unchurched, Jin Kim described a multicultural church vibrant with diversity and yet centered in Christ.

At the Church of All Nations, no ethnic or racial group is in the majority. On one Sunday the Asian choir will sing, on another the African drum choir will augment the singing, and on another the contemporary band will lead worship. “This is what heaven will be like,” Jin asserted. The Upper Room suddenly looked very monochrome and traditional.

As vastly different as these two churches are, what unifies them is a determination to demonstrate to those outside the church how winsome and fulfilling is a life devoted to Christ. In both cases everything the church does is controlled by their mission.

Mike Frost writes about the way many churches are deciding to align every activity according to their mission. Even worship is redesigned so that it can carry forward God’s mission to the world.

“Missional churches understand that this sending impulse infuses all of church life. On the other hand, conventional churches that make worship the organizing principle usually see evangelism, for example, as the recruiting of new people to attend worship services. They see Christian fellowship as the building up of the worshiping community.

“Missional churches understand that community is best built by those in league with each other in the creative task of mission. They worship like crazy because they see God’s Lordship over all of life. They disciple each other in order to be better missionaries. Mission is the spark, the catalyzing energy, that makes sense of everything the church was intended to be.”

In those two paragraphs, written to entice people to attend the Presbyterian Global Fellowship gathering in August 2007, Mike Frost sets out the way God is refining the overarching purpose of the church. The way each church lives out its calling will vary, but the impetus is always to join God’s saving mission to the world.

Whatever creative form it takes, the heart of the church’s vision must be the passion to participate in God’s work of transforming the world in Christ.