When former Christian artist Michael Gungor first hosted a new spiritual community in Los Angeles this year, worship began not with an organ blast or sermon series video promo, but with blowing bubbles. Appropriately dubbed "Play," Gungor envisioned the event — which featured painting, dancing, corporate singing and meditation, but no religious creed — as a celebration that "redefines worship." "I want to be in a room and see each other's eyes and smell each other and hear each other singing out of key.
This is something we've always done as a species," Gungor said. "I think there's something important, really grounding and human about it." Gungor's idea of worship wasn't always so experimental.
In packed churches and concert venues, thousands once sang along to the band Gungor's 2010 hit "Beautiful Things," a song that became a permanent fixture on the setlists of youth group bands. But in 2014, Gungor's critiques of the Christian music industry — as well as his public musings on Genesis as a poem rather than historic fact — led to his exclusion from the Christian music business. Now, after a long process of wrestling with his inherited evangelical faith — documented on his podcast "The Liturgists" — Gungor says he's more interested in embracing the current lived moment than being tethered to a set of religious beliefs, though he describes Christianity as his "native tongue.
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