Crossroads Church members minister ‘differently’ in downtown Birmingham

Crossroads Community C­hur­ch, a decidedly distinct congregation, is making its mark on Birm­ingham’s trendy South­side.

Founded in 2000 by Andrew Jenkins as Ecclesia, Crossroads is neither traditional nor  contemporary, but hovers somewhere be­yond. 

Some call the style postmodern, but Jenkins contends what they are doing is so new there are no names for their kind of church yet.

Stop in at Crossroads — a converted warehouse that still looks very much like a warehouse — and you will encounter a worship service unlike any other.

The worship teams or “rock bands” as Jenkins calls them, play many of their own pieces. Often the music minister, Rodney Calfee, will write song lyrics that reflect Jenkins’ messages.

Throughout the sanctuary paintings, drawings and sculptures, created by members during worship, further testify to the church’s eclectic approach.

“Sometimes during the singing time people express their worship in other ways besides music,” Jenkins explained. “Some draw, others write or pray, while others take part in communion.

“It sounds unusual, but what we do reflects the people who come into our church,” he said. The people who are coming in, he noted, have been missed by the traditional and contemporary move­­ments.

“They grew up in a postcontemporary world,” he said. “They rejected the contemporary movement because the praise music and how-to sermons that characterized that movement weren’t relevant to them. To them, the contemporary movement is traditional.”

Jenkins was drawn to Birmingham’s South­side because urban renewal was luring a younger set back to the area and many of them fit Jenkins’ description of the “missed generation.”

Jenkins likened the area to a “Friends” episode. “Young people want to live downtown, work there and have coffee at the local coffee shop. “The problem was, all the churches were gone.”

Jenkins started Crossroads with five members including his wife, Cristy, and it has since grown to more than 200. Most of their members came after hearing about the church from a friend or co-worker. Others saw the Web site posted on the outside of the church and began attending after listening to a few of Jenkins’ online sermons.

“Most of our members were either unchurched or grew up in the church and then left,” he explained. “We don’t have a lot of people from other churches because they don’t seem to like our services. It doesn’t seem like church to them.”

Jenkins said his constituency is as random as it gets.

“In one pew you’ll have a 30-something lawyer sitting next to a guy with spiked hair and tattoos,” he said. “We have every type. The unifying factor is not where they live or socioeconomics. It’s their mind-set.”

“Church, as we know it, isn’t relevant to them. At Crossroads, we’re not going to try to get them to become something they aren’t when we present the gospel,” Jenkins continued. “We take the gospel to their culture and incorporate who they are into our service.”

However unusual Crossroads may be, Jenkins’ father, Edwin Jenkins, director of the office of leadership/ church growth for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, sees the church as a biblically grounded Southern Baptist church. It has a commitment to the teaching and preaching of the Word of God, he said. “They just do it differently.”