Swimming Upstream
Erwin Raphael McManus’ Postmodern Ministry Goes Against the Current — and Gets Results

Interview by RaeAnn Slaybaugh 

Los Angeles-based Erwin Raphael McManus — writer, futurist, activist, artist and spiritual and cultural leader — serves as the lead pastor and cultural architect of Mosaic, a faith community regarded worldwide for its spiritual creativity.

McManus, too, has achieved worldwide recognition: first, for his reputation as a thought-provoking communicator, which has taken him to more than 30 countries on speaking engagements; and also for his award-winning writing, including a new book, Soul Cravings.

Church Business caught up with this notable postmodern ministry leader to talk about his controversial take on reaching society’s trendsetters for Christ and his reputation as an ‘irreligious’ pastor — and why it’s working for him and his church.

Church Business: You have a reputation as a hip pastor. Do you think some pastors might disregard what you’re doing and your methods of outreach because of that fact?

Erwin McManus: Yeah, I think pastoring tends to have a template, and we look for people who are like us. I would say I do a lot of research, and I go a lot of places pastors need to go.

CB: When people call you ‘irreligious,’ what are they implying?

McManus: It means I don’t have a lot of value for traditions and rituals that no longer connect to people in terms of their own spiritual journey. I don’t have a lot of tolerance for meaningless religion. I really think Jesus came to connect us with an intimate relationship with God, not to establish another religion with rituals and rules and procedures.

CB: You’ve said you’re looking to reach the toughest 15 percent of people. Who are they?

McManus: We’ve really focused on reaching that percentage of culture that would be called innovators and early adopters. They tend to be the trend and culture setters, the people who embrace the new — new innovations, new technologies, new approaches — faster than others. They also tend to be the people others look to for a sense of where culture is going.

CB: Are there aspects of that ‘irreligious’ label that work to your advantage in getting through to them?

McManus: Absolutely! Most of the people I talk to would call themselves ‘spiritual but irreligious.’ The reason they’re not open to the message of Christ is because they see Christianity as a religion that is not spiritual.

CB: How are the ministries and activities of Mosaic, your faith community, tailored to help people satisfy the essential longings you reference in your book, Soul Cravings: intimacy, destiny and meaning?

McManus: Mosaic is very much a relational community. It’s all about establishing meaningful friendships with people who are searching for God. Everything we do, no matter how ‘hip’ or relevant it might be, is really grounded in people whose lives have been changed by Jesus Christ connecting with people who do not know Jesus Christ.

CB: Some might argue that your unique, unconventional ministry works so well because you’re in Los Angeles. Can what you do be replicated somewhere like, say, rural Kansas?

McManus: The whole country is shaped disproportionately, not equally. New York and Los Angeles are going to have more influence on where America is going than, say, Tulsa or maybe even Atlanta.

One [way to reach the most difficult 15 percent] is to genuinely live a life of faith. When churches are more predictable, more comfortable, more status quo, they are less attractive to this group. When churches are really doing things that are important — that are relevant and even risky — they are far more attractive.

When you’re dealing with issues of, say, social justice, or engaging on some important cultural issue, or even dealing with film and art, when you’re really pressing the boundaries and trying to step into the most important things the world is dealing with, you become more relevant.

I would say is that every town, whether it has 5,000 or 5 million people, has the influencers — the shapers, the people who everyone listens to when they speak. If you really want to make a dramatic and significant change in your community … you have to go after those people who, when they make a decision, everyone else starts to consider it. They’re the tribal leaders. They’re in Des Moines and Topeka, and they’re in Miami and Chicago.

CB: In a recent interview, you said you heard God tell you, You’re not going to be a Billy Graham … [b]ut you can give your life to the top 12 to 15 percent. Nobody may ever know you’ve done that, but if you reach one person in that group, you can change the course of history. Does that suggest there was a time when you did hope to emulate what Graham was doing?

McManus: Oh yeah, absolutely! When I came to faith in Jesus Christ, I was 20 years old, and all Christians would tell me about was Billy Graham! And then they would point to the 100 other people who were trying to be like him.

To be honest, when I came to faith in Jesus Christ, I felt like a salmon thrown into a school of tuna. I thought, ‘OK, I’m supposed to go in this direction, with everyone else.’ But eventually, you just have to swim upstream … even if it means you’re going to die. [laughs] 

CB: You sold the property you owned and opted instead to meet in four locations across LA, including a night club and a high school, often vacating a space with one day’s notice. For many pastors, that sounds chaotic — but there you are with a congregation of 3,000.

McManus: Yeah, and what’s really fascinating is who those 3,000 are and what they’re like. Even though we did move quite a few times, often it was because we felt like we weren’t reaching enough people in that venue. We always made a commitment that if we were only gathering Christians, we would discontinue whatever we were doing. It helped people realize that it’s not just something we’re talking about — it’s not just lip service. We’ll only give our resources, time and energy if we’re going to engage the culture with the person and message of Jesus. And now our congregation really knows that.

CB: Your church recently upgraded its video Podcast capabilities — note I said ‘upgraded,’ not that you’re just starting to offer video Podcasting. Any advice for pastors who are hesitant to pursue technologies like these?

McManus: We love the innovation that makes our world better. We’re afraid of the innovation that belongs to the next generation, but we love the innovation that belongs to our generation.

I don’t even really understand video Podcasting; I had 20-year-olds pop into my office one day and say they had an audio Podcast. Within a week, we had the no. 1 audio Podcast on spirituality in the world — and I didn’t even know there was a list!

So I said, ‘OK, what’s next?’ They said video. We hired a guy, and he helped us figure out how to compress the video. I don’t even know what all that means, but I said, ‘Do your thing,’ ‘Get it done,’ and of course, ‘How much is this going to cost us?’ After we had 10,000, 12,000 and 15,000 people watching our video Podcast, we realized our congregation on video every week is bigger than our live congregation! It seems like a lot of money to spend to give away a video Podcast. We’re probably spending $100,000. But we’re not charging people to come to church, so we don’t want to charge for this video Podcast. We want to affect people’s lives, to connect them to God — and here they are, inviting us into their lives on their best schedules.

CB: You say in your book that your soul “always craves more.” Is this something to which you think all church leaders are equally susceptible?

McManus: I think Christian books aren’t as honest as we think. To be frank, a Christian magazine just did a very nice article on me. In the photo, I was wearing a shirt that had a gun on it shooting out butterflies. When I got the magazine in the mail, they’d PhotoShopped out the gun.

When I saw it, I thought, This is the inherent problem with Christianity. We’re not honest. We distort and recreate truth in a way that is palatable to us. When we do that, people hear our messages and they think they aren’t real and they aren’t honest. We think that because we have the truth, everything we do is truthful. We need to not only preach the truth, but be truthful.

Soul Cravings, for me, is an honest book. We all crave.