In The News
Article: Emerging
Church
For those who want the nightclub scene without the drinking and solicitations for sex, Club for Jesus in Waldorf, Md., offers a fun atmosphere where believers and nonbelievers can have a good time.
"Just because you're saved doesn't mean you can't dance," Yolanda Darby told The Christian Post in an interview on Friday. Darby said she was inspired to create Club for Jesus when she discovered the need for "an alternative place to go dance or party without drinking, without being picked up."
Traditional churches end up stifling people, Darby said. "Ninety-nine percent of church people are the ones who patronize secular clubs," she argued. "We feel that the churches, somewhat, in some cases, are putting people back in slavery." Pastors warn their congregations against having fun at places like Club for Jesus, and that drives them to go to secular clubs.
"We have rap
night, poetry night, or jazz night – that's more for the older folks,"
Darby shared. And on some Fridays, Club for
Jesus offers variety praise,
where they mix up different kinds of praise music to appeal to a broad audience,
such as families, she noted.
Darby, who contrasted Club for Jesus
with a normal church,
critiqued mainline denominations for following the Roman Catholic hierarchy of
organizing pastors and bishops over people, thus losing the scriptural
organization of the Church and Jesus' commandment that the greatest should be a
servant.
"These churches build buildings much faster than they build people. That's not a
vision, that's a money pit," she quipped. "We build people." Darby even went so
far as to call some pastors "traitors of the Gospel."