The Crossing is the “big” church in Columbia, larger than
the biggest United Methodist Church in Missouri. It’s the church that Methodist
pastors could get jealous of, were it not for coveting being on our top 10
“Don’t” list. Most people I know in Columbia, including some who have been
attending there for years, think The Crossing is non-denominational. It’s not.
It’s part of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. If you’re not familiar with
the EPC denomination, don’t feel bad. It’s tiny. The EPC has a smaller
membership and attendance nationwide than the United Methodist Church has just
in Missouri. Most of the people in the EPC denomination in Missouri are at The
Crossing.
Early in September, The Crossing leveraged $430,000 to pay
off $43 million in medical debt in 31 counties in Missouri, picking up the bill
for people they had never and would never meet. It was a pretty cool thing to
do, and they every got some national attention from the secular medial for it.
It was a church story everyone could feel good about. But we’re not talking
about medical debt anymore.
Every year downtown Columbia hosts the True/False Film Fest,
the top documentary film festival in the nation. Imagine reality TV if reality
TV wasn’t trash, but actual reality. The makers of these films dedicate years
of their lives to telling untold stories, often of the overlooked or oppressed.
It takes over downtown for a few days, and Missouri United Methodist Church is one
of many venues for the films.
Part of the festival is the True Life Fund, which has been
sponsored by The Crossing to the tune of about $35,000 a year. Whenever I’ve
been at the True Life film, one of the organizers of the festival would come
out on stage before the showing and say apologetically that people always ask
him why a church sponsors the festival, and they think it’s weird they would
let a church be involved in any way, but he goes on to say that he thinks the
conversation is important. Then the pastor from The Crossing takes the stage,
sometimes seeming a little miffed that an apology is required for him to take
part in the festival, then he goes on to say people at his church always ask
him why they would sponsor a left-leaning gathering of people who seem
anti-church, and he says that he thinks the conversation is important.
The relationship between church and film-festival was so
unusual that the New York Times did a story about a few years ago under the
headline: Crossing a Divide, Seeking Good. As a church communications guy, I
would call getting a story like that in the New York Times a win.
The relationship between True/False and The Crossing was
unusual, awkward and apparently fragile. In October The Crossing was doing a
sermon series on Genesis, and one Sunday focused on gender, and trans-gender,
issues. I listened to the sermon online, and I could fill this magazine with
criticism of it. I’d probably start with the sermon being 40 minutes long, and
the pastor having about five minutes’ worth of stuff to say. I would have
plenty of points of disagreement with his interpretation of scripture and his
overall theology. This did not surprise me, because I am not an Evangelical
Presbyterian.
The sermon got a lot of buzz online, more the talk of the
town than any other sermon I’ve known of. Within a few days the relationship
between The Crossing and the True/False Film Fest was severed.
The Crossing didn’t just support the festival, it also
contributed several thousand dollars a year to the Ragtag Cinema, a small,
independent art house theater in Columbia that was the genesis of the True
False Film Fest. The Ragtag decided to end that sponsorship as well.
Before the beginning of feature films at the Ragtag they
briefly show an image on the screen of all of their sponsors. I was there a
couple weeks after the hubbub, and when they put up the screen there was a
conspicuous hole where The Crossing’s logo used to be.
“Yay, they’re gone!” someone called out, and people around
me cheered.
“Everything is better now,” is said sadly sarcastically to
myself, loud enough to catch an elbow from my wife.
People inside and outside of the church have more in common
than they know. They now have one less opportunity to figure that out.
