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With his short-cropped hair, beard, and Sunday-not-go-to-meetin' wardrobe of sneakers, baggy jeans, and a bland shirt, 24-year-old Chris Seay looks more like the lead singer for an alternative rock band than the pastor of one of the most successful new churches in Texas.

But that's just fine for the hundreds of young people who attend University Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, every Sunday. And it's fine for Seay, a third-generation Baptist minister who says the thought of being a pastor once looked "pretty revolting." Seay's views have changed, however. He has accepted the calling to take the gospel to the so-called Generation X, that much-maligned group of 40 million young people between the ages of 18 and 34.

Open to God, not church
"They're open to the God thing," says Seay (pronounced "see"), "but they're not into the church thing." Nor are they into the typical hymn-and-sermon routine, if a recent Sunday at the church, which meets in Waco's downtown Hippodrome Theatre, is any indication.

Instead of laid-back, Jesus movement-style praise choruses, a seven-piece band belts out aggressive Christian rock, while young congregants sing and sway. Unable to find songs they like in the contemporary Christian praise genre, the band writes its own, like "There's No Chain," which captures the congregation's hunger for authentic spirituality: "There's no heart too wounded. No heart so broken that he can't mend. No life so hopeless. No life so empty Jesus can't fill."

After the musicians lay down their instruments and take their seats, Seay strides to a stool in the middle of the pulpitless stage, sits down, props his feet on a nearby speaker, takes a drink from a bottle of Snapple, and launches into a meandering monologue based on the R-rated Richard Gere movie Primal Fear.

Before long, Seay has used the movie's plot elements of dishonesty and intrigue to bring his audience around to a Socratic inquiry on truth. For Seay and most others in his congregation, truth lies somewhere beyond familiar platitudes or the mundane churchianity of their youth. "We can spout Sunday-school answers," he says, "but when it comes to reality, it doesn't really flesh out in our lives."

Seay leads his listeners through a series of questions: Can truth be found in the church, an institution that has supported prejudice, corruption, slavery, and the Crusades? Can truth be found in humanity's tired traditions? Or can truth be found in the Bible?

"Some of you say you don't believe the Bible," says Seay, "but we'll read it anyway and see if there's anything interesting in it."

Delivering his talk in a spontaneous and self-deprecating style, borrowed in part from TV's David Letterman, Seay tells his congregation not to base their lives on pop culture icons like Oprah Winfrey, Susan Powter, or Tony Robbins, but to trust "this really cool gift from God, the Word of God."

It is an approach that connects with the church's youthful members. "When he gives his messages, it's like he's talking right to you," says Brandy, a marketing major at Baylor University. "He's the same age as us, and he has the same hurts as us."

Doing church the new way
A new way of doing church, University Baptist Church was launched in January 1995, and within weeks, large crowds forced the congregation out of its original cinder-block church building. Last October, nearly 1,100 young people showed up for Sunday worship.

Services do have some similarities to those held at more traditional churches; they feature periods of worship, preaching, and prayer as well as Sunday bulletins and offering baskets. And there are additional similarities to the seeker-sensitive, baby-boomer ministry model. But that is where the similarities end.

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November 11 1996, Vol. 40, No. 13