Evolving Faith

Ian Lawton is executive minister of C3Exchange: An Inclusive Spiritual Community, in Spring Lake, Michigan. Michael Dowd engaged Ian in conversation just two weeks before the scheduled removal of the 65-foot cross of this former affiliate of the Reformed Church of America. (Soon after, Ian was interviewed on Fox News about the controversy.) Independent since 1997, the congregation called Ian in 2004. Many more changes ensued, leading to the removal of the cross and a new identity in 2010. The former Christ Community Church is now C3 Exchange, and it is in the vanguard of liberal/evolutionary religious reform in America. According to his church profile, though trained at a conservative Anglican seminary in his native Australia, "Ian was always more interested in connecting with the people who don't go to church: the homeless people, the broken people, the creative people, the liberated people, the recovering people, the inquiring people, the family people, those who put their humanity before their ideology." A