Hillsong and Vineyard critiqued in niche churches article

AN ARTICLE in the May 2008 Christianity magazine looked at niche churches. Including those featured were St Edward King And Martyr Church in Cambridge which runs a fortnightly goth eucharist and Zac's Place, a church targeted at bikers. Quoted in the article was Michael Volland, a Church Of England minister who leads Feig, a small emerging community in Gloucester. He said, "Christians in mainstream churches are in a subculture. The mistake they make is to think they are not and other people are. If you take something like Hillsong or Vineyard - they are subcultures. They have merchandise, heroes, ways of doing things - all the marks of a subculture. The mainstream church has buzzwords, songs and behaviours which are nothing to do with the Gospel, but people think that they are. People don't recognise that, so they try and reach out to others as if the Gospel they proclaim is somehow culture-free."