It’s become hip to rip on the church. People like to blame their problems on “the church.” You can hear these criticisms in popular culture. Take, for instance, Arcade Fire’s song “Intervention”: Working for the Church while your family dies You take what they give you and you keep it inside Every spark of friendship and love will die without a home Hear the solider groan, “We’ll go at it alone”” The song paints the church as a militant institution,

You will observe that I am not merely exhorting you “to go to church.” “Going to church” is in any case good. But what I am exhorting you to do is go to your own church—to give your presence and active religious participation to every stated meeting for worship of the institution as an institution. Thus you will do your part to give to the institution an organic religious life, and you will draw out from the organic religious life

The American landscape is dotted with churchless Christianity. Church has been reduced to a weekly event, even a religious institution. Instead of being the church, we have fallen into merely doing church, and far too often our doing is disconnected from being. Church has devolved from Gospel-centered community into man-centered institutions or events that look more like: shopping malls, fortresses, and cemeteries. These aberrations contribute to the confusion regarding “church” in America. In order to better understand Gospel community, it

It is impossible to avoid homelessness in Austin, where it is estimated that on any given night up to 6,000 people sleep without a home. In January, at Austin City Life, we talked about renewing our beloved city by moving people from a place of mercy to a place of justice, from temporary hand-outs to permanent transformation. As one City Group discussed the call of the gospel to advocate for justice, they began to ask questions about what it would