My church got locked out of our building on Monday. There’s nothing we could have done differently: the seedy business park where we were renting was foreclosed upon and they changed the locks after church on Sunday.

So, my church is homeless.

Let me say that Alex and I have been looking for this group of people since we got married. We’ve church-hopped around, not finding anywhere to put down roots, looking for a group of people who love Jesus, each other, and others.

We’d heard about New Song Dallas because they do international student home groups through the same organization that we do. If we wanted to find like-minded people, this should be it. The first Sunday we went was at the pastor’s house because someone was getting baptized in the neighbor’s pool.

I was hooked.

The church’s tag line is “Christ. Community. Cause.” I’d never thought about it before, but those three things are all interconnected and important in creating a space for the Body of Christ where people can grow and love. Very few, if any, of the churches I’ve attended have done all three of those things well.

This group of people shares what God is doing in their life. They are vulnerable, raw, humble. They want to walk beside you, even when it gets ugly.

The Church is not a building.

These are the sort of people that know when your doctor’s appointments are, that get excited about throwing a shower for your adopted child, that make a concerted effort to have vegetarian options when they serve food. These people know how to have community.

The Church is not a building.

This is a group of people who are educated and passionate about social justice issues; a group of people that want to be the physical presence of Christ on Earth by loving the poor and those that need someone to stand beside them.

The Church is not a building.

This sort of challenge that would be normally considered a deathblow to many churches will hopefully make ours stronger. We can meet in a park, a mall, a home, an alley, an apartment clubouse. The building isn’t the most important part of what God is doing in this group of people.

My Church is not a building.

¹⁹ “Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. ²⁰ For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” (Matthew 18:20)