Not A Building Campaign

We have written a letter to the Christian leaders of our city. You can copy and/or print it here. We encourage you to forward it to the leadership of your church and edit it to the purposes of your city.

August 31st, 2009

To the leaders of the local church,

 

We are a group of young Christian activists known as Peacemaker Revolution.  We are rooted in three houses in Winston-Salem, NC.  We meet in our homes to read the Bible, coordinate feeding the hungry, and connecting members of different churches across our city.  We are writing you to stimulate awareness of how we feel about the American Church and our generation.  We live the way we do because it is a compelling avenue to exercise Christianity in our time and place.  We are calling this campaign “You don’t call your house your family, why is your church a building?”

 

We believe in the local church.  We think the local church is a pivotal organizer of people to provide Jesus’ love to its neighborhoods and the conduit for his claim that his people will do greater things than he.[1]  We also see troubling things in our country where the building, the institution, the organization, and the maintenance of these things is more consuming of time and resources than the actual serving of and service by the people. 

 

Our group is committed to the feeding of the hungry, providing the most elementary medical care, loving the disenfranchised, and healing the flagrant racial divide of our city, because more than anything these are the most literal manifestations of the Gospel love Jesus calls us to.  Our choice is to be in our churches, participating in those communities, not breaking off to construct more hedges and alienating ourselves from other generations and people different from ourselves.

 

As a group of young people who participate in six different churches across six different denominations on any given weekend, we want to make a few things clear to the generation leading us.  We are not compelled to participate in a body because of its music, its building, its marketing, or its programs, nor do we believe the non-believing communities of our city are compelled by these initiatives.  We are not deep with wisdom or experience, but we do live in the trenches of the art scene, the college and post-collegiate arenas, and we see people longing not for a well-oiled organization or an attractive worship space, but a gospel lived out.  For our campaign, we are asking your church for three things.

 

First, to visit our website, www.peacemakerrevolution.org and sign our pledge to foster a church whose identity is a community of people with the purpose of love as an alternative to creating a centralized structure.  Second, to visit our site over the next month to read articles by our community and other people living like us around the country in the context of these ideas.  While we do not have it all figured out, we hope you can see what young people are thinking and feeling.  Third, we would like to connect with your church and find out how we can participate in what you are doing or help encourage intentional community within your body since we see the local church as the most important catalyst of what Jesus clearly calls us to, love through compassion, mercy, and justice in our city.  These are not just words for us, we are invigorated to participate.  Please allow us to connect with your leaders over a cup of coffee, have the opportunity to brain storm with your community, and please invite us to participate in what your church is doing to live out the Gospel.
 

 

 

Thank you and God bless,

Austin Pfeiffer and PeacemakerRevolution.org
 

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[1] John 14:12