This past Sunday I spent the morning at church, celebrating in ways familiar to millions of Christians. I was in a building with an organized opening prayer, couple of songs, sermon, benediction, and social hour. I spent the afternoon in a very different kind of Christian community called the Outdoor Church.

The Outdoor Church of Cambridge is a church that meets outside in order to serve its congregants –mostly homeless men and women resistant to social services and uncomfortable in traditional churches, many suffering from addiction or mental illness. After two services held in local parks and squares for those who are interested, pastoral staff spend the afternoon walking around the city. We give out sandwiches, socks, and juice to anyone who wants them and try to get to know the people we encounter.

The simple liturgies of this one unique community have taught me a lot about what it means to be Church in general. We have no sermon at the Outdoor Church, but discuss the text together. There are no bulletins, no committees, no music, no nursery. It’s always cold or hot or wet or windy, we are sometimes interrupted by passing teenagers or drunken outbursts, and grape juice communion is served out of a cracked creamer. But in the essence of what it means to be a disciple to Christ, this church has it all.

Everyone comes as they are. No one is rejected. We have a total focus on praising God in the face of despair, and encounter God through shared joys and concerns, the Bible, and communion. We help one another where we can, and weep for one another in lamentation when we can’t.

The questions this experience has raised for me in my first semester of Divinity School will be among my primary concerns here at State of Formation. What is Church? What must it be to live out the words and work of Jesus in the 21st century? How can we do so in a way that incorporates all, and speaks to the needs of the suffering?

This also, counter-intuitively, leads me to my long commitment to interfaith work. As a community Outdoor Church tries to alleviate the conditions of congregants through referral to social services, jail visits, and hospital visits. But any attempt to house the homeless, improve the emergency medical services congregants receive, or truly change their material conditions, will require that every member of the Cambridge community come together to pool their resources and innovation.

Christians, those of every other faith, and those who define as atheists, secular humanists or ‘none’ must come together in mutual respect and determination to address the social ills that plague us if they will ever be solved. Facilitating and celebrating those efforts is as much a necessary call for me as a Christian as my church work.

This is what I wonder about, and what I am struggling with. I look forward to learning from every member of this blogging and commenting community, and hope that we can make some progress on these questions together.