If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a hundred times: “We don’t do church the same old way here.” It seems to be a statement memorized by most aspiring church planters and trumpeted with pride from the stage. You know, the stage—the same stage with the same artsy decor, led by the same cool white guy pastor with skinny jeans, Warby Parkers and a bit of scruff just before he launches into the same Sunday morning programming.
Now, none of this is bad. In fact, a lot of it is really good. Churches can accomplish a lot using tried-and- true models, and utilizing tested programming isn’t necessarily laziness—it might be called smart.
So where are the churches truly doing something different? We wanted to highlight some trailblazing faith communities rethinking what church can look like in a modern context, whether in terms of how they engage their members, how they reach out to their communities or how they champion justice. Some of them are big and well-funded, some of them are small and struggling, but all of them are setting a new bar for what church can be.
1. Eliminating Debt
The Altar Fellowship: Johnson City, TN
Last week, news broke that The Altar Fellowship Church in Johnson City, Tennessee, had paid off approximately $8 million in medical debt for local community members. This initiative, done in partnership with a national debt relief program, has relieved 3,921 families across several counties from the heavy burden of unpaid medical bills.
The vision for this remarkable effort was cast by Senior Pastor Mattie Montgomery, who was moved by personal experiences from his childhood. After losing his father to cancer at a young age, Pastor Montgomery was inspired by the kindness of a businessman who provided Christmas gifts for his family during a difficult time. This memory fueled his passion for helping others in a similar way. The church’s dedication to this cause became even more personal when it was discovered that some of the debts forgiven belonged to their own congregation members.
“We want to love not just the people at our church, but we want to love our neighbors,” said David Morrison, Altar Fellowship’s Missions Pastor. “And Jesus said in Matthew Ten, he said freely, ‘you have received so freely give,’ and we believe that he paid our debt when we didn’t deserve it. This is just a beautiful example of what Jesus did for all of us by just paying the debt for people that many will never meet. And what of like relief of a burden. And to get that letter in the mail saying your debt is forgiven, you don’t owe anything else, and we love you. And that’s really our message. It’s like God loves you, we love you, you’re seen, and we believe in you. And we want to relieve this burden from you and your family.”
2. Connecting Immigrant Families
Naco Christian Church / Iglesia Cristiana de Naco: Naco, AZ
Naco Christian Church is one church with one pastor in two different locations—with a large, taxpayer-funded fence between them. The church is just a few blocks from the Mexican border and offers services on both sides of it. There’s an early-morning service in Naco, Arizona, followed by one just across the border in Naco, Mexico, later in the day.
The church is pastored by Jesse Wood, while his wife Jessica works as the church’s children’s coordinator. They’re a binational couple, making them uniquely fit to lead a church that serves two different cultures. And the church is no gimmick. By operating close to the border, Naco Christian Church is a lifeline between children and their parents who’ve been deported back to Mexico.
3. Creating a Community Hub
Impact Church: Atlanta, GA
Impact Church’s slogan is “Doing Church Differently,” and they’ve worked hard to earn it by creating a church that puts more focus on the other six days of the week than they do on Sunday mornings. With Pastor Paul Thibodeaux at the helm, Impact has become one of the fastest-growing churches in the United States, and they’ve done it all while maintaining a commitment to improving the lives of their congregants inside and outside their walls.
In addition to offering Bible studies, Impact fosters communities to teach things like financial responsibility, dating advice and even estate planning.
The next stage in their journey is refurbishing a warehouse into an eco-friendly space that will serve not just as a church, but also a sort of community center. The new space will feature hygiene centers for Atlanta’s homeless population, after-school programs for area youth, office space to serve as incubators for startup businesses, a community garden and creative programming and coding classes.
4. Taking Aim at Racism
Quest Church: Seattle, WA
Eugene Cho was already a rising pastor, author and speaker when the aging, mostly white congregation of Interbay Covenant Church agreed to merge with the young, mostly Asian-American congregation of Quest Church, gifting them a large, upscale debt-free building in the process. The church had the usual generational bickering at first—arguments over the volume of the music and the type of food served at potlucks—but what’s emerged is a new vision for a multi-ethnic church in the United States, one that transcends nominal lip service to “diversity” to offer a truly radical integrated community of people who depict something that more closely approximates what the actual body of Christ might look like rather than the usual homogeneous lineup.
The church has doubled down on its focus on combating racism since the events in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. Cho was deeply moved by the death of Mike Brown and what he perceived as the Christian Church’s lack of compassion about the realities of systemic racial injustice in modern America. In 2018, Cho stepped down to focus on other ministries but the Church continues to grow in Seattle under the leadership of pastor Gail Song Bantum.
5. Housing Dallas’ Homeless
Church of the Incarnation: Dallas, TX
This Anglican church has been around for a long time, but its approach to ministering to one of Texas’ larger cities has remained cutting edge for every one of its more than 100 years. Under the leadership of the Rev. Anthony J. Burton, the church has set the bar for what it looks like for a church to take Jesus’ concern for the homeless to heart.
Whether it’s volunteering at a nearby home for the low-income elderly or cooking hot meals for a nearby shelter, there are few ways the Church of the Incarnation isn’t involved in local homeless work. Maybe most notable is their Incarnation House, an area for homeless teens and teens in unstable housing situations. Incarnation House provides a real, concrete place for teenagers without anywhere else to go, and provides them with physical, educational and spiritual resources to take the next step.
