We're not leaving the church. Just the box it lives in.
A name carried since before any of the rest of it had one.
Before Hope Like A Virus had a name, before Fire Breather Ministries, before any of the books, there was Move Beyond Church.
Every Tuesday and Thursday night we went live on Ustream. We called it The Broadcast. This was the days of MySpace, and this new thing called Twitter, on a handle one letter short because the name wouldn't fit... movebyondchurch. By 2010 there was a church plant too, a mosaic of people who didn't fit anywhere else.
Then it went quiet. The accounts went. The streams went. The domain went. Most of that record is gone now.
The name never left.
Eighteen years after the first Broadcast, I registered it again. The first thing I wrote down about it was one line.
We're not leaving the church. Just the box it lives in.
The second thing I wrote down was what it isn't. This is the antithesis of deconstructionism.
Deconstruction takes the building apart and walks away from the Bride. That isn't this. This walks away from the box and keeps the Bride.
"And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." (Matthew 16:18)
The word He used for church is EKKLESIA. It is built from two words, out and call. In the Greek city it meant the citizens called out of their homes into the public square to do the city's business. An assembly. Not a venue. Not a program. Not a brand.
The church He talked about building... ain't the box. He built a called-out people, and then He sent them out. Somewhere along the way we took the called-out people and called them back in.
When the name came back, three ideas came with it.
One. The box. Everything we built to hold the faith that ended up holding it hostage.
Two. A refuge for the burned out. You got into ministry because you wanted to help people. You are people too.
Three. A move beyond the walls. The Word carried out the door and into the places where people actually live.
I didn't choose between them then. I didn't have to. They were one road the whole time. The box burns people out, and the walls keep the weapons inside. The way out of both is the same door.
"Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach. For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come." (Hebrews 13:12-14)
He suffered outside the gate. The invitation was never to bring Him in. It was to go out to Him.
Read the name out loud. movebeyond.church
The dot is the wall. Everything on this site happens on the far side of it.
movebeyond.church is where my life outside the walls shows. Haiti and the village we helped build. The ways you can go with us. And field orders from The Weapons of Our Warfare... one word, one text, one drill, run in the break room, the pickup line, the hospital hallway.
Called out. Sent out. Out of the box.