Written by Topher Thomas.

This article launches our new Speaker Series, a collection of paywalled features that mirror talks given at our Speaker Symposium events. The series offers a glimpse into the expertly curated content and detailed insights shared at the in-person talks given to each of our cohorts.

We hope you enjoy!

The church, long a hallowed space of transcendence and pursuit of justice, finds itself in steep and steady decline.

Church attendance dwindles year after year. Churches are closing their doors, because they simply cannot afford to keep them open anymore. It is much a crisis of faith as it is a crisis of financial sustainability. The church in America is dying, at least the church as it is. Maybe this death is making way for something more, something different.

At the center of the Christian tradition, the tradition I locate myself within is a spiritual imperative to care for the marginalized. We find here a God who could not be God without us, demonstrating to us our inherent divinity. Maybe in this death, as the old way decomposes into the soil, new ways to achieve that imperative and to embody that God are ready to grow.

One such way, a simple way, is the provision of shelter.

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