We begin every Outdoor Church worship service with these words of scripture: “Jesus said, ‘Come to me, all of you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden light’” (Matthew 11:28-30). 

Just as these words are the starting point of our every worship service, so too are they the starting point of our theological reflection. We believe that through Jesus Christ, God calls every individual back into loving relationship with Him. However, for reasons political, social, and economic, this is not an invitation that is extended by the church equally to all persons. Since even the founding of the Christian church, certain categories of men and women have been excluded and precluded from hearing this message of salvation. 

In our own time, the chronically homeless are one such category of person. Out of embarrassment or shame, hostility or illness, many chronically homeless individuals simply cannot or will not enter conventional churches even if they are welcomed in. And yet, Jesus Christ, the one in whose name the church gathers, is the one who came “to preach good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18). If indoor churches are not spaces where chronically homeless individuals go to hear the good news of redemption through Christ, the church must carry its message to where these people are (Matthew 28:19). 

The Outdoor Church thus operates on an incarnational logic, reflecting the movement of a God who, through Christ, reaches out to people where they are, as they are. Ours is a church without walls whose sole aim is to carry the Good News out onto the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts to the men and women who live there. 

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