Zach Bauer didn’t quite know what he wanted Red Door Church to be. As lead pastor, he had experimented with different formats, but none quite fit his vision of making connections with each of its members.

While undergoing a journey of rediscovering what church means to him, Bauer said he found a common denominator that all people, regardless of who they are, could connect with: food.

“Anyone and everyone was always more than willing to sit down and share a meal together,” Bauer said.

Red Door Church has been a “meal-centered” church for about a year, hosting weekly Sunday morning breakfast services. The church also held Monday evening dinner services, but those are postponed indefinitely because of logistical issues.

Bauer said the church’s breakfast services are interactive and conversational. As attendees eat a free meal, they are treated to live music and conversations with their fellow parishioners. They also give everybody the opportunity to share a story or moment from their lives that week.

“It just happened to be the worst possible time to switch,” he said. “It was actually great for us, but it was kind of a unique 2020. It was just not a time you typically would change your church, model and vision.”

Bauer and his wife both grew up in Montana, where Bauer was a pastor for a dozen or so years. He and his wife felt a call to start their own church, so they moved to Sioux Falls with their three kids in 2012 to pursue their goal.

The couple launched Red Door in 2013. Bauer, who also works in digital marketing and graphic design for a bank, described the church as nomadic since then, moving to various locations in Sioux Falls. The church has been housed in an old movie theater and has shared buildings with another church and the Red Cross.

In the past year, Red Door has moved into its current location on the first floor of Union Gospel Mission downtown.

And while going to church in a place meant to support the homeless might not seem the most obvious fit, it starts to make sense if you get know a little more about Bauer.

His career includes time as a youth pastor, reflecting a passion for helping struggling kids. He said he strayed a bit from the church in high school and college, getting in trouble with the law and, at one point, was arrested. While going through a period of being in and out of jail, he said he underwent a shift in perspective on how and why people struggle in life and what he could do to help.

This is a major element of Red Door’s mission: helping people who are struggling and embracing the “messy” nature of each of our lives.

“When we planted, we always wanted to have a church … that kind of would reach out to those who had never been a part of church or felt disconnected or are nomads of church themselves,” Bauer said. “And so that’s kind of always … driven the heartbeat behind it, was always about how do we really help those who need family, need friends, need connection.”

When the church was founded, it operated in the “traditional mindset” of what Bauer considers to be the Western church; that is, a church that holds traditional services and is focused on the production side of it. However, after a few years, he realized this model wasn’t financially sustainable and also didn’t fully fit his vision for the church.

Bauer said he then went on a journey to redefine how he viewed what church is.

“In that process, we realized what church really was — it wasn’t about these lights and production and all the programming and all the, what we kind of consider consumeristic church. And we felt like the church in America had kind of become … all about producing. And so we kind of started to make this shift away from that.”

This eventually led to Red Door becoming a meal-centered church that is nondenominational and “fairly progressive.” Bauer said he tries to preach during services that church is not just Sunday morning — church is every day of your life. That’s why the first Sunday of every month is Sabbath Sunday. The community doesn’t gather at church and is instead motivated to slow down, take some time to be with family and friends, and serve in the community.

“We always encourage people to live out the Gospel in your day-to-day (life), be a good citizen, be involved in your community, be involved in your neighborhood,” he said.

As the church continues to grow, Bauer said he hopes it can continue to reach marginalized members of the community. And while the church sees tremendous turnover within its community, he said the goal is to provide each member with the tools to improve themselves and their communities once they leave.

“We see it as a place as how do we develop and grow and help them in those six to eight weeks, so that when they move on, they can contribute and be part of their community in a greater way,” he said. “And so yeah, it’s unique for us because our church is constantly changing and (has) different people all the time. But we think that there’s an opportunity for people to gather and belong for a season with us.”

Article from Pigeon 605 - https://pigeon605.com/meal-centered-church-focuses-on-feeding-bodies-souls/

‘Meal-centered’ church focuses on feeding bodies, souls