The task of a church is to work out the body of Christ. However, a body, particularly the body of Christ, of Jesus, is not a stationary object that somebody could draw a chalkline around. It is not to be confused with a corpse. The body of Christ, the body of Jesus, moves, it is a “way.” In order for a local “church” to be a church, to be the body of Christ, it must also move—and move, as Jesus does in the gospels, to those cast out by extant institutions of power (some of them ecclesiastical). That means, that a church “board” (I hope one day that term would never be used by a local church) is to gather again and again in order to pray that they might discern where the outcasts in the church’s neighborhood are to be found. If it is in a neighborhood packed with power brokers, it is very, very seriously to consider moving into those neighborhoods that are most dangerous and forbidding to human flourishing. That is, the Jesus of the gospels is a journey to the poor. The body of Christ is a journey to the poor or it is nothing at all.