What is CitySaver?

Wanna hear something really crazy? This wasn’t our idea. We didn’t have some folks sitting around brainstorming about how to invent a new thing. We don’t just think it up. God told us to do it. Yeah… I know! Crazy, huh? Well, the thing is that you’re welcome to believe whatever you want and we’re never going to shove anything down your throat, but WE believe that God is real and that He talks to people – and that we need to be hearing Him because He knows best.

If you were looking for one person that was out in front on this, that would be Doug Perry. Back in 2004 he had a vision from God of how bad things are, how angry God is with this thing we call “church” and how things ought to be different. He left the mega-church he’d been attending and started caring for the poor. He started a homeless shelter that was desperately needed (but nobody in town wanted) and a food pantry feeding hundreds – and then thousands – of people per month.

If you really want to read more about the vision he had and how this all happened, you can read more below. A lot of this is motivated by something he wrote in 2005 called “The Open Letter of Apology to the World” that you can read below, too. It’s an acknowledgement that this thing we call “church” is really pretty whacked and not what Jesus wanted – and that Doug was going to do everything he could to turn things around.

It seems to us that a really important message of the Bible is about community, particularly in the New Testament and the Book of Acts. It also seems to us that the only real “church” you can find in the Bible is “Church of Jerusalem,” “Church of Laodecia,” “Church of Ephesus,” etc. One Body Per City seems to be the model laid out for us. And when it was working right the Christians led the world in loving one another, caring about one another and working together. Or at least they did for a little while. Lots more on that below as well.

The Christian faith has split up into over 50,000 denominations now. We start a new one every 48 hours! And all this from people that claim their “Lord” was the guy that prayed that they would be ONE as He and the Father are one. Something has to be done. We have to try something different!

So, it’s like this, some of us that claim to be Christians have seen the damage done by “churchianity” and we want to turn this ride around. The Christians were supposed to be the ones to loved their neighbors, cared for each other, and more. There was no homelessness, no hunger, no needs that weren’t met – because the church was all working together and even taking people into their own homes. So we’re building CitySaver as a gift to the world and we’re hoping it will make up for how badly we’ve got off track. That it will make up for the gold-crusted cathedrals and abuse and fraud and waste. Yeah, people are going to have to stand before God and be called to account, but that doesn’t mean we should at least TRY to do things differently.

We want this tool to build local community, support local causes, help local businesses and maybe even make a difference when problems arise – and we’re hoping it will help the Body of Christ have a mechanism to come together outside of the walls of their Sunday morning buildings and begin to manifest their oneness.

Anyway, if you don’t particularly care about religion or you believe in something else, that’s OK. We’re not going to push anything on you and we’d love for you to use CitySaver in any way that might help you. If you want to hear more about all this, about how Jesus came to save whole cities, about how God judged whole cities — then click on the CitySavior link at the top and dig around over there.