My take on it, though, was that it was communication intended for an unchurched audience that would view the slogan differently, and that would probably understand exactly what it was trying to say. To state it analytically, I think this unchurched audience would interpret “doing church” (as in the slogan) as “conducting church affairs in a ritualistic and/or formalistic, institutional manner reminiscent of what I may have experienced directly or indirectly in previous contacts with church.”

In other words, this church is claiming to be a church for people who don’t want to associate with church in its popular stereotyped, dry and institutionalized form. (I am not myself affirming that stereotype, but I do recognize it exists among many unchurched.)

Mandy, I hesitated before using that word “authentic.” I didn’t want to write a long description of what a genuine, Christ-following, New Testament church might be like, since an accurate blanket description is so hard to come up with. One implication of what you’re saying, couple with what I just wrote in the previous paragraph, is that some churches stereotyped as ritualistic or institutional actually have a great deal of the life of Christ in them.

Anyway, I chose a shorthand word for genuine church life (and I’m not sure that’s a good term for it either, but I hope you get my point). If you think there’s a better description for it, I’m quite sure you’re right.

God have mercy on us.

Its a self defeating proposition. Once someone begins to do church, they no longer are someone who doesn’t do church, and so there is no such thing as a church for people who don’t do church. Just a church for people who didn’t used to do church. Which every church is.