In January 2016, six months after Kerry Mraz, 38, moved to Houston for his wife's new job, his marriage ended and he found himself unmoored in a city he barely knew. While walking one day in a park near his home, he met a neighbor, who invited him to church -- at a Taco Bell.
The next Wednesday, at 7:30 a.m., Mraz went to Taco Church, where a small group of men gathered for breakfast, Bible study, jokes and prayer. The group, started by an Episcopal priest and a few guys from his gym, shared vulnerability in a way that Mraz had rarely seen. Sometimes he had to step outside the fast-food restaurant to cry.
The priest, the Rev. Sean Steele, told Mraz that Taco Church was part of the newly launched St. Isidore Episcopal, a "church without walls" focused on small group discipleship and community service. The church didn't have a building, and it didn't want one, Steele said. Instead, it had a cellphone app, linking members to the church's many parts.
As Steele explained, St. Isidore was one church embodied in many different ways. It wasn't just Taco Church. It would eventually become three house churches, a pub theology group, a free laundry ministry, a food truck and more. It was all quite unorthodox, except the liturgy and theology, which were decidedly Episcopalian.
