One Family Church - U-City Tivoli Campus — Attraction in University City

I attended One Family Church for years but eventually left after too many red flags: their constant emphasis on being a “diverse” church, their partnership with the St. Louis Racial Reconciliation Network, the Maya Angelou mural, and a race series that leaned on false & misleading examples. These felt like ideological tests, not biblical teaching.

Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings has been banned in schools across the U.S., including the U.S. Naval Academy library, for graphic content and racist themes. Yet the church uses her “caged bird” imagery as a permanent symbol of victimhood—reinforcing a worldview where guilt is demanded endlessly and forgiveness is never part of the process.

The church has chosen to partner with and fund the Racial Reconciliation Network. This program is not biblical reconciliation—it CRT. Marx divided society into oppressors and oppressed. CRT applies that model to race: white people are labeled oppressors, people of color oppressed. Instead of forgiveness, the framework demands permanent guilt and endless penance.

I met with the Network’s leader to understand this process. We agreed the purpose is for Yt people to acknowledge privilege and give it up. When I asked what that looked like in real life, his best example was, “It’s like male privilege, you know, like holding a door open for a woman.” That is not a real example of how to live it out. He called the program a biblical cause, yet provided no Scripture. The central idea—privilege—cannot be defined or measured, yet the entire program rests on condemning people for it.

I also met with the main pastor. At first he declined to discuss CRT, calling it “not useful.” When we did meet, I reminded him that he says he wants a church like the disciples built—open to all nations. But this framework does the opposite: it singles out one group and forces them into endless penance with no forgiveness.

Later, I spoke with the prayer group leader. I warned him that this false teaching puts salvation at risk, since the Bible says when the blind lead the blind, both fall into a pit. His response was, “salvation is guaranteed.” Confidence is misplaced when it defends false teaching.

The curriculum confirms the issue. It combines Multi-Ethnic Conversations with Peggy McIntosh’s Yt Privilege Checklist, a secular exercise from 1989. The book never mentions forgiveness and instead tells participants to repeat reconciliation so injustice “doesn’t happen again.” The checklist assigns guilt by skin color. A secular sociology tool is treated like theology, while forgiveness—the heart of reconciliation—is missing.

True reconciliation in the Bible is completed with forgiveness, not endless cycles of guilt. Once forgiveness is given, it is done. This program denies forgiveness, enforces permanent division, and replaces Christian doctrine...

My family and I were looking for a new church home in the University City area, and we found U-City Family Church on google. We have been a part of the church ever since, for more than two years, and we love it. There are several factors that differentiate U-City Family Church and these are the reasons we stuck around:

First, it's diverse. People of different economic strata, ethnicities, nationalities, religious denominations, political affiliations - you name it, we've got it. The only thing we have in common is following Jesus and being in community with each other, and it rocks. Diversity is what first attracted us to U-City Family Church; it was the first thing we noticed when we visited, and it felt like the way things ought to be.

Second, the pastor, Brent, is a good preacher. Now that I've been there for over two years, I've gotten to know him really well, and I appreciate him as a friend. My first few weeks, though, what struck me was that his sermons were both spiritually challenging and intellectually stimulating - a rare combination. He puts a lot of work into his presentations each Sunday, and it shows.

Third, everyone is involved. We love that U-City Family Church meets in the Tivoli Theater in the Loop. One of the downsides, though, is that transforming the theater into a place we can have a church service and then back into a movie theater each Sunday morning is a lot of work, and most church members have a volunteer role in addition to being there to enjoy the service. Some people volunteer as musicians (our musicians are top notch), others teach in the children's classes, and others do manual labor. It's great - you can serve on Sunday morning while you get the encouragement you need to go out and change the world the rest of the week.

Fourth, the community of our church is truly supportive. We love the friendships we've gained by being members and by being part of a small group that meets every couple of weeks on a weeknight. We've been able to be a blessing to other people, and they have been a blessing to us. I've also noticed that the diversity part I mentioned above adds a lot to what the community can do - having so many different viewpoints and gifts in one congregation adds a lot of value. Along with that, our church sees itself as part of the fabric of the larger community and works alongside other churches, other faith groups, and other individuals to do good things. It's not a competition, it's a community!

If you're looking for a group of people to get involved in, we...

My family has been attending U City Family Church since the 2nd week it opened back in September 2011. I've been truly blessed to be a part of this church, and my family has as well. Pastor Brent and his wife Rebecca are both doing such tremendous work, and the whole church has pitched in to build it into what it is today. It's grown tremendously in the past two years, and I'm continually thankful for the work God has done in this church.

A couple of my favorite things about UCFC:

It's inclusive to everyone. As a start up church, the culture is inviting, and it's easy to get involved in a meaningful way. I love how open the church is to people of all ages, races and backgrounds.

The people. A church is made up of people, and this church is blessed with a vibrant, caring, passionate congregation of people.

The message, the sermons and the music. I love the positive message that Pastor Brent preaches, and I've always enjoyed the worship as well.

The church is doing, not just talking. The church held a food drive for Operation Food Search and sponsored a volleyball tournament for them a while back. The U City Mayor will send out help requests to Pastor Brent, he sends them out to the congregation, and someone steps in to help. A couple months ago, someone with a severe disability undergoing financial hardship needed her lawn mowed, and a lawn care professional from our congregation stepped up and took care of her. Those are just a couple of many examples I could give.

The church tithes. 10% of everything that people donate to the church gets donated back to charities. Those include Operation Food Search, the Kingdom House and a couple others I can't remember off the top of my head. The bottom line is I'm really confident that the church's finances are well managed. The priorities are in the...