About

Who We Are

With humble beginnings in houses, basements, and coffee shops, The Sanctuary Interfaith Community Center is the most current iteration of The Church Within. Founded over three decades ago this space is one with many homes, many faces, and many different possibilities. The Church Within was founded as a spiritual refuge for those hungry for more connectedness and community. These thinkers and seekers forged lasting bonds and fierce relationships as they established The Church Within.

With the retirement of a long-term pastor in 2024, The Church Within began the deep contemplative work of future forecasting. With roots in anti-oppressive theology, our congregation set out to clarify what our community feels like versus what our name says about us. This year-long project has produced The Sanctuary Interfaith Community Center, a space rooted in love, growing in spirit, and cultivating community.

We believe we are all born for belonging. That we are all an integral part of all spaces in which we arrive. We understand that for marginalized, oppressed, and traumatized peoples, the intersection of care and religion can feel suspicious and uninviting. To offset what we know about mainstream faith spaces and their ability to harm, we worked to consider how we may become irresistible to those who seek a spiritual home traditionally left out of mainstream faith spaces.

Our community invites all. We seek to be a space of welcome and of celebration to anyone who walks in the door. Especially those who struggle to feel at home in traditional faith spaces. We believe that practicing connection to the Divine requires the diverse constellation of the human experience within our walls and within our community.

We believe that Black Lives are Sacred. That Queer Inclusion is the only path to liberation. We believe that all abilities and all bodies reflect the divine within. We support immigrants and their work to build our country – past and present. We long for ways to integrate the vastness of all into the walls of our community center. In a time where what makes us unique makes us a target, we hope The Sanctury Interfaith Community Center becomes a place of communal refuge and spiritual reconciliation.

Come see for yourself what The Sanctuary Interfaith Community Center feels like. We think it feels like family.

What You can expect

Our building is located in the heart of Fountain Fletcher Neighborhood on the southside of Indianapolis, Indiana. The building itself has been home to a school and community center in different seasons of its life. The space boasts plenty of parking in our lot as well as on the alleyway directly beside Yasso Jamaican Restaurant.

When entering our building, there is a typically a greeter on-site for services to welcome you. Name badges as well as interaction dots are located on the table nearest the entrance. Interaction dots signal to our community what your level of interest in engagement and touching are. Green: Let’s hug and chat. Yellow: I need more time and space but I am open to your invitation for touching and chatting. Red: Respect my space and my silence please.

We have bathrooms that are gender neutral and the entire building is wheelchair accessible as well as easy to navigate for those with mobility concerns. We have a Gathering Room that seats over 100 but typical services are around 40-60 people. There are slides and visual images to follow along with.

You will find lending libraries, gathering areas, a full kitchen, and a conversation pit in our building. We also have Youth Sangha for anyone under 18 who wants to be in community with peers while Sunday Service is live.

There is a notable absence of religious iconography and messaging in our space, and this is intentional. We believe that our spiritual paths are intimate journeys of our own which are celebrated and enhanced by the gathering in the collective space we share. We do not hold any one faith tradition as more central than others and for this reason, we do not practice decorating our space of worship with religious artifacts.

Sunday Services begin at 10:00am and typically conclude at 11:15am. These services are structured with candle lighting, meditation, a prayer, music selections, and a message from the speaker for the day. We do practice a community collection and greeting one another, both of which is by choice and there are no rituals we practice that are required of anyone in attendance.

Our Sunday Services end with a community meal which is pitch-in style. Our community has several members with allergies, and we are a latex free building and are well-versed in feeding those with food allergies. Seating is available for meals inside as well as on our outdoor patio which is gated.

Smoking on the building campus is permitted in designated areas only and we request that you are responsible for your litter and waste in the appropriate containers we designate.