Welcome to Redeemer Community Church. We're a young church. We've only been around for a few months. If you'd like some more information about who we are and things like that, we, we have some sheets out there in the foyer that tell our vision statement, also tell things about community groups, ways you could get involved. But I thought I would take just a few minutes tonight, before we sing anymore, before we pray, just to remind us of who we are as a body and some of the things that make us distinct.
Joel Brooks:Our purpose at Redeemer Community Church, we we consider ourselves to be a community, being transformed by the gospel of Jesus to love God and to love our neighbor. A community being transformed by the gospel of God, gospel of Jesus, to love God and to love our neighbor. We believe that God has called us specifically to be part of the spiritual, the social, and the cultural renewal of this city and of the world. And so everything that we do as a church is for those things. We we don't claim please hear me.
Joel Brooks:We don't claim to be better than other churches at that. As a matter of fact, we're probably a lot worse in some areas. But that's our goal. Our goal is to see these things happen, and, everything we do tries to fall under those goals. Jeremiah 29 is one of our key passages for this church, which Jeremiah wrote a letter to the exiles, and he said, you are to seek the welfare of the city.
Joel Brooks:Seek the welfare of the city. Pray for its shalom. Pray for the city's peace. And so we're not to, as Christians, get in our little holy huddles and and to just distance ourselves from our communities. But we are to be involved in our neighbors' lives, involved in the city.
Joel Brooks:We're to be out there reaching out to people, to seek its welfare. And we believe that redemption is the theme of the Bible, and that Jesus Christ, through His death and His resurrection, has purchased this redemption, and it has already broken through in this world, and it will come in full when Jesus returns as our King. And it is a joy for us as a church to begin to be a part of that. One of the things that we strive to do as a church is, as much as possible, to keep things simple and focused. Simple and focused.
Joel Brooks:Simple in that we're not going to ever offer a whole lot of programs. We're not gonna have a whole lot of events. We want to do very few things, but we want to do them well as a body. We want to preach the Word of God with clarity and with conviction, and we want to spend time in prayer and worship passionately. We want to do those things.
Joel Brooks:And we want to stay focused on these things. And and you can see this, for those who've been coming in little ways, that maybe you've probably never even noticed. For instance, we don't use our prayer times at Redeemer as a time of transition. As, you know, whenever we just kind of need a break, you know, maybe move the service in a different direction, let's pray. You know, it's time to pray.
Joel Brooks:Or you're never going to close your eyes and also open them and the worship team will be gone. Or, you know, close your eyes and you open them and the whole worship team is up here, and that was the the point of transition, or the scenery changes, or lights are different. Prayer is not a time of transition for us. It is a time when we engage the Lord, all of us, especially the worship team. And that's one of the ways that we want to stay focused.
Joel Brooks:And and so it might mean we do that we have occasionally a few awkward moments of, you know, a guitarist having to come up here and plug in their guitar. Now we're gonna have to wait for a few seconds. I hope you could get over that. But, we want to engage the Lord in everything we do and stay focused on these things. If ever you want to see if a church if you want to find out a lot about a church if you're visiting, keep your eyes open during the prayer time.
Joel Brooks:Keep your eyes open. I know you're like, the pastor told me not to keep, you know, to keep my eyes open. Do. If there's a bunch of activity going on, it's a performance. It's a performance.
Joel Brooks:They're not really engaging in worship, And we want to try to do that. We're also one of the the distinctives, I think of redeemers. We're always gonna read the entire passage as much as possible. The entire passage of the scripture that we are studying. I'm not gonna just give you a line, and then tell you everything I think about it, because actually think the word of God read itself has more power than my words can ever have.
Joel Brooks:And so we want to read the word of God in its entirety, and in its context, and the message that we're going to be looking at. And we want the Word of God to always be central and we want to never distract from that. If, if ever, you know, there's there's music, or there's lighting, or if or if building or programs become central, or divert tension away from those things, we agree with Paul in 1st Corinthians 1 that we are making the power of the cross empty. We're emptying the cross of its power if those things become our focus. And so if if ever we as a church begin to think things like, you know, if only we had more money, if only we had a better facility, if ever we had these things, we could really reach people, we could really advance the kingdom of God.
Joel Brooks:If we go down that road, we need to know that we have abandoned our calling. We've abandoned it. It's not like God's waiting for us to get more resources. He's not. We've just lost our focus.
Joel Brooks:And this affects big things like our overall church structure, but also affects little things like the reason that we have an overhead projector, instead of having a LCD I don't know what do you call them, plug in the computer digital thing. It's, you know, I only got the internet after college. And so I'm not very technologically savvy. But, this is one of the reasons we even have this, is because we don't want to distract. All all you guys need is words.
Joel Brooks:You know, we don't need waterfalls. We we don't we don't need things like that. We don't want to distract from the word of god. And also this costs $5. $5 versus, you know, 1,000.
Joel Brooks:And so we have saved $995 in buying this, which we have set aside for the poor, which we have set aside for missions, and we believe that that is worship. That God is glorified and us doing that instead of us having something that's, you know, top notch or or or colored or or whatever it is. That Christ, when he says, If you give to the poor, if you give them even so much as a cup of cold water you've given to me, that's worship. We believe that. What happens during the week is worship, not what we put here on a screen or do things like that.
Joel Brooks:And that's why you're sitting in $12 chairs, and so we can kick money out to those things. That's why you're meeting in a gymnasium, Because the church is not a building, the church is its people. And we're going to be people focused, And we're gonna try not to distract from the gospel. One of the things that thrills me as a pastor and as a dad is, communicating these things to my little 5 year old Caroline. And within just a few short months, she now, when she drives by a church building, she makes a distinction.
Joel Brooks:She says, look at the pretty church building. And she adds building to it, because she realizes the church is a people. And it thrills me to think that she is growing up, and that's her first thought when we say, church. It's a gathering. And we can gather in a warehouse.
Joel Brooks:We can gather in a gymnasium. We can gather anywhere, because the focus is not on a building or the structure. It's when we scatter and take in the gospel with us. Another distinguishing mark of Redeemer Community Church is how we have decided to grow. How we've decided to grow both numerically and in community with one another.
Joel Brooks:The only way that we are ever going to grow is if you invite a coworker or if you invite your neighbor. We'll never grow any other way. There there's no way we can. You know, we're we're not going to, we're not gonna advertise on the radio. We're not gonna put up billboards.
Joel Brooks:And we're not gonna do massive, you know, handouts, flyers, mail outs. We're not gonna do any of those things, and it's strategic. The reason we've decided to do that is because we want to invite people to a community and not invite them to a service. And and so we we we don't want people to come to a service. We wanna invite them to join a community.
Joel Brooks:And that only comes relationally. If you know the person, you've had face contact, you're asking them to come, and so we will never grow more numerically than we have relationally. And so as we grow, we will always grow in community. And what that means is a is a few things. Likely, we will never explode in growth.
Joel Brooks:We'll probably never explode. And and I have been pastor, you know, of of a of a ministry that had over a1000. And I know the difficulties that come with that and also the benefits. I don't know if we would ever get there. Don't know.
Joel Brooks:It's in the Lord's hands. But it's likely that we're gonna grow slow. By word-of-mouth, we invite people to be a part of our community instead of being part of just a service. I I'm gonna stop there. I could go on and on about our church, but, those are some of the things that we're focused on.
Joel Brooks:And mainly we want to stay focused on the Lord. The word of God preached, we believe is central. The word of God in our songs, central. We wanna be authentic, and we wanna be ancient in our worship as well, connecting to the church of the past. And if we are gonna do that now, I invite you guys to stand, and we're going to we're going to sing again.
Joel Brooks:And let me pray for us before we sing. Not a transitional moment. A time when we engage the Lord. Lord, I thank You for our little church. I thank You for the community You're bringing here and how day after day I either get an email or a phone call from somebody who is getting something out of their community group, or from what you're teaching them through our service, how you're using them in the workplace, and I give you thanks.
Joel Brooks:Lord, we don't do everything perfectly at all. We don't claim to have all the answers. We just claim to know the one who does. And I pray that we would know You more, and we would worship You more deeply and sincerely and passionately. And I pray this in the name of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Amen.