2010: The Building of a Movement

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2010 looks to be the year the Redemption Movement will begin, and like the word "movement" indicates, it will start with something small, like Bible studies and acts of kindness, that will move forward into a full blown church with several life-giving ministries. Our approach will be less focused on a time table and more geared toward a one-step-at-a-time strategy. This ties in better with the idea of movement, and allows us to grow at a healthy and authentic pace.
To better communicate this movement, we have created a step-by-step illustration that captures the vision of growing us from a small group of believers meeting in homes, into a public church with weekly ministries and local outreaches, and finally, into a church that has worship services, provides aide internationally, and plants new churches.

Information Meetings Step one: build a group of committed people who are passionate about Jesus and His church. Information meetings act as a great way to introduce new people to the Redemption Movement by laying everything out about our purpose, doctrine, vision, etc. This way, an informed and prayerful decision can be made on whether or not one would feel this is the right time to join the movement. People who sign up at this stage will make up the founding core group of the church. They will be challenged with the founding work of the church and enjoy the spiritual growth of watching the fruits of their labor blossom into a church that blesses others.

Small Groups
Small to medium-sized groups will weekly meet in each others homes and enjoy meals, Bible studies, worship, and good old fashioned hanging out. This will be key to building a strong faith community. Small groups will provide a believer with several important ministries of the church including discipleship, worship, prayer, fellowship, and giving.

Acts of Kindness
This is a simple idea that can make a huge impact: teams of people regularly going out into the community to show others the love of Jesus by serving them in practical ways. Passing out food, raking leaves, washing cars, the possibilities to make a difference in peoples lives is enormous. Not only will the acts of kindness teams help others, but this outreach ministry will be even more rewarding for the people who serve.

Weeknight Gatherings
Think of this like a hybrid of a church service/coffee house/family living room. This will be an experimental and casual model of public ministry that can be enjoyed by both the super spiritual Christian and the open minded skeptic. The gatherings will operate with an open-to-close format, have short teaching and worship sessions throughout, allow time for prayer and discussion, as well as provide an area for games and snacks. It is a rather new way of doing ministry, and a more detailed blog post will be made before it premiers.

Partnering with Local Charities
We want to be a church that helps the poor, one the most effective ways of doing this is to partner with an existing local charity that is already doing a great job.

Establish Church Ministries
In this stage we will start several different ministries and programs that churches typically have. Ministries for kids and teenagers, men's and women's groups, worship teams, all of these groups and more will be added as we go along and have need, instead of having every one in place before we start.

Public Launch Event
Everything until now has been invitation-only or semi-public. When we finally enter into the public arena we want to go big with a an event called a "launch." It would be ideal if we could coincide the public launch event with the grand opening of a new location that can accommodate more people, preferably something in the downtown of Oneonta. This event will be very celebratory and heavily promoted, it will also be set apart from the weekly routine.

Weeknight Gatherings (New Location)
The format of these meetings will be unchanged, and they will continue to be the churches main gatherings, but by moving to a new location that is closer to the downtown, we are hoping to add the dynamic of picking up more casual passer-byers and being more in the public eye. This will mean beefing up the coffee house element of the meetings and include more introductory aspects to the teachings.

Start a Church Charity
At this stage, we hope to have the numbers and resources to start our own charity for the community, while continuing support of other charities and the work of our acts of kindness teams.

Public Launch Event
Another heavily promoted launch event will be used, this time to promote the next phase, which is the addition of church services.

Church Services
For us, the church service will not be the foundation of everything we do; but rather, the gooey celebration-flavored icing on the moist and delicious cake of who we are. I think it will be a healthy approach to not put all of our energy from the beginning, into trying to put on a perfect church service every week, for a culture that may be tired of simply "going to church." But by adding the church service element after years of strong ministry and healthy relationship building, I think the services will be more meaningful for everybody who is participating.

Meeting International Social Concerns
By now, the influence of The Redemption Movement will have gone well past the doors of our church and even the borders of Otsego County, New York. At this stage the church should be able to address big problems that are facing our world. We may not be able to solve every issue, but I believe God intended His church to make a big difference.

Plant a Church
Spreading the movement through replication. We want to be a church that is planting new churches, and then the new churches plant new churches, and so on. As a church plant we believe in church planting, and we would especially like to start new churches in communities in the area that could benefit most from a new church.