5 Major Changes We're Making to Fridays at The Redemption Movement

We've had our Friday Evening Gatherings open for a little over a year now, and after prayerful consideration, we're making five changes to the evening's format and tone. We feel that these changes are necessary, and that they come from us better understanding our community and its needs.

The New Schedule for the Evening

6-7pm - Free fellowship meal.
7-8pm - Announcements, worship, and a message.
8-8:30pm - Group discussion time and prayer.
8:30-9:30pm - Short devotional followed by a spiritually-themed art project.
Hang out time for the rest of the evening.

Of course, this is a very loose schedule. Friday evenings at The Redemption Movement are meant to be free-flowing and casual, so consider this more of an order of events than a strict itinerary. Our Friday Evening Gatherings are still open-to-close, which means that you can come and go as you please and take in as much or as little of the evening as you would like without being "late for church."

Additionally, on Fridays at RM, there still exists the possibility that you may experience something other than a structured night of Bible teaching, like a community service project, a rock band playing a set, an extended time of prayer, or anything else that we feel will be appropriate and in keeping with the church's mission.  

What are We Changing? 

1. Less Preaching: We're replacing the second teaching session with a group art project. With the previous format, the idea was to take a typical church sermon that's 45+ minutes long, split it into two parts, and have a group discussion time about the night's topic in the middle. That way, the second session would be more engaging and relevant. This format made for some very meaningful teaching sessions, but at the end of the night, it added up to a lot of time spent teaching and talking--perhaps too much time talking for someone who's casually looking into church.

2. More Art: By replacing the second teaching session with a group art project (one that's themed after the night's lesson), we hope to make the night more memorable, engaging, fun, and even fill our barren-walled space with beautiful and original art. We wish to tap into a wide range of art projects. This isn't a totally new idea for us, it was always our intention to include something like this at our Friday Evening Gathering, however, implementing artful illustrations always got pushed aside in favor of extending discussion and teaching time.

Click HERE to see photos of our art project:
  
3. A Change in Tone: We designed our Friday Evening Gatherings with the idea of being seeker sensitive, which means accommodating people who are seeking truth and looking for answers. At this point, we've not had many seekers visit our church. Instead, we've noticed that people attend RM for other reasons, whether it be social or they're simply visiting. It's perfectly fine that we have a casual audience. Now that we're aware of this dynamic, we're making changes accordingly and no longer gearing our messages to seekers.

4. No Longer Providing Corporate Direction: When the church gathers, they look to the church leadership for direction on where the church is going (like this blog post). This is all fine and good, however, by us hosting our church gathering on a Friday evening, we've discovered that our audience consists primarily of people that claim other churches as their home church, or they're attending strictly for the social aspect of it. Therefore, to have church leadership agonize over finding God's will for the congregation, only to discover upon delivering it that the audience isn't committed to the mission of RM, makes for a rough evening for those tasked with delivering the vision, and it's awkward for uninterested people having to sit through a heartfelt plea about the direction of the church.

5. No More Communion on Fridays: For us, taking of the Lord's body and blood is a serious activity, and we've been trying to do this in a casual environment with casually-committed people. We've set aside another time in the week that we feel is a better time for this sacred activity. Read on to find out more about this time.

For 2-5, we wish to one day be able to reintroduce these aspects into our Friday Evening Gatherings, however, before we do, we first need to develop the people that are coming into a committed group that's looking for things like corporate direction, communion, and extended Bible teaching sessions. To develop a hunger for these things in the people we're working with, we've started a weekly discipleship group. We call it a Missional Community Group and it meets on Sunday mornings. It's designed to be a heavy time of finding God's will for both your life and for the church, followed by practical application about what we can do to make it happen. If this kind of a group interests you, then talk to or email one of our pastors about it, or give us a call at 607.434.2564 to learn more.

At The Redemption Movement, we will continue to adjust our format and change our ways to better accommodate the community that we feel called to minister to. It's easy for us to change our methods, but one thing that we'll never change is the message. We're still a Gospel-centered church and it's still our mission to reach Oneonta with the redeeming message of Christ's love.