An Update On Finding a New Music Venue and Our Plans For Mobile Church

By Kaler Carpenter

The question I seem to get asked the most these days is, "When will The Redemption Movement do shows again?" In this blog article, I want to update all of our wonderful supporters about this, and share plans regarding what we’re currently up to.

Fans of our live shows will be happy to learn that we've got plans to host live music again... but first, some things need to happen.

What We've Been Up the Past Year

One year ago we were asked by the City of Oneonta to cease hosting shows at our storefront venue. To this day, I still get show requests from bands from all over the U.S. and Canada. It pains me to have to tell these artists (many of whom I call friends) that I've got nothing for them, and it bums me out when I have to turn down my favorite bands, which means that they end up skipping Oneonta altogether. 

Booking at Bluefields's Cafe

Last summer, I tried my hand at booking shows at other local venues. Even though I was successful at this, I soon discovered that it's too time consuming to coordinate shows at places that I don't run. It was much easier for me to simply unlock the doors where I live and let bands play downstairs.

After getting our live music shut down, we immediately begin looking into what it would take to obtain a space downtown that we could use as an all-ages music venue/community center/worship space (moving downtown makes more sense than fixing up our River St. storefront to meet the code requirements for live music). After learning about what it would take to rent various spaces, it quickly became obvious that we couldn't afford to make the move.

What about Fundraising?

I considered fundraising. It seemed like an attractive option because virtually every musician I know wanted to play a benefit show. As totally awesome as it would have been to organize one giant fundraising show, I knew that, realistically, such a show wouldn’t raise enough money to cover even one month’s worth of rent.

A major move like this would require some serious fundraising, especially if the new venue were to continue our policy of giving bands 100% of the door. This level of fundraising would require me to hit up every person and business I know with letters, and I would have to do bake-sale-like stuff every weekend. This would literally take up all of my time. 

“Well then, how about delegating the fundraising work to others?” I’d love to. Herein we get to the heart of the matter. For the past year, my church never had enough committed people to assist with fundraising, and to this day, we're still shorthanded. 

Helpers like Mike Deyo are valuable.

Also, I'd like to point out  that, in order to run a live music venue, additional help is needed that goes beyond fundraising. Even if we miraculously were given enough money to purchase a new venue, or someone donated a space, we wouldn't have the personnel to run it. 

Running a show requires a team of people. Church services too need a dependable team. Plus, if we had a downtown venue, we would additionally have to come up with enough people to offer something when the space isn't being used for church services and shows. Unfortunately, it would be impossible for me to run a new church/music venue like this with the number of people we currently have coming to our church.  

A Case for Growing The Redemption Movement

I've always considered the shows to be an outreach ministry of The Redemption Movement. Therefore, moving our shows downtown would coincide with moving the church downtown, which would require a committed team from the church.

Given our current church attendance, the responsibility of organizing and doing the fundraising to move RM would fall on its Pastor (me). Even though I am capable of making this move happen, given the fact that I'm a bi-vocational minister with a family, finding a new space for RM could only happen at the expense of something else, namely, my time pastoring the church.

Keep in  mind that The Redemption Movement’s primary role is to be a church where worship and discipleship take place. Hosting shows isn't our primary purpose (but is sure is a fun secondary activity!). Therefore, if the primary purpose of the church isn't being met, then it’s irresponsible for the church leadership to focus their limited energy on secondary things, like super-fun shows.

I think this lack-of-help situation highlights the importance of why people should commit to a local church. A small church like The Redemption Movement has plans to do some pretty big things in order to bless and better our community. Hosting small shows for local artists is just the beginning. We've got it on our hearts to tackle some of the worst societal issues plaguing our community, which includes the implementation of needed social service programs and spearheading social justice initiatives. However, we can only do as much as our limited numbers and resources will allow.

RM founding plans from 2010. We're on track to do a lot of good.

Not to boast, but consider all of the outreach and good things that The Redemption Movement has done for the Oneonta community. Whether it’s making the city a nicer place through acts of kindness, organizing events that bring the city together like The Town & Gown Gala, giving musicians a place to play and sleep, assisting people with their personal issues through Bible teachings and counseling, and even going so far as literally saving lives by taking intoxicated people home at night, all of these good works have been achieved with a group of motivated people from The Redemption Movement that rarely exceeds more than 10!

Hosting and feeding touring bands at The Ol' Storefront.

Can you image how big of an impact The Redemption Movement can make if we had double the number of church members? Triple? Or even if we had 100 people committed to what we're doing down here on River Street? Doing something like establishing a new all-ages arts venue would be a piece of cake. And take for example our designated driving service. Right now we're safely getting about 40 people home per week with just our small group and my personal car. If we had a large group of committed church members, we could get a fleet of vans and do the DD service multiple times per week and see those ride numbers skyrocket.

This doesn't even begin to cover what 100 motivated people could do about addressing poverty and social issues in our community. Big things can happen when the church is united with a clear mission. This is why we include the word "movement" in our name.

Growing the Church By Going Mobile

Therefore, my primary concern right now isn't moving downtown so that I can do shows again, it is to grow The Redemption Movement. To that end, we have a new model of ministry that we will be premiering this Spring called Mobile Church. After spending 18 months unsuccessfully trying to grow the church by inviting people to Friday gatherings at our River Street storefront, we have gone back to the drawing board and come up with a ministry where we go to different neighborhoods, parks, and public places to “have church” where the people are, instead of begging, pleading, and imploring the world to come to us.

Last Sunday our #church met at the park on a nice Spring day and worshipped under a big tree. Much more of this to come with #MobileChurch
— Redemption Movement  (@RedemptionNY) April 20, 2015

It’s my prayer that this new mobile church model will grow and produce committed people that will desire to lead additional incarnations of mobile church. This multiplication plan will hopefully yield a committed group that will take on the work of moving The Redemption Movement to a downtown venue so that we can one day do shows again.

To Recap 

Putting on shows is still a part of our plans, but we need your help in order to pull it off. 

If you would like to help us find a new music venue and participate in our community outreach efforts, then we encourage you to  talk to us about making a commitment to join The Redemption Movement, and you're welcome to visit us on a Sunday for Mobile Church in order to experience what we're all about.

Mobile Church kicks off this Spring, premiering at Huntington Park at 10am on April 26th. Through May, we'll continue hosting Mobile Church at Huntington Park for the following Sundays: May 3rd, 10th, and 17th. After that, we'll move Mobile Church to a new location which we'll post on this blog and to our social media pages. When it comes to our new Mobile Church model, “If you can find us, you can worship with us.”