Sunday, May 17, 2015

Milestone: Giving Our 1,000th Free Ride!


Serving the Seniors

Oneonta’s Senior Bar Crawl was a perfect occasion to give our 1,000th free ride.

The SUNY Oneonta class of 2015 has played a big part in The Redemption Movement’s short history. Many of these seniors were sophomores when our church launched in the Spring of 2013. For half of their college careers, they've been shown God’s love on numerous occasions by our church outreach efforts. With this class, we've developed many meaningful relationships and taking 57 of them home during the crawl felt like an appropriate way to say our goodbyes.

Literally.
This was the first time that we've offered rides during the crawl, so I didn’t know quite what to expect. After learning about how busy of a yearly event it is, we committed to arriving much earlier than normal and parked in front of Choice Ultra Lounge around 6:30pm. Arriving early like this ensured that we would give our 1,000th ride during the crawl--our total going into the evening was 973. << Click here to read stories about the previous rides >>

What we didn’t know is that the bar crawl officially started at 6pm, so nobody needed a ride home that early. However, our time wasn't wasted. Parking in such a visible spot (outside of 3 bars), gave us a chance to interact with many of the crawl’s participants.

This was a very positive experience. We had a steady stream of students stop and talk with us (many of whom we've served and worked with in the past for various reasons), as well as pause to thank and high-five us. In all honesty, we felt like rock stars. This is amazing because we’re not seeking popularity, instead, our goal is to serve others in a dinigified manner. I think that us being shown honor in a setting like this gives merit to Jesus’ Golden Rule, “Treat others as you want to be treated.”

The Breathalyzer Was a Hit

We didn’t give very many rides during those first couple of hours, but we did get to provide another helpful service, breathalyzer tests. We bought a breathalyzer in March for such a reason as this. Up until now, we've only given a few tests for each outing, but for the Senior Pub Crawl, we had a constant crowd of people awaiting their turn to take the test. I feel like our new full-sized breathalyzer sign had something to do with it.

By the end of the night, we had administered 31 breathalyzer tests. 
 It was a learning experience for many of the participants. As the device calculated each test result, I would point to the sign and explain what the BAC levels are for getting a DUI. Granted, few of these students were planning on driving that night, but, for future reference, these test takers now have a better idea of how much alcohol it takes (and what it feels like) to be beyond the legal limit for when they will drive.

The most dramatic test came from a petite young woman who blew a 0.2 (the highest BAC level of the night). Her jaw hit the sidewalk when she saw the result because she felt fine. I had the opportunity to explain to her how her small stature meant that she gets intoxicated quicker than her friends. I could tell that the test made her want to slow down (or even stop) her drinking for the evening.

Giving Our 1,000th Ride

Come 9pm and we had given only 7 rides and parked in front of multiple bars. This is when the “second shift” started and I swapped one helper for another (in keeping with our two-person volunteer policy). By now, the students were thinking pizza and Tino’s was filling up. Therefore, we made Tino’s our HQ from 10pm on. All the while, we had the magic number of 27 in mind--that’s when we would hit the big 1-triple-zero.

We gave our 1,000th ride before midnight. The ride was extra special because it was to two Music Industry Club students. The MIC students have been a huge help to our church when we tried our hand at booking shows. Our 999th rider (Mike), is the drummer in the student band “Living Proof,” a band that we booked for November’s Town & Gown Gala (their first show). Earlier that evening, other Living Proof band members made sure to find our car for a picture. 
It was neat to see how the 1,000th ride worked out. Knowing that the next carload would contain the special rider, I happened to get simultaneously flagged down on Main Street by two different groups. I parked the car at equal distance from the two groups and they both begin to approach. My MIC friends were in group #1, and some rowdy bros that I didn’t know where in group #2. Thankfully, my friends made it to the car first and hopped in the backseat. I told the bros that my car was full and I’d be back to get them. They requested that I instead pick them up at a house a few blocks away (which I attempted to a little later and they weren't to be found). 

I refrained from telling my riders the good news until I was a half mile from their apartment. Upon arriving, I gave them a “1,000th Rider” crown and gift bag with some chocolate and sparkling grape juice. They were excited to receive the prize and were good sports about letting us take their picture.

It was a fun experience that was enhanced by social media. After we gave the ride we posted the picture to Twitter. Throughout the course of the night we would tell other passengers about giving the 1,000th ride and they would reply that they saw it on their friend’s timeline. It’s reasons like this why we live tweet the night using #OneontaRides.

Keeping the Rides Free and Thinking about the Next 1,000 Rides

By the end of the night we had given 57 free rides to a variety of people (bringing the all-time ride total to 1,030). All the riders appreciated the act of kindness and many asked about how they could support the service.

That night, we did our best to turn down people’s money, insisting that the ride is free because we believe God’s love is free. Though we refused people’s money, we did plant a fundraising seed, telling them how we want to fundraise over the summer so we can expand the service and make an even bigger impact when the students come back next Fall. I asked the passengers to keep an eye on The Redemption Movement’s blog and social media pages for when we launch the fundraiser, which will be a good opportunity to give.

The best way to get the latest on our fundraising plans is to join The Oneonta Designated Driving Crew on Facebook. With what we've got planned, 1,000 rides is just the beginning!
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Friday, May 1, 2015

The Future is Bright for RM with the Launch of Mobile Church

On April 26th, The Redemption Movement launched Mobile Church at Huntington Park, Oneonta. This is a whole new way to approach church by taking it to the people, instead of expecting people to come to us. In keeping with RM’s value of simplicity, it was a soft launch with a small turnout and not a lot of fanfare, but for the small group of RM faithful that’s been planning and praying about this Mobile Church venture since December, the small outing was filled with hope of much bigger things to come.

How Does Mobile Church Work?

Taking church to the people is a simple idea that’s in keeping with Jesus’ great commission (the basis of RM’s mission), and the format for Mobile Church is meant to make room for relationships (another RM value). This is done by opening the morning with a Bible study and worship, followed by a light lunch and an act of kindness for the neighborhood by a “kindness team.” During the AoK, another team hangs back at the meeting place (like a base camp) for the purpose of meeting and greeting new people that both teams encounter.

How Our First Mobile Church Went

The April launch date was picked with the hope that the weather would be good enough to meet outside. This particular day was a bit cool when the clouds came out and the wind picked up, but after such a long winter, it didn’t feel cold enough to call it off. Moving forward, the weather is sure to be one of the biggest challenges for Mobile Church.

One of our Mobile Church tents.
To help with this we bought some tents and we can always retreat to our River Street storefront if we need to. For our first Mobile Church Sunday, the new 10x10 pop up tent took us awhile to figure out, and there were a few other hang ups which caused us to get started at 11am instead of 10, but our group wasn’t deterred. In fact, we were expecting hang ups like this and made it a point to enjoy every moment of the launch, instead of stressing over the small stuff.

Once we were set up we sang worship songs in the park, led by my wife Laura. At first, it felt a little weird, especially when a group of students walked our direction en route to downtown. As we sang along with the first verse, I halfway expected to be heckled. Although, it didn’t take long for the world to fade away and to get lost in worship. This made for a kind of exhilarating and inspirational worship experience that you just can’t get within the four walls of the church. I look forward to more public displays of worship (PDW) with future Mobile Church outings.

The Bible study was on Luke 15 and likened the big effort of doing Mobile Church to the extra effort that the shepherd went through to find the one lost sheep in Jesus’ parable. We kept the music and the study short and sweet, due to the cool wind picking up. For future outings, we will make use of the tent walls and set these up too.

Lunch for the group consisted of $10 worth of subs from a block away (an easier solution than preparing a meal). We snacked on the subs while setting up for the act of kindness phase of the day, which was passing out free funnel cakes (one of our favorite and most delicious AoKs).

Meeting New People with Mobile Church

Doing the AoK in the same spot where we worshiped just moments before really highlighted the purpose of what we were trying to accomplish with Mobile Church. This was powerfully seen in the first person who approached us for a funnel cake, a middle-aged woman with a 5-year old at home. She was thankful for the gift and we hit it off in conversation.
Yard games are great for building relationships!
It was much easier for us to explain to the woman that we’ll be back at the park next week and she’s welcome to join us, than it used to be to try to explain to people where on River Street we’re located and what our Friday gatherings are like. The lady we gave a funnel cake to told us that her and her son will join us next week for Mobile Church, which I interpreted as a confirmation that we’re doing something right.

In addition to offering free funnel cakes in the park, I went downtown to meet people and offer to deliver fresh funnel cakes to them. I had the most success with this at The RedJug Pub (the bar we’ve been working closely with for our designated driving outreach). I got to deliver funnel cakes to the bartender and the people at the bar, and they all seemed very receptive and grateful for the gift.

Mobile Church Builds Off of Established Relationships Too

This kind of quality interaction is very encouraging and let’s us know that we’re onto something. For me, this was most clearly seen while I was in the park setting up for mobile church. While I was by myself, I was approached by 3 friends (on 2 separate occasions) that weren’t a part of our church. I got to tell them about Mobile Church and they all seemed receptive to it, one even bought me a coffee.

All three of these friends are people that I have personally invited to church events at our River Street location. In the past, even though all three of these friends acted interested in visiting my church, they never did. Now, here they are helping me set up for Mobile Church, just because they happened to be walking by and saw me, their friend, in the park.

The Value of Doing Mobile Church in Public Places

I predict that this kind of random interaction from passerbyers is going to make all the difference when it comes to Mobile Church. We never saw much interaction from passerbyers while on River Street, even if we had a free BBQ happening just a few feet from the sidewalk. This is primarily because the majority of people that walk by our River St. location (which isn’t too many), are often locked into their headphones and they don’t seem to have time to stop and chat, much less join us for a free meal.

I think Mobile Church opens up new doors of opportunity to meet new people by doing church in public places, people that we wouldn’t have otherwise met by limiting ourselves to a church building. We’re excited about doing Mobile Church throughout the month of May at Huntington Park, and as we go into uncharted territory in order to meet new people, who knows where else this mobile church idea will take us?

Truly, at the end of the day, doing church this way felt like we were doing church in the same way that people in the New Testament did church, which we view as our blueprint for church. What a pleasant surprise that doing church like they did in the Bible is actually a lot of fun!

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