Mission Oneonta, The Redemption Movement Church Oneonta NY 13820: Mobile Church is a Hit!

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Mobile Church is a Hit!

Having Fun Taking Church to the People

Article taken from our June newsletter. Updated 6-18.

After 4 months of prayer, study, and planning, we launched our new Mobile Church model on April 26th at Huntington Park. Click here for a detailed report on our first Mobile Church outing >>

To date, we've done 8 Mobile Church outings. After each one, I am left feeling optimistic about the future of this church plant. People are responding well to it, new people are attending our worship and teaching gatherings, and every Sunday we meet dozens of people that we wouldn't have otherwise met if we tried making our River Street building work.

We've given away hundreds of fried cakes since 2012 http://t.co/qKDYQDaEhD Want one? Find us Sunday for #MobileChurch pic.twitter.com/qmeOqTtQhC
— Redemption Movement (@RedemptionNY) May 23, 2015

The beauty of Mobile Church is that it's not dependent upon inviting people to a religious service. Instead, we simply pitch a tent in a public place of our choosing, and then get to naturally meet and interact with new people. Couple this idea with our regular Sunday Act of Kindness (which so far has consisted of giving away items like, funnel cake, hot dogs, bottled water, flowers, and ice cream), and we end up with a dynamic model of ministry that lovingly draws people to our tent, equipped with grill and yard games. And if the park happens to be empty, we just walk a few blocks or even to the nearest bar and directly approach people with an AoK.

Providing lunch to a LARPing group.

We've discovered that it's immensely easier to invite a person to our tent for a giveaway, as well as to ask them to join us at the same location for next Sunday's Mobile Church, than it is to invite people to our out-of-the-way River Street location for an event taking place 5 days after the Sunday AoK. We're stoked about the future, we're meeting a variety of people, and we're having a lot of fun with this new model of ministry.

One of the advantages of Mobile Church is that we're no longer limited to one physical location. In fact, it's our goal to be in a different spot every month. Therefore, if you would like to participate in an upcoming Mobile Church event, check our blog or social media pages or call us to learn about where we'll be at for the upcoming Sunday. Everyone is welcome to attend, and as we like to say, "If you can find us, you can worship with us!"