Big Change: Taking a Break From Sunday Mornings

After 2 years of The Redemption Movement hosting worship services on Sunday mornings at our River Street storefront and at various city parks for Mobile Church, we've made the hard decision to take a break from Sunday morning worship services so that we can better focus on discipleship. Rest assured, we hope to one day host worship services again, but before we do, it's our goal to first grow by way of discipleship so that we can better support the demands of a public gathering.

Though this feels like a setback in what has been a very trying church planting journey, we're excited about this season of change because it allows us to focus on a completely different model of church that is both Biblical and better suited to the culture of Oneonta: multiplication. 

Attractional vs. Movemental

For the attractional model of church, having a worship service as the centerpiece is the way to grow: you attract people to a big activity and hope they come back. One big lesson we've learned from trying this is that the attractional model demands a lot of time and resources in order to maintain it.

For our small church, the wisdom of relying on an attractional worship service has come into question because the effort spent maintaining it takes away from seeing to the true work of the church, discipleship. Plus, we're church planting in a postmodern community where people aren't necessarily looking for an attractive church to attend, and less than 4% of the population is connected to a group that studies the Bible. In fact, one reality that we as missionaries recognize is that we're "starting a new church in a community that doesn't want a new church." Translation: the attractional model simply won't work in our city.

Instead, multiplication is a mustard seed-like approach that prioritizes in making disciples that can make disciples.

Even though doing the work of multiplying a small discipleship group is slow going and time consuming, the payoff is that a community of discipleship groups will be equipped to make more discipleship groups--as modeled by Jesus with his 12 disciples. The community will then be stronger for going through the discipleship process, and the church will be equipped to do great things--whether it be hosting dynamic church services or any other Kingdom initiative requiring a team of committed people.

What's the Future Look Like for RM?

Despite popular opinion, a church isn't defined solely by its worship service. In fact, during this time of transition, there are still plenty of ways for a person to connect with our church and participate in what we're doing. Moving forward, here's what The Redemption Movement will look like:

• Movement Meals: These will be small groups that gather regularly to share a meal and go over discipleship curriculum together. These movement meals will essentially be the heart of our church. A high commitment level is required to participate in these small groups, so it's something that can't be casually checked out. Instead, anyone wishing to participate in our Movement Meals should first talk to Pastor Kaler or one of our church members about it in order to learn what they're about and find out when the next round of Movement Meals will start.   
• Downtown Outreach/Acts of Kindness: We will continue operating the downtown Kindness Station, providing Oneonta with the #OneontaRides free ride service, and performing various acts of kindness. Anybody is welcome to volunteer for this outreach activity. The best way to connect to the outreach efforts of The Redemption Movement is to join the Oneonta Kindness Team Facebook Group, and to tell let Pastor Kaler know of your willingness to help. 
• Monthly Kindness Team Presentations: Once a month we will gather to encourage one another with stories from serving Oneonta with acts of kindness. These meetings will serve as our social space and they're a great event to attend if you're new to RM and wanting to learn more about what we do and meet our people. These meetings will take place at least once a month on a weekday evening, and they'll be held at various venues. Keep an eye on this blog, the Kindness Team FB Group, and our eNewsletter to find out when and where the next presentation will be held.
• Social Events: From time to time we'll offer social events like barbecues and game nights where people can just hang out. At this point, it's not something that's regularly scheduled, but we will announce these social events on social media when they pop up.
• Participating Together at Other Local Churches: Even though we won't be hosting Sunday morning worship services, it doesn't mean that we can't visit other local churches together and worship the Lord. In fact, several local churches have extended an open invitation to our church to participate in their worship services and ministry activities. Now that we're taking Sundays off, we plan to connect with these local churches in this way. Contact Pastor Kaler if you'd like to attend church with the RM crew. We're likely to have lunch together afterward, schedules permitting. 

Lessons Learned From the Last Worship Service Reset

It's eerie how similar this situation feels to 2 years ago when we stopped hosting worship services on Friday evenings for the very same reasons. In fact, in both instances I made the sad announcement around the time of Advent with the River St. storefront freshly decorated for Christmas. However, unlike 2 years ago (where we also had every good intention of transitioning out of the attractional model and into the multiplication model), for this time around, we approach the small group model with better training on how to multiply, as well as better discipleship resources.  On the last go around, we discovered that without a solid plan, it's easy to default back to the attractional model of church that we're all so familiar with.

For The Redemption Movement's upcoming season of intentional discipleship and sharing Movement Meals together, I'm excited about what a move like this means for the future of our church plant.  A community where disciples are making disciples--that's the kind of movement I want to be a part of!

The Amazing Story of Our 3,000th Ride!

On the night of September 30th, 2016 The Redemption Movement gave our 3,000th safe ride to the Oneonta community. In a similar fashion to how we celebrated our 1,000th ride, we celebrated the recent milestone by honoring the special passenger with gifts. With the most recent gifts, we were absolutely amazed and pleased when we found out who and where they ended up!

To begin, let's go over the 2 gifts donated by the Oneonta Kindness Team. The first gift was from Domino's Pizza. This year, Domino's has been supper supportive of #OneontaRides by donating a weekly pizza party at the Kindness Station. When Ramon from Domino's found out about the 3,000th ride, he offered to give the special passenger a free pizza party. Knowing that making people smile is something that Ramon loves to do, I invited him to come with me for the 3,000th ride and present the gift himself. He gladly accepted the offer.

The other gift was a nice gift basket from an anonymous friend, full of fruit, jams, and other goodies. On the same day that I was scheduled to give the 3,000th ride and pick up the basket, I noticed that my friend worked at a place that sold pumpkins, so I asked him about taking 7 of them with me to give to a house full of students that we gave pumpkins to last year for a special and impactful act of kindness. My friend agreed and I left the store with 7 pumpkins and a gift basket in the back of my car.

On the way back home, I stopped at the students' house with my son and we gave the pumpkins to a group of smiling girls that remembered the pumpkin gift from last year, and knew us well from the several safe rides we've given them. 

Although, during the first pumpkin delivery almost 1 year prior, we weren't greeted by smiles, or even greeted at all. In fact, a year ago, the girls may not have even been happy to see me. What follows is an earlier blog about how we met: 

When Life Gives You Pumpkins, Make Up With Kindness.

 

It’s typical for drama to accompany drunkenness, and even more so when you’re dealing with six drunk college girls. This was the case when I got a call to take a group of five girls home from Jimmy T’s. Upon arriving, three of the girls got in my car. We chatted while waiting for their friends (one of the intoxicated girls kept calling me Jesus). I’ve given these ladies rides home before, and on this night they were extra appreciative of the service because they were out of money and couldn’t pay for a cab. Ok. So far, so good.

Then things got crazy as 4 of their friends (all drunk) showed up and piled in my car. For those keeping score, that makes 7 passengers plus me--in a car that can legally hold six people. When I told the ladies that I could only take 5 of them home and that I could come back for the other 2, I was met with instant protest. I tried to rationally explain how I will get pulled over and ticketed for having too many passengers--but they didn’t want to hear it. Instead, they wanted nothing more in life than to go home RIGHT NOW… ALL OF THEM… TOGETHER… ONE TRIP.

I’ve had similar encounters with large groups of riders in the past where I have caved and took more people home than I should have. But this was out of ignorance on my part because I was new to giving rides. Last Spring, the Oneonta Police informed me of how many people I can legally fit in my car, and I promised them that I wouldn’t break my vehicle’s capacity. Since then, I have gotten good at putting my foot down with riders about my car being full. Although, on this night, these 7 ladies were putting my resolve to the test. After unsuccessfully trying to reason with a car full of screaming drunk girls, I then got out of the vehicle, opened their door, and demanded that at least 2 of them exit the car. 

As you can image, this did not go over well. I was called a few choice words, and the girl who previously called me Jesus was now funneling her anger to my newsletter clipboard and angrily scribbling a page full of nonsensical and mean sayings. Eventually, 4 girls exited the car to walk home while 3 stayed behind for a ride. I assured the 4 that I could come straight back and that I really wanted to help them, but they were so over me.

As I drove the 3 girls home, I discovered that one of them was sober. She apologized for her friends’ behavior, and she admitted to me that she could see that good that I was trying to do. I asked her that she please explain this to her friends when they sober up the next day. I also pointed out to her that during this short trip, I had already passed 3 police cars. Any one of these officers would have been able to spot an overloaded car and ticket me. The sober girl agreed to tell her friends and she seemed to understand my dilemma.

Soon afterwards, we caught up with 3 of the girls from the group who had chosen to leave my car and walk home. From my car window, I told them that I still had room for 2 of them. One of the girls took me up on my offer, while another girl seemed even more enraged at me for asking and told me “F*** you Jesus cab.” I then took my 4 passengers home.

Even though I did the right thing by refusing rides to all 7 of them at once, I still felt bad because my primary goal is to show kindness and represent Jesus well, not come off as a jerk and make someone’s night even worse. 

Thankfully, I would find a way to make up for this during my church’s Sunday act of kindness. 

It turns out that, for the following Sunday’s Mobile Church, we were meeting at the park right across the street from where these girls live. For that day’s act of kindness, we had purchased pumpkins to give away to people in the park. Unfortunately, it was a slow foot traffic day and we didn’t get around to the pumpkin giveaway until it was too late. This meant I was stuck with exactly 7 pumpkins. 

I didn’t want these pumpkins to go to waste by having them not bless anyone. As I considered my options, I couldn’t think of a better way to be a blessing than to give the pumpkins to the 7 girls who lived across the street (and probably thought ill of me and my church). To make the message even more memorable, I located the clipboard that the one girl scribbled angrily on, and I wrote a message over her writing that read “Sorry I couldn’t take 7 of you home on Friday. Here is 7 pumpkins!” Michael and I then went to their door to deliver the gift. Nobody answered, so we left the pumpkins, along with the clipboard with the note on their front porch, hoping to make amends and share God’s love. 

I don’t know what they thought when they found the gift. However, the next day I made it a point to drive by their house. That’s when I saw their front porch carefully decorated with all 7 of the kindness pumpkins, which put a big smile on my face :) 

Fast Forward a Full Year

It turns out that this little pumpkin outreach sparked a desire with each girl living in the house to pay it forward and make sure and do one act of kindness each day for the following year. I know because they made sure to tell me this during the several rides that I gave them throughout the following schoolyear. Additionally, one of the girls gave a presentation about The Redemption Movement to her public speaking class at SUNY Oneonta, which included the showing of one of our #OneontaRides videos!

Throughout the the following schoolyear, we were happy to give the girls in that house many rides home, and we got to know them a little bit better with each and every ride, to the point that we are now on a first name basis. Therefore, doing another pumpkin AoK and making it an annual event seemed like a great way to welcome our friends to a new schoolyear. 

Our 3,000th Ride Was to Sara From the Pumpkin House!

Now that you know the background, you can see why I was so amazed when I discovered that Sara from the pumpkin house was our 3,000th rider, and I was happy that she was the one to receive the gifts.

To say that she was excited is an understatement :)

Congratulations Sara and our friends from the Maple St. pumpkin house. May this year have in store even more kindness, goodwill, and love than the year before!

#OneontaRides milestone: 3,000 #SafeRides! Congrats @BiggieSquals for being our 3000th ride. Happy that our #ClubMaple friends won 🍕 & jams! pic.twitter.com/RwdlGCsZYt

— Redemption Movement (@RedemptionNY) October 1, 2016

A New Semester and a New Home for the Kindness Station

On August 26th, volunteers from The Redemption Movement will embark downtown to begin the church's 8th straight semester of serving the community with free rides home from the bars, an effort responsible for over 2,700 safe rides. Each year brings exciting changes as the outreach continues to expand. This year, we begin the semester by setting up the Kindness Station at its official new home, in front of LEAF!

#Oneonta Kindness Team gave 71 #SafeRides & the #Kindness Station in front of @LEAFcouncil was a hit!#OneontaRides pic.twitter.com/6SRr6kWnH8

— Redemption Movement (@RedemptionNY) April 30, 2016

Why Did You Move From Muller Plaza?

Adding the Kindness Station to the free ride service was an idea we had last summer. In November, we launched the station at Muller Plaza, a location that made for a great first home. The City of Oneonta oversees the plaza, and therefore, city officials played a major role in helping to procure the spot. In fact, the approval process alone was enough to draw local media coverage, which included concerns about the safe ride service voiced by a minority of citizens. 

Read More: 

• "Ride service draws ire of taxi drivers" -The Daily Star
• "What Exactly is Going On Friday Nights at Oneonta's Muller Plaza?"

As much as we enjoyed using Muller Plaza, the location had its limitations. Primarily, when it came to working with city bureaucracy. To be fair, the city officials we worked with were great and they went above and beyond to help us. It's just that the nature of working with city policies with the accompanying red tape and committee meetings isn't flexible enough to keep up with our outside-the-box outreach ideas. And, while the city was obligated to assist us with questions and permits, a government institution can't go so far as to embrace and support the work a religious group is doing, and we don't expect them to. 

Plus, I was beginning to feel sensitive about how taxing my church outreach activities and inquiries were becoming on city personnel. It's always been a goal of mine for the activities of RM to assist and bless the community and its leadership; if a simple activity like setting up an outreach station means pages of paperwork and the coordinating of multiple meetings with city officials, taxi drivers, police officers, fire fighters, code enforcement officers, and the potential for a public showdown at City Council, then I have to wonder if it would be more responsible of me to simply move operations 100 feet so that we're instead on private property. 

Therefore, when St. Patrick's Day rolled around and the holiday landed on a day outside the agreed upon time for using the plaza, we began looking for alternative locations to set up the Kindness Station. This search brought us to LEAF, an organization that occupies a privately-owned location, and thus, doesn't require city approval in order for us to use it. LEAF was kind enough to give us permission, and they were very flexible to work with. This encouraged us to seek out continued use of their location during the remaining weeks of the Spring 2016 semester, which LEAF generously approved as part of a trial period.

The Redemption Movement and LEAF: Two Nonprofits With Similar Goals 

Working with LEAF is a natural fit for what we're trying to do with the Kindness Station and the safe ride service. In fact, LEAF's stated goal is:

Our goal is to reduce the serious personal, social and economic consequences of alcoholism, other drug addictions and associated problems.

Amazing! This is a value that we share and a goal that we're working toward too, albeit at a different angle. Whereas the work of LEAF battles the long-term effects of drug and alcohol addiction, I feel that RM compliments this work by putting ourselves on the front lines and doing what LEAF Executive Director Julie Dostal describes as, "You're sharing the kindness and keeping people safe from alcohol-related harms."

In August, LEAF's board of directors voted unanimously to allow The Redemption Movement to officially meet in front of their building for the upcoming school year. At this point, use of their space is the official extent of this partnership, but I look forward to developing this mutually beneficial relationship further, and I appreciate how they cheer us on:

.@RedemptionNY Thank you for helping to reduce the harm associated with excessive alcohol consumption. #PayItForward #ActsOfKindness

— LEAF (@LEAFcouncil) April 30, 2016

For example, one way that we've already benefited from associating with LEAF is when it comes to our practice of offering the public free breathalyzer tests. Upon viewing our posted video of us giving the tests, Julie was kind enough to reach out to me with some compelling statistics regarding intoxication that myself and the Kindness Team volunteers now share while administering the tests. Since incorporating these figures into my "breathalyzer spiel," I've seen it persuade several people to quit drinking for the night because they now understand that they've definitely had enough.

Additionally, LEAF has spoken at the Town & Gown Gala, invited The Redemption Movement to sit in on OCO Task Force meetings, and even provided the Kindness Station with food on busy evenings when we're running low. May this this relationship continue to make a positive impact on the local community by minimizing the associated problems and consequences of drug and alcohol abuse.

Other Advantages of the New Water Street Location

Additionally, we've discovered other advantages that make Water Street a good fit for the Kindness Station. Advantages like: 

• Water Street is more of a hangout place than Muller Plaza, where people generally just pass by. This has allowed for better conversations with people who would otherwise feel rushed to move on to the next bar.
• LEAF has given us permission to collect donations at the Kindness Station, whereas the city forbid it as part of the agreement to use Muller Plaza.
• Water Street is actually a rather rowdy spot and sees a lot of drunken brawls. I believe that our presence and efforts have helped to reduce this violence.
• There's a bus station nearby that we can point people to if our cars are busy or they need a ride, but don't necessarily want us to take them home. There's even been a time or two where we've assisted people by walking them to the bus stop because they've been too drunk to make it there on their own.
• Excellent police coverage.
• The flexibility of making and changing last minute plans. 

Of course, Water Street can sometimes be a little tricky to navigate our free ride cars down, but we've made it work by utilizing the parking garage and telling people who stop us and ask us for a ride that "We've got a tent at the end of the road with a line that you can wait at." Some nights, it can be rather comical how often we get hailed for a ride while trying to make it to the Kindness Station and pick up someone who's been waiting patiently for our car to return. Case in point:

 

Overall, the new location has a lot of potential and it's working out great for what we're trying to do, and working with LEAF has been a joy. We're looking forward to serving Oneonta with another semester of safe rides and kindness, and we invite anybody who wants to help us to join the Facebook Group "Oneonta Kindness Team," as well as donate to fund what we're doing. 

May Oneonta have a safe and happy 2016-17 school year, and feel free to find us on Water Street to say hi and see the Kindness Station in action!