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!