Redeemer Next Steps Church Update

So we're gonna have about a 10 or 15 minute meeting about the future of what this church looks like over the next few months.

Um and my name's Brian Robinson, I'm one of the elders here.

Um what we like to say every week is we're more broken than we originally thought, but more loved by God than we can ever dare to dream.

And that's what we've been resting in, what we've been teaching, what we've been learning, what we've been singing about for the last 10 plus years.

And we started singing about these things in a setting of a dental, my dental office lobby, um, which I would say if God can make a church out of one of the most feared and hated places in all of America, then I mean that's why we're here.

God can do unbelievable things.

So yeah, that's my office lobby.

Um we moved from there to my family's living room, which is right there.

Um it's crazy.

All those kids are pretty big now.

Uh then we moved to Walker Preschool.

Um, and then we moved here.

Oh, there's my family uh in front of this building.

So Sydney and Meg are both in college now, and then those two cute little guys are on the front row right there.

James, all almost as big as me.

Almost, but not quite.

Um and then, yeah, so there's the old sanctuary, which is right here, and then we're sitting in the new one.

So God has been extraordinarily faithful over that time.

It's amazing to me to think about the last 10 years, and deeply humbling and um just amazing.

And I remember sitting in the old sanctuary after a particularly clear moment of his faithfulness, and David Russ shared uh Ephesians 3, 20 and 21, which says, Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think according to the power at work within us.

To him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.

Um, it's just made me thankful for our staff, like the individual people that God has brought at a certain time, at his timing, and incredibly thankful for Russ and Christie and your leadership.

Um our prayer since the beginning has been that he would make the next step clear and that we would get out of the way.

Uh hold our hold our plans loosely, which brings us to today.

Um, and we're talking about adding a second service in August.

We're also, um, not by coincidence talking about pursuing the purchase of some adjacent space to this church, as it has just come available right when we need it.

Um, let's talk a little bit more about adding a second worship service.

Um this is part of our ongoing call to teach and rest in God's love for us, but it's also part of our call to extend that love to the next family and the next person.

So here's our current timeline for Sunday mornings.

Um as you can see, a lot's going on, um, but this is kind of what we do right now.

Um, and then here's what it would be if we added a second service.

So more.

Lots of colors.

Um, so lots going on there.

We're not gonna die, I'm not gonna dissect this all, thank God, um, for all the kids here.

Um, but there's lots of moving parts and pieces to this.

Um, our starting point in this plan is that we want to have these two services be pretty identical.

So there's not one that's like for this group and one that's for this group.

They're identical services, they'll both have full child care and kids ministry at both.

Um, and we're planning on starting that, I think I said this, in in around August.

So Russ is gonna come up and talk a little bit more about some of the logistics of that.

Great.

Yeah, thank you, Brian.

So I'll try to be uh clear and quick.

Um want to be both those things.

So what we've always been saying about our church is we're gonna be a place of rest, growth, and worship, a place where community is formed and spiritual depth is pursued, a place where individuals, families, and marriages heal, a place where children and students are rooted in Jesus alone, and a place that multiplies ministry to other places.

That's what we we've been saying that on and off throughout the years.

And we're not big on numbers around Redeemer.

We don't count, we just know when rooms get full.

But we do know based on rooms getting full, that we have grown as a church in the last three years by about 40%.

And so God's doing something we want to follow.

Our challenge today is that on most Sundays uh we overflow into the overflow room.

And so that's not our a forever solution.

That is not an incredibly welcoming environment, say amen if you're in the overflow room, uh, to be in long term, for especially for new people or for us as current parishioners.

Uh so we're gonna be adding a second service in August.

And so here is our direction with some details to it, um, if you love details.

So two identical worship services, one at 9.15 to 1015, and one at 11.

So both services offering this same service, the same music, the same musicians, the same sermon, the same sacraments, the same kids' ministry.

If you're a kids' ministry volunteer, don't freak out.

You'll only have to serve one hour, is our goal and our aim.

And Annie's gonna meet with y'all in March.

The goal here is that so any person or any family can choose either service, and one service doesn't become the lesser service or the other service, or just systemically, it becomes sort of the service where certain ages and certain families are directed one way or the other.

Now we're gonna continue to be a church of groups and Bible studies during the week, and as well, you may be involved in an adult Sunday school class and you can meet one hour and you can attend worship the other, just like you can volunteer one hour and you can attend worship the other.

We do need a 45-minute transition time in between the two services.

That lets that 9.15 hour to not get kicked out of the building before the 11 comes in.

And that transition time will serve for them to linger and talk just like you do right now, this same experience, just doubled in two different places.

Allow them to talk, pick up their children, and process out of the building.

And we don't want to create an environment for the early service where we short the service or it's a lesser service in any way, or that they get kicked out of the building or hurried out of the building.

And so we have a first hour, a transition time, during that transition time as well.

Family worship, if you're a part of that, it'll meet during that time.

Student ministry Bible study will meet during that 45-minute transition time.

And we'll continue to offer our baptism and explore redeemer chats after the 9-15 service during that transition time as well.

So, again, two identical worship services being able to be provided.

So we decided against the model, maybe in a church that has an early service, a Sunday school hour, and then a late service.

And we decided against that model uh right off the bat because we desired two, our starting point was two identical services so that people could choose either one.

And a true Sunday school hour would then create three one-hour blocks where we would have to provide kids' ministry and child care three full different hours, which is just impossible for us to do.

We do it one hour right now.

So that was not a step that we could take.

As well, the adult Sunday school classes with going Sunday school classes aligning with the worship, a same room can be used two times, and there's kids' ministry offered during that hour for any kids.

So here's what we know we know it all won't be perfect.

It's not perfect right now, we've just accepted a lot, right?

And we know it won't be perfect in the future, but we know God knows us, He loves us, we know something's going on, we want to follow Him, He is faithful to us.

We know we will discover some amazing things in August when we add this and we all make some choices of how we're gonna adapt.

We know we're gonna discover some amazing things, just like in every other season of our church.

We have discovered that.

And we're gonna learn some things that we didn't expect.

We don't even know what we don't know.

We don't know what we're gonna learn yet.

We've already learned stuff the last couple months as we've been planning.

We're gonna learn more in August, and we're gonna listen, and we're gonna learn, and we'll adapt as we go.

That's what we're gonna do as a church, and that's what we want to do as a leadership, a staff, elder board, uh, all of our different leadership.

We want to listen, learn, keep adapting.

So, what do we do if we keep growing?

Right?

That's like in membership class, that's like the number one question at the end of the time.

What is the plan?

Well, I don't know if we have a plan, but we do have a direction.

Here's our direction.

So our heart stays the same.

If you just kind of think of this as a kind of linear a little bit, but these things kind of overflow on top of each other.

We're gonna add a second service, we're gonna buy more square footage, Bo's gonna come up and talk about it in a second.

And then out of that, we're gonna develop and grow as people, and we're gonna develop and grow as a church.

Our groups are gonna continue to develop.

Our community and fellowship is gonna continue to develop.

And so we're gonna continue to develop and grow.

Along that way, at some point, we're gonna start to look at what are the signals for us to plant a second church, to plant another campus that can be highly attached to us at first.

It is not a video of me over there, but they have their own preacher and pastor, but it looks like and it feels like, and it's connected to Redeemer, and then in time they could become autonomous.

So that means at some point there's a point where we say, We're done here.

Like there's a final footprint.

Our goal is to buy the square footage that's on the other side of that wall right there, and then maybe buy one more unit if it comes up for sale in a couple of years, which it might, and then we'd say, We're done here.

If this is done, we'll just max this out, develop this, max it out, and then when the signals are right in terms of our group development, financial margins, hire in a pastor who wants to go and plant a second place that could become autonomous in time.

Bo's gonna come up and tell us a little bit about the additional square footage.

Thanks, Russ.

My name is Bo Teague.

I uh I'm a new elder this year.

Um and if we could put up this next slide.

I wanna I'm I'm not an architect, I'm not a real estate tycoon, but I really love looking at this kind of thing.

And it's super exciting to see what's ahead of us.

It reminds me of a few years back when we were looking at this very building and pouring over plans and thinking about kind of what it might look like, and then looking at that, looking back, seeing where we are now and seeing how faithful God has been to us.

It gets me really excited.

So I'm excited about this.

So that that kind of tan space is where we are.

That's the current footprint.

As Russ mentioned, there's a unit directly to um to our right.

So this just we just learned about this a few months ago.

This unit directly to our right, which has doors that open onto the courtyard back there.

You may have looked through the windows and seen the courtyard, and then the unit behind it that has doors that open onto the back parking area.

Those both became available.

And um we're kind of bursting at the seams in certain parts, and so we were immediately interested.

We saw the potential for near-term stuff, um, like in this space to the left of us or to the right of us, where we can do um groups, we can do lunches, we can have some expanded office space.

Um, you know, if you think about what else that could do in terms of this exact footprint, we could maybe squeeze over into it and have a larger sanctuary down the line.

So just thinking about a lot of potential with that space being right next door.

Uh the unit right behind it, again, projecting further, there's the potential for that to be a much uh more friendly entrance on Sundays for the rear parking lot.

If you if you uh park in the back, you might have come through that kind of wormy squirmy, duck your head hallway.

This would maybe make that a little bit better for us.

So we're excited.

And as of this week, we're under contract on both of those units uh for$750,000.

We're looking to close on May 1st.

So, near term, what does it look like?

Well, near term, that rear unit, we're gonna lease it back through June and then look to lease it out over the next few years while we um while we don't necessarily need it.

But as I mentioned, we do need that space to the right of us, and so we're gonna start using that right away.

Um, it's maybe a little rough, uh, but it's gonna give us some room for office space and for some groups to meet, particularly Sunday school on Sunday mornings.

Um, and so I think that we're gonna move into that ahead of the fall when we'll raise money to pay down that debt, and then look to renovate that with cash after that.

If the Lord is moving you, we're taking financial gifts now to get a head start on that.

So just uh baskets are on the side.

Um but it's it's really exciting, and like I said, just seeing where God is taking us and seeing what is possible is is uh is pretty thrilling.

Russ, I think you've got a few more points and then just one more thing.

Thank you both.

So one more thing, if you saw this last slide, just sort of like where we're headed in terms of the coming months.

So March and April, uh volunteers and classes, and just learn more about the transition in August.

Uh Sunday, April 30th, another church update.

And a lot of that will come back of what we hear feedback from you guys.

We send out a survey this week.

If you're on our email list, you'll get that.

Um, and then April and May, new volunteer rotation will be created and communicated.

August 6th is when we'll add a second service.

And then in the fall, at some point, we're gonna talk about fundraising for how do we pay off the debt because we're securing this, buying it with financing, putting a down payment 25%, and financing probably 75% is probably what we're looking at.

Um, and so in the fall, we'll talk about fundraising of how we're gonna pay off that debt, get some money raised to renovate there, hopefully renovate that courtyard so our children could run around and play and groups could meet out there, and then hit the children's wing eventually.

And then that's that's where we're headed.

It's not a plan, it's not a tight grip plan, but it's an open, open palm hold before God plan.

The church, go in the grace of Jesus.

You're free, get and free.

Have a great week.

Go in peace.