Hey Redeemer,
Welcome to Journal… a Redeemer Central Blog.
Myself and the team have been exploring means of better communicating/connecting/storytelling within our community in Redeemer. It can be difficult for people to keep tracking with the thinking, teaching and direction when not present in the room. Obviously we believe that church community is fostered best when people are physically present together in time and space… it’s the essence of the incarnation. Presence. And it can’t be replicated fully across media. We love our gatherings — Sundays & Tables — and all the other ways we practice community.
I am reminded about these verses in Hebrews 10:
“So let’s do it—full of belief, confident that we’re presentable inside and out. Let’s keep a firm grip on the promises that keep us going. He always keeps his word. Let’s see how inventive we can be in encouraging love and helping out, not avoiding worshiping together as some do but spurring each other on, especially as we see the big Day approaching.”
So we continue to encourage one another to gather and participate in community life regularly.
But life can means we don’t always make gatherings and I have been reflecting on how media like blogging and podcasting could help us story-tell better with in our church and provide a place to share ideas, resources and reflections. The heart behind this is to help our whole community not miss some of the amazing things that actually are happening in and around the Redeemer community. So we are trying something new (sorta) and restarting a Redeemer blog — Journal — as an experiment to this end. It will remain a more internal facing blog — at least initially – and won't have a super high output, but will aim to simply highlighting things that are worth capturing and sharing within Redeemer. Hopefully it helps us all practice better communication and storytelling and helps everyone in Redeemer journey along together well.
It lives here — http://redeemercentral.com/blog — and whenever there is a post it’ll push out in an email to everyone who has signed up to our main Redeemer Central Weekly mailing list.
Look forward to seeing how this serves us.
Grace & Peace,
Dave