Hi Wider Leaders,

I hope you are well.

It’s hard to believe it’s August. Summer is always quieter in church life and often August is the quietest month of the year for most of us. I hope you’re all enjoying some rest and holiday time. I want to share two things. Watch the video or read on:

Gatherings

Reopening 101 on Sundays

For myself and our leaders the month of August is a time of planning for the new church season ahead. Obviously this year is proving more difficult to plan amidst the uncertainty with COVID and the social distancing measures that change on a weekly basis. So firstly, I want to clarify where we are at and what our current thinking is on church life going forwards. You can read that update here:

On Tuesday 18 August the Senior Leaders, Staff and Directors are meeting to discuss re-opening plans for church wide gatherings.
Last weekend we successfully hosted a wedding in 101 with 60 people. This was our first gathering since March and provided an opportunity to explore what it would take for us to host and event, safely and well.
The church gathering we are focusing on hosting again is our Sunday gathering at 101 Donegall Street. This is a very different event to a wedding so there are considerations we are exploring in order to do this well, including provisions for families with children, Redeemer Kids and Tots and an online option to allow people at home to still connect in that way.
There are also considerations for our leadership to consider regarding the restrictions around singing, obvious limits to practicing eucharist, providing refreshments and seating layout etc. All of this remains undecided and will be the focus of our leaders meeting next week.
We currently don’t have a date for a return to hosting Sunday Gathering at 101. We are aiming for mid-September. Certainly there will be no Sunday gathering at 101 earlier than 13th September. We believe the first few weeks of September will be another transition and change especially for families as schools return in their various forms so we felt it wise to delay church gatherings until mid September at the earliest.
Until then we are continuing with a mix of Livestreams and Coffee in the Park meet-ups and Zoom gatherings on Sundays.
Tables have been journeying with the Prayer Course during summer and will continue to meet when/how they can weekly or twice-monthly.
Farmbox food delivers continue every two weeks to 10+ families in our city.

Church is not a gathering, but a people

Listening and learning to the holy spirit in these days

As we make plans to return to gathering we also recognise that the church is people, not a building or a public gathering. Although we miss being together and value the Sunday gathering to worship together at Jesus Table we also recognise that church is more than this and often takes place in the unseen ways. The past number of months have helped to teach us as leaders about the kind of community we actually are. God is revealing to us our strengths which we should celebrate and our weaknesses which we should pay attention to. As leaders we continue remain open to the Spirits leading as to any lessons we should learn and changes we should make that would help our church remain faithful to the way of Jesus. We are a small church and together we should all work encouraging genuine community life, fostering spiritual health and prayer, and identifying and serving the needs in our city going forward.

We would ask that you be praying for us leaders as we make decisions and plans about church life going forward. Pray that we remain open to the Spirit’s leading. Pray for wisdom and discernment in our decision making, pray that we have courage to adapt and change where needed, pray that we have leaders around us in the wider community to help us minster to the needs in our people and our city, pray for leaders to emerge in this season, pray that we have at the forefront of our minds ‘the least of these’ and pray that above all, love would guide our conversations.

2. Communication

To help improve communication across the whole church we are introducing an app:

BAND is a free app used by community groups, charities and some churches to be a platform for sharing and connecting. It’s a little bit like a social network for church and allows everyone in the whole church to join.

Why?

For outward-facing communication we use our email newsletter, social media and our church website. This works fine.
For more internal-facing communication we rely on email updates for the whole church and WhatsApp groups for select teams. We feel this doesn’t work so well.

The emails are church wide, but impersonal.

The WhatsApp groups are personal but not church wide.

During the past number of months it has been more challenging to communicate effectively to everyone in our community. For example, when it comes to things like family news we normally reply on Sunday gatherings to communicate these things to the whole church. With church being more scattered and gatherings online this kind of communication has been more difficult to do in a safe and sensitive way.

Our friends at Collective Church have been using BAND since 2017 and find it compliments community life really well and improves communication across the church. We want to give it a go in Redeemer.

How does BAND help?

Church-wide communication: The Redeemer Central BAND is for everyone, not just leaders or volunteers. BAND allows a variety of communication (posts, videos, photos, events, polls etc) to be shared with everyone keeping people in the loop.
Quick and mobile: BAND is best used via the app on your smartphone. Communication is quick and easy for staff and leaders to share important information instantly. And every user can control their own notifications or turn them off completely.
Participation: Using BAND should reflect the kind of participatory community we are, with every person having a presence and a profile and able to post, interact and respond to posts or chat with anyone else should they wish.
Safe and Private: One problem with WhatsApp is that it reveals every persons phone number to everyone else. This is a privacy and GDPR problem. BAND gets around that by being a place where anyone in our community can reach anyone else without needing their phone number or email address. There is also a parental supervision feature that will enable parents to allow teenagers a presence on the platform.

What are the features?

Community Board: This is the main feed where all posts end allowing people to stay up to date. We want this to be a focussed place of communication and sharing so only leaders will be able to post here for the time being. We would rather the community board not become a stream of non-essential posts (photos of peoples food and coffee art etc). However, everyone can respond to a post with comments or likes etc. And to encourage widespread participation we do plan from time to time to invite other folk in the community to share a meaningful contribution on the feed.
Chatrooms: There is a main chatroom for the whole church to participate in. Anyone can create a private chatroom with one or more people that can be used for tables, volunteers teams or just general group chat.
Events: We will post all church events on BAND. You will receive reminders of events, you can RSVP to events and subscribe to the event calendar should you want to.

To read more about BAND visit the website https://band.us

How do I join?

We’re hoping to roll this out to the whole church very soon but we want to invite all our wider leaders to join now to get familiar with it. We would ask you as leaders once we do launch the app church wide to encourage those people in your groups and teams to sign up.

To join click here and setup your profile: https://band.us/n/a5a336V7mab9E

What is happening to the weekly emails and WhatsApp?

We will continue to send out weekly emails with key info for everyone on our mailing list. We hope to close many of our WhatsApp groups and replace them with private chatrooms on BAND where possible. The plan will be to stop using WhatsApp where possible and focus all communication on BAND.

What if someone doesn’t want to sign up?

We will be encouraging the whole community to join BAND. For those who would prefer not to they will still receive weekly email with basic info etc.

Ultimately, we are aware that we don’t want to add to the noise in our lives so we are carefully managing BAND so it does not become a distraction. It is only a tool, but we think it could be a really helpful tool that helps community life.

Thanks for taking the time to read this update

Grace and Peace,

David Armstrong