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Red:info
Are you new to Redeemer? Have you recently started coming? Or are you wondering how you can get connected? On Thursday March 4th we are hosting an evening when you can come and hear more about us, our vision and what we are about.
This Sunday at Redeemer Central - The You Temple
This Sunday at Redeemer Central we will be continuing our series red:values looking at our core values. In his talk titled The You Temple, David will be talking to us from 1 Corinthians 3. Join us at 10:30am, The Oh Yeah Music Centre, Belfast.
Another year over
We haven't even been meeting a year! It’s amazing to think of all that God has been doing amongst us since February this year. It seems a long time since a small handful of us gathered in my modestly sized lounge to worship and pray. Then came Love:Belfast which saw 120 people gather in the Studio Theatre at the Waterfront Hall to worship, pray and support. We quickly found ourselves too big for our front room so complete with wafting smells of pizza’s we began meeting above Pizza Express in the City centre. Within weeks it became clear that we were going to quickly outgrow Pizza Express and by September, surrounded by memorabilia from Belfast's rock music history we settled into our new home, The Oh Yeah Music Centre. In the space of a few months we doubled in size gathering together as ordinary people called to be and do something extraordinary! So into 2010, meeting on Sundays and launching as a church in September. Next year is going to be very exciting.
Tags: Church, Church planting, CityGroup
We are nothing unless We are everything
It's the way it all goes down in Luke part 2. The acts the Apostles do see a dynamic community established. The new followers first response is to be an everything people. Everything for everyone, in no small amount. You need it and I’ve got it? Then you can have it. You are poor and I am less poor? Then I will choose to become poorer so you can become richer. My home is your home, your home is my home, lets share a meal of bread and wine.
Tags: Bible, Christianity, Church, Church planting, Community, Faith
Studio altercations
I recently visited an exhibition of paintings by the Irish born painter and two time Turner prize nominee Sean Scully. Speaking of his work Scully says "I hold to a very Romantic ideal of what's possible in art, and I hold to the idea of the 'personal universal.' This is a complex agenda. My project is complicated in this way, and in that sense I'm out of fashion. I'm going against the current trend towards bizarreness, oddness; as you just called it, the 'esoteric', which of course was around in the 1920's. That's what is being revisited now. In between the two great wars, there was a very strong period, particularly in Europe, of a strange, bizarre, distorted and perverse kind of figuration, with freaks in the paintings. Very disturbing twins, subjects like that. These paintings were mostly coming out of Italy and Germany. Now we have a return to that again in a strange period, after the end of Modernism".
Tags: Art, Christianity, Church, Church planting
Deep church
Been reading the book Deep Church: which you can buy here
Tags: Books, Christianity, Church, Church planting
Grace in dangerous places
On Monday night I went out for a drink with some friends, one of whom happens to be gay. Brought up in the church and a follower of Christ, albeit in ‘another’ place on his journey at the moment we had some fascinating and revealing discussions about how the church (not just our church) can converse with those in the gay community.
Tags: Christianity, Church, Faith, Hope, Identity, Life, Made me think
Put your hands in the air stand up sit down sing a song say hello turn around
Some time ago I was invited to go and watch the Belfast Giants play ice hockey. For an ice hockey virgin stepping into the home of the Giants, the Odyssey arena, was to say the least, otherworldly. I only have two ice rink sports based memories the first is of Torville and Dean in theatrical dress dancing and throwing each other around and getting all upset. The other is of the Slovak professional ice hockey player Miroslav Satan at the 1994 Winter Olympic Games. As young geeky evangelical pastors kids we had endless minutes of fun with this (a geek of course being a word derived from 18th century circus performers who bit heads off chickens, but that's another story) the thought of Satan playing ice hockey in hell was soon put to bed by the obvious temperature disadvantage that exists there. Although, as I was fast learning, watching the game, for some, may of course be used as a very successful form of eternal punishment.
Tags: Christianity, Church, Church planting, CityGroup, communication, Community
Everything Must Go - Jesus Christ Superstore
On Wednesday night at CityGroup we had a great time of worship, teaching and discussion. We began our new mini-series Everything Must Go - The implications of being a missional church. Around candle lit tables we sang, listened and threw out thoughts and questions, all incredibly helpful and challenging stuff. The audio of the talk will not be made available but I hope to be able to capture some of what we looked at here.
Tags: Christianity, Church, Church planting, CityGroup, Community, Faith, Made me think, Preaching, Teaching
My Grandad’s chair
My Grandad always sat in the same chair in his lounge. It was his chair, his cushion beside which was his table sat, upon which he could place his drink, TV remote, newspaper and gold half-moon glasses. The chair would be positioned in the optimum TV viewing position. Centre room, 7ft from the TV and 2ft from the door, that way tea could be taken without any TV sight-line infringement. Nobody touched the chair, not even moved it. In a way I am glad the chair was never moved, who knows what kind of museum dust gathered around the carpet indentations would be revealed underneath.
Tags: Christianity, Church, Church planting, Faith, Made me think
Interview with Pastor Scott Thomas
Pastor Scott Thomas is Director of the Acts 29 church planting network and serves with Mark Driscoll as an Elder at Mars Hill Church, Seattle. Acts 29 have seen numerous churches planted throughout America and the world. It was a tremendous privilege to be able to host Pastor Scott at Redeemer Central on Sunday 4th October. After Scott spoke David Capener grabbed a few minutes with him to ask him some questions - Watch the interview here.
Tags: Audio, Belfast, Christianity, Church, Church planting, Newfrontiers, Video