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2 years of Redeemer Central
Redeemer Central has been journeying 2 years today! 2 years ago a small crowd gathered in the Studio Theatre at The Waterfront Hall in Belfast to worship, pray and discover what God might want to do through a small bunch of people committed to journeying with something called Redeemer Central.
Tags: Church planting
How not to be a missional church No.2 Meetings
A sure fire way to avoid being missional is to have lots and lots and lots of meetings. Have lots of ‘proper’ meetings, with a chairman and minutes and lots of people. Spend the first 40 minutes of the meeting reliving the previous meeting by going through the minutes, slowly. To spice things up make sure that there is one person there who talks, a lot, and knows the answer to everything on the agenda. He’s important, because to have a missionally avoiding meeting you need to waste lots of time discussing ‘things’, but never actually agreeing anything. Talk lots about internal procedural things too, talk about structures, processes and organograms, this is great because it has nothing do with other people, and everything to do with you.
Tags: Church, Church planting
How not to be a missional church No.1 The air raid shelter
Church as air raid shelter; The air raid shelter is the place where you go to hide from the scary, evil, dark and dangerous pagans. The place to huddle together away from the blitz of ‘nasty’ postmodernity for fear that you might actually become a little bit like ‘them’. Its the place to tell stories of the dark and foreboding storm that is modern life, convincing each other that the shelter IS the safest place to be. Sit tight, wait, it wont be long, the end is nigh, and if not nigh, then hopefully soon (please).
Tags: Church, Church planting
5 reasons to plant a church
So here is part 2. The first part looked at some of the reasons not to be a church planter, that is unless you have been called by God to do so. Here I will look at 5 reasons to plant churches.
Tags: Church planting
5 reasons not to plant a church
Ten years ago if you had asked any young, twenty something, missionally minded, Jesus loving, Christian, what they would like to 'do' for God you would probably have got this answer; Go and do mission in [.....................] (fill in blank with name of country). Ask the same question now and the answer will most likely be, church planting. Church planting is in vogue, you can buy the books, listen to the sermons, read the manuals and get the degree. For many it is seen as a pretty cool thing to do. And in many ways it is. At Redeemer, we along with Newfrontiers, are deeply passionate about church planting. In fact I am convinced that it is the only way that we will genuinely see Gospel transformation in our cities and nations. Our vision is to see churches planted across this nation and into the nations. My concern lies in the percieved 'trendiness' of church planting, we want to encourage more church planters to rise up, but not at their expense. What do I mean by that? Well I think there are things that a lot of the 'manuals' don't talk about, so I want to open that discussion up in this 2 part post. Part 2 will follow shortly and will be titled, 5 reason to plant churches. So here goes..........
Tags: Church planting
The Story we find ourselves in: God’s Grand Narrative
As people individually and as a body we are in a story bigger than ourselves, bigger than Redeemer 'Central', bigger than 'Redeemer in Belfast'.
Tags: Belfast, Church, Church planting, Community
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
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