We’re well overdue on an update, which lets you know that a lot has been going on here, which also means that there is a lot to report since the last update, so here we go.

Maybe I should just start with a snapshot of a typical week in the life of Redeemer as of right now. We are now meeting in a new school building that was just opened in August. The school is Foundations Charter Academy, and we began meeting in the building on Aug. 15. We’re very grateful that God has provided this place for us to meet and has given us a good relationship with the school. The school is right in the middle of the neighborhood the LaCavas are living in as well as another family that is now part of the church, and it is more than sufficient for all our needs on Sundays right now. So, we get to the school building at about 8:30 each Sunday morning and begin setting up. We were able to purchase a sound system a couple of months ago that has been a big help for our services, so that has to be set up along with the chairs, tables, nursery, kids’ classroom, etc. We begin a time of prayer, as we’ve been doing since January, at 9:30am, usually using one of the Psalms as a guide for our prayer. This prayer time runs until 10:15, and then we transition to the worship & teaching service, which begins at 10:30.One new thing to note about our morning service is that we’ve added in several instruments to accompany Danielle as she plays the piano for our worship. We have a clarinet, a cello, and a couple of guitars, so this has been a good addition to help us as we sing to our awesome God. As far as the sermons, we’re going through Luke right now and are into chapter 5. We finished up our study in Ephesians in August and thought it would be good to move next to one of the gospels. God has been teaching me much about Jesus Christ through this study and, I trust, the rest of the congregation as well. We usually finish the service at 12:00, and then we fellowship together and begin tearing down and cleaning up, which usually takes us until about 1:00 or 1:30.

For the middle of the week, we meet in two fellowship groups, one of which meets on Wednesday evenings and the other on Thursday evenings. The groups are being led by Ryan Fisher and Matt LaCava and have created an opportunity for even more meaningful fellowship and personal relationships since we broke our one midweek group into two smaller groups back in October. We meet in each other’s homes for a time of praying together, sharing with each other what God is teaching us & doing in our lives, and looking into the Bible together. We’re going to begin reading through a book together for the fellowship groups in the next couple of weeks, probably Living the Cross-Centered Life, by C. J. Mahaney, to provide something focused for us to discuss together when we meet in the fellowship groups. We’ve also talked about following a Bible reading plan together throughout the week so that we’ll also have the benefit of discussing what we’re learning from the same Scripture passages.

On Saturdays, we alternate between ladies’ Bible study and our men’s group meetings. The ladies began a few months ago a study through Proverbs at a local bakery every other Saturday, and this has been very good. The men have been meeting for several months now on the other Saturday and have finished two books together: Don’t Waste Your Life, by John Piper and Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, by Donald Whitney. Both of those studies were very challenging and helpful, but we’re excited to be moving into a new study now through the book of Deuteronomy.

So, that’s a typical week for us, and now I need to cover some other things that didn’t necessarily get noted in that snapshot. In the last update, I reported that Matt & Kate LaCava arrived in Colorado in May. Since then, Matt finished his internship with Heritage Bible Church, they found a nice house to rent, Judah (Jude, for short) was born in August, and God provided Matt a full-time job in November, while Kate has started voice lessons with her first two students. God has been very good to them and to Redeemer in bringing them to Colorado to serve with us & grow in Christ with us. Matt prepares and leads our worship for Sunday mornings, which has been a great blessing to us, along with other normal church ministry stuff.

In July, God led a fourth couple from Heritage Bible Church to Colorado to be part of this church plant—Paul & Tara Hurst. Paul & Tara are both teachers, and it was remarkable to see how God provided them both with jobs teaching school at a time when it’s very hard to find a position as a school teacher because of budget cuts. They both got jobs in the Brighton area, Tara at the school in which our church meets on Sundays. They were getting close to the point when they had to make a decision about the next school year with their then-current schools in South Carolina when God provided the position for Paul. They planned to move to Colorado with just him having this job, but shortly before their move, God provided Tara with her teaching position. This was another evidence of God’s faithful provision & direction for them and us as a church, and they have also been a great blessing to our church, especially by their service in leading our new children’s ministry.

In the beginning of August, a college-aged team from Heritage came to Colorado to help us pass out fliers about Redeemer in the community in preparation for our move to the new meeting location August 15. The fliers also included an invitation to a community outreach we held Aug. 13 in an effort to meet people so that we could teach them about Jesus Christ. We passed out around 2,000 fliers I think and had around 50 people or so come to the outreach event. The event included a 9-hole miniature golf course that we built along with face painting for the kids, and it allowed us the opportunity to meet several people from our community, to have spiritual conversations with some of them, and to show God’s love to our community in a small way. We had a few families visit our church on Sunday mornings as a result of the outreach event or the fliers, and one family has become a committed part of Redeemer. We think we’ll try a similar outreach event again next summer using the miniature golf course we have built now.

Around the same time as our move to the new meeting location, God brought another couple of families from the community who have been a great addition to Redeemer. Also, since we started meeting at the school building, we’ve had a steady stream of visitors, particularly from the neighborhood where the school building is located. Just to give you an idea of the makeup of the church currently, we usually have 45-55 people on Sunday mornings with about 60 people or so who are regularly connected with our church. We’re grateful for the people God has brought together to form our young church, many of whom are mature believers who are very committed to growing in Christ themselves and helping others to do the same. At the same time, because of what God has already done, we are greatly challenged to invest ourselves fervently in reaching out with the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Word of God to more and more people in our community.

One outreach effort we engaged in was putting together Thanksgiving boxes for some needy people in our community. We were made aware of five families in the community who could use some help, and God provided the resources through the giving of our people to put together boxes for these families with some money left over that allowed us to include a grocery gift card for them as well. It was really encouraging to see how God worked to make this effort successful, using his people. One of these families has been coming to our Sunday morning services consistently since we passed out the boxes, so we’re grateful for the opportunity God has given us for discipleship through this ministry.

I should also include the news that in the last couple of months, God has led two more families to move to Colorado to be part of our church. In both instances, God has provided jobs for the men in this area, which again shows us the sovereign leading & provision of God in light of the tough job market throughout the country currently. Please pray for the McDaniels and the Lees as they make the move out here and try to sell their houses in Atlanta and San Antonio respectively.

At the same time, we’ve definitely experienced some difficult things as a church family. Some of the members of our church family have endured the loss of a close family member, one of our men losing his wife after a 5 year battle with cancer. We’ve also experienced challenges with the jobs of some of our people and continued physical difficulties, but in all these things we’ve seen God’s faithfulness and his Fatherly work to conform us to the image of Jesus Christ. We face the same things every church faces, and so when you pray for us, please pray for God’s gracious provision as well as for the fulfillment of his always good purposes in the trials we endure. We can certainly say through all these situations that God is good and God is great.

We’re overwhelmed by the work we’ve seen God do so far, using our imperfect efforts and sometimes apart from anything we’ve done. We’re grateful for the people he has brought together to make up Redeemer both from this community as well as from other parts of the county even. This compels us to work still harder in seeking to spread the gospel of Christ in our communities and to teach Christians how to follow Jesus Christ as we depend on God through prayer and reliance on his Word and Spirit. Please continue to pray that God will make the members of our church more and more like Jesus Christ on a daily basis. Please pray that he’ll use our witness of Christ to draw many to himself in salvation from their sins, and please pray that he’ll bring still more people to us that we can disciple and who will join with us in our service to God here. In particular, please pray for God’s leading and provision as we look towards constituting as a church in 2011 and appointing elders and deacons. We certainly need God’s powerful working in all these ways, and we trust that he will work to accomplish his purposes for the sake of the glory of his name and the joy of his people in him. What an awesome privilege to be his servants in this work and, even more, to be his children! All praise and glory to God for what he’s done so far and for what we anticipate he’ll continue to do!

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