The Redemption Blog

Sunday @Redemption...

If you are normal, your first response to the word "discipline" in general and "church discipline" in particular, is probably not positive.

We hear that word and our thoughts harken back to childhood. We think of things like...

The many times we were forced to sit in the corner...

The hours we spent grounded in our rooms...

The bars of soap used to wash the profanity from our mouths...

For some of us it brings to mind dark memories of abuse, or severe and over harsh punishments we both did not deserve and did not understand.

Needless to say, it is a loaded word for each of us.  

Join us this Sunday at Redemption as we work to both unpack this word from God's perspective and discuss how we work it out as a church family. My promise to you is that it will be a time of healing, challenge, conviction, and encouragement.  

You won't want to miss it!

Map and Service time here...

Preaching Resources

 

Here are a list of resources to supplement further study based on Sunday's sermon on Redeeming Church: Sacraments.  Enjoy!

Introductory

• John H. Armstrong, ed., Understanding Four Views on Baptism (Zondervan, 2007), 224 pages.
• David F. Wright, ed., Baptism: Three Views (IVP, 2009), 200 pages.
• Gordon T. Smith, ed., The Lord’s Supper: Five Views (IVP, 2007), 157 pages.

Intermediate

• Thomas Schreiner, ed., Believer’s Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in Christ (B & H Academic, 2007), 364 pages.
• Leonard J. Vander Zee, Christ, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper: Recovering the Sacraments for Evangelical Worship (IVP 2004), 249 pages.
• John H. Armstrong, ed., Understanding Four Views on the Lord’s Supper (Zondervan, 2007), 224 pages.

Advanced

• Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries (Eerdmans, 2009), 912 pages.

Sunday @Redemption...

Since I was a kid I have wanted to be many of the characters I have seen on the big screen.  

I know this will not win me any cool points, but I wanted to be Luke Skywalker, Indiana Jones, Robin Hood, King Arthur, and a host of other strong characters that were involved in something bigger than themselves.  I know this makes me a geek, but unfortunately it has not gone away.

Before you are too quick to judge and find a church with a pastor who does not want to be Harry Potter, be honest about the fact that I all of do this to some degree.  

How does a good movie do this?  Why is it that we connect so deeply and get lost in these stories?

I think it is because we identify with what we SEE happening.  

In a sense we are there.  

We are not simply reading what happened, or hearing what happened, we are getting a chance to see it for ourselves and experience it.  

While all metaphors are limited, in the church, sacraments act much the same way films do.  Through communion and baptism we are not simply remembering Christ's life, death, and resurrection, we are identifying with it.   

Join us this weekend at Redemption as we seek to not just remember, but actually climb inside of and identify with the great Gospel story as we explore redeeming Church sacraments...

Redemption Bible Church

Weekly Worship Gatherings: 9:45 @Cutting Hall

150 E Wood St in Downtown Palatine (MAP)

Preaching Rescources

Here are a list of resources to supplement further study based on Sunday's sermon on Redeeming Church: Movement.  Enjoy!

Introductory

• Joshua Harris, Stop Dating the Church!: Fall in Love with the Family of God (Multnomah, 2004), 144 pages. Josh Harris calls Christians to pursue a healthy relationship with the church that involves commitment and faithfulness.
• Thabiti Anyabwile, What Is A Healthy Church Member? (Crossway, 2008), 128 pages. Too often Christians focus on finding the perfect church and neglect dealing with their own hearts. Anyabwile urges Christians to examine their own lives to see if they are healthy church members.

Intermediate

• Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church (Crossway, 2004), 288 pages. Mark Dever examines the nine characteristics of a healthy church, one of which is church membership.
• Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck, Why We Love The Church: In Praise Of Institutions And Organized Religion (Moody, 2009), 224 pages. DeYoung and Kluck look at why the church is something that should be loved by people rather than hated.

Good morning friends!

We are getting ready to start a more intentional level of missional living at Redemption. If you have been around a while you know that our vision at Redemption is to see rebels redeemed for the glory of God and the good of our city.  We fulfill this mission in three primary ways:

1. Seeing lives transformed by the gospel

2. Seing the gospel lived out in community

3. As a community we take the gospel to our city

I am humbled to report that we have seen the first two of these in amazing ways. People are giving their lives to Jesus and giving their lives to each other.

Where we have tremendous opportunity is taking the gospel to our city.  

We do not want our community to simply center around a desire for relationship.  While this is good there is more we have been called to.  

Our desire is to see community center around common mission.

This is where we are seeking to bring some intentionality.  Here's some questions we as a community need to think and pray through:

• How are we intentionally building relationships (both individually and corporately) with those who do not know Jesus in our neighborhoods?  

• How are we intentionally building relationships with people we work with?

• Where are the areas of brokenness and need in our cities that require the gospel to heal? 

• Where are the areas no one else wants to serve that Jesus may be calling us to?

• How can each of our community groups center on a common mission? How can they serve the cities they live in?

I want to invite you to pray with and for us concerning these issues.  I also want to invite you to offer up your ideas and help us sort this all out.  

If you have ideas on how we can bring greater intentionality to our mission post your ideas here...

You can also email us at info@redemptionbiblechurch.org.

God has done amazing things in our young church and greater things are yet to come.

I love you guys!

 

Preaching Resources

Here are a list of resources to supplement further study based on Sunday's sermon on Redeeming Church: Movement.  Enjoy!

Introductory

• Milton Vincent, A Gospel Primer for Christians: Learning to See the Glories of God’s Love (Focus 2008), 97 pages. If you read one book on movement, let this be the one! Vincent compelling shows how the gospel transforms every area of our lives.
• C. J. Mahaney, Worldliness: Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World (Crossway, 2008), 192 pages. Mahaney uncovers the presence of worldliness and helps believers learn to relate to the world while resisting its influence in our lives.
• Jerry Bridges, The Gospel For Real Life. Bridges says the gospel is the very lifeblood of our walk with God. Without doubt it is the key to our salvation, but it is also the power for our daily progress in holiness.
• Tim Keller, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith (Penguin 2008), 176 pages. Keller speaks of the extravagant grace of our God and sees this grace as the key to our sanctification.
• Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters (Penguin 2009), 192 pages. Keller says the Bible tells us—following Calvin—that the human heart is an “idol-factory,” taking good, wholesome things and turning them into idols that drive us. He also shows how the gospel disables the factory and tears down the idols.
• Jerry Bridges, Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate. Bridges writes not from a height of spiritual accomplishment but from the trenches of his own battles with sin. In his admonitions, Jerry offers a message of hope in the profound mercy of the gospel and the transforming grace of God as the means to overcoming our subtle sins.
• Dan B. Allender and Tremper Longman III, Breaking the Idols of Your Heart: How to Navigate the Temptations of Life. The authors lead us through Ecclesiastes to help us recognize and exchange cheap pursuits for the only One worth pursuing.

Intermediate

• Gregory Beale, We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry (IVP 2008), 341 pages. The heart of the biblical understanding of idolatry, argues Gregory Beale, is that we take on the characteristics of what we worship. Employing Isaiah 6 as his interpretive lens, Beale demonstrates that this understanding of idolatry permeates the whole canon, from Genesis to Revelation. Beale concludes with an application of the biblical notion of idolatry to the challenges of contemporary life.

Sunday @Redemption...

Remember that scene in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation when Chevy Chase cuts into the Christmas turkey that's looks amazing?

As soon as he makes the first cut the turkey explodes and reveals nothing but a burnt carcass on the inside.

Many Christian lives are just like that.

We work hard to keep it together on the outside, but if the reality of our heart, our attitude, or our motivation were revealed we would see nothing but dead works detached from a heart of worship. 

We have been called to more than trying to make God love us more by living a good life.

We have been called to more than behavior modification detached from heart transformation.

We have been called to more than trying to make everyone think we have it all together when in reality we're as broken as everyone else.

We have been called to MOVEMENT.

Join us this Sunday at Redemption as we explore Redeeming Church Movement.

Sunday Worship Gatherings

9:45 @Cutting Hall (150 E Wood ST)

MAP

A note from Ryan...

Can you believe we are already five weeks in?!

We are half way through our new series, starting new community groups, getting ready to begin our first round of membership and the holidays are quickly approaching. It is getting colder outside and the Bears are running head on into being this years Super Bowl champions...yeah, that last part may not happen, but we can pray...

This is right about the time we may begin to settle in and get comfortable.

The excitement of our launch has come and gone and now we are into the grind of living life in gospel-saturated community, setting up and tearing down weekend worship gatherings, and generally just trying to keep our heads above water.  

But the truth is,the journey has just begun. 

There are countless people you and interact with each day who have no relationship with Jesus.  Whether they be family members, classmates, coworkers, a spouse, a child, or a stranger at Starbucks, God is putting people in your path.

So here's my challenge for us this week:

DON'T GET COMFORTABLE!

Let's continue to lean into the angst ridden feeling of knowing that God has put lost people in our lives for a reason. Let's seek God for the courage to open our mouths and share the gospel. Maybe you're wondering how we can do this together. Let' start like this:

1. Pray

Ask God who He has put into your life for gospel reasons. Who would He have you reach out to and get to know? Who is He calling you to for the sake of sharing the gospel and being a source of light in their lives?

2. Invest

Once God has revealed to you who that person is begin to ask Him how you can invest in that person. Maybe it will mean going to the same coffee shop each day to get coffee before work and intentionally starting conversation with a specific barista. Maybe it will mean going out with people after work in order to get to know them on a personal level. Maybe it will mean having neighbors over for dinner. The question is, how can you invest in the person, or people God is directing you to?

3. Invite

Simply begin inviting your lost friends to church. As you invest in these relationships and begin to have credibility and voice in these people's lives, invite them to come and check out Redemption with you some Sunday. Go to breakfast before, or lunch after. Offer to give them a ride, or meet them there. Have the courage to not just open your life, but open your mouth and invite someone into what God is doing in and through Redemption.

This is a simple way we can each be involved in the mission of Jesus at Redemption. Let's not get comfortable. Let's not just settle in and be content with who's already here. Let's ask God to keep us uncomfortable and bent on seeing rebels redeemed for His glory, their good, and our joy!

Sunday @Redemption...

If you are like most people you are probably skeptical of people in authority. 

This is due partially to the fact we all have a deep authority issue, but partially because we live in a culture of corrupt authority.  Whether it be politics, business, education, or the church, it seems that too many in authority are pursuing power over true leadership.

But does this mean we should reject all authority?  What are we to do with the fact that God has always worked through authority?  What does Gospel-driven leadership and authority really look like in general, and in the context of the local church in particular?

Join us this Sunday at Redemption as we look to the Scriptures and seek to redeem rather than reject church leadership.

Sunday Worship Gatherings 9:45AM at Cutting Hall

150 E. Wood St in Downtown Palatine (MAP)

Preaching Resources

Here are a list of resources to supplement further study based on Sunday's sermon on Redeeming Church: Community.  Enjoy!

Introductory

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community (Harper, 1979), 128 pages. Bonhoeffer’s classic work is a wonderful examination of what it looks like to “do life together.” This is a must-read; if you read just one book on community, make this the one!
• Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, Total Church: A Radical Reshaping Around Gospel and Community (Crossway, 2008), 224 pages. This new book is a beautiful look at how the gospel transforms how humans live together in the community of the church.

Intermediate

• Mark Lauterbach, The Transforming Community: The Practice of the Gospel in Church Discipline (Christian Focus, 2003), 256 pages. Mark Lauterbach shows how compassion, mediated through a functioning body of believers, provides the answers to human waywardness and maintains the integrity of the church.
• Tod Bolsinger, It Takes a Church to Raise a Christian: How the Community of God Transforms Lives (Baker Academic, 2004), 208 pages. Bolsinger sees the Trinity as a pattern for how Christian community ought to look. He shows the relevance of weighty Christian doctrines to everyday life.

Advanced

• Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church As the Image of the Trinity (Eerdmans, 1997), 314 pages. Volf competently argues that who God is in himself as Trinity provides the basis and program for all human social action, grounded in the eternal self-giving of the Godhead.
• Miroslav Volf (ed.), God’s Life In Trinity (Fortress, 2006), 280 pages. This set of advanced essays looks at how God’s Trinitarian life relates to human life such that by participating in God’s life, so to speak, Christians are able to act as an image of the Triune God.
• Daniel Treier and David Lauber (eds.), Trinitarian Theology for the Church: Scripture, Community, Worship (IVP Academic, 2009), 262 pages. This set of essays looks at how the doctrine of the Trinity relates to other important issues in church doctrine.