Announcing a New Home for Redeemer
Download MP3Just a moment, we're gonna welcome our new members, but before we do that, I do have one very exciting announcement to share. Just over eleven years ago, it was actually 03/05/2014, a small group of Redeemer members gathered for the very first time in the sanctuary. It was a Ash Wednesday service. Any of you were any of you here? Raise your hands.
Joel Brooks:Okay. So we have like 10. 10 of you maybe were here during that time. You might remember walking into to the sanctuary wondering like, we're going to meet here. I mean, was a long line of temporary homes for Redeemer.
Joel Brooks:Started in my living room. We then moved to Girls Incorporated, then we went to Cornerstone Elementary School, and then we came into here, and you're probably struck by a number of things. One, the red carpet was just hideous. All the trim work here was painted yellow, so it had this McDonald's vibe in here. But probably the thing that hit you most was this place is so large.
Joel Brooks:It it just the space. We actually we roped off the balconies. We didn't have the back rooms there open, and all of us could fit in just this front little area here. We had less than 200 members then. After our members join today, we will have close to 2,000 members.
Joel Brooks:Do you know how many people can fit in this sanctuary now? And they use the word sanctuary loosely. I'm talking about every room like pushed back there. When we are packed to the gills, we can hold only 648 of our members. With each month that passes, our ability to actually live out the core convictions of who we are as a church is becoming harder and harder.
Joel Brooks:How in the world can we practice gospel hospitality? How can I encourage you to bring your coworkers, to reach out to your neighbors, and to bring them when we might not even have a seat for them? How can we practice fellowship when we don't have a space for you to even have a little conversation together at the church? I mean, you might think the most disheartening thing for me as a pastor is having to turn people away from the church at times, and I've had to do that. And it is it it kills you.
Joel Brooks:But not as much as this. After the services going out there and seeing all of you gathered around the front steps, you're laughing, you're having a cup of coffee, some of you are praying, you're catching up on your all your weeks. I'm like, I can't believe I have to do this. Would you all get off my front lawn? I mean, you all have heard me yell that.
Joel Brooks:It's like, I need you to leave because we have to have your parking spaces. You you can't fellowship. I mean, that will kill you thinking that or having to say that. So for years now, we have all of our leadership, we've been going through stacks of architectural plans, we've looked at I think every empty lot here in Birmingham, every empty warehouse, we have we've looked at skyscrapers. I mean, we have looked everywhere to try to find not just a larger place because you can find a larger place, but to find a larger place that is strategic for what we believe God has called us to do.
Joel Brooks:A place that will allow us to better live out our convictions as a church, to help us foster the needed community, and to put us what I believe to be in a better position to reach the city. And so after years of looking, believe we have found this place. Do any of you guys remember the old Trinity Hospital or Montclair Hospital that's just a mile and a half away on Montclair Road? Well, as of this past Tuesday, we have placed part of that facility under contract. Up there on the screen.
Joel Brooks:There we go. Many of you probably remember it from our time during COVID, where we met at the adjacent parking lot, and we were known as the the parking deck church. Now, besides having gorgeous views, it actually does have gorgeous views. You're on top of this mountain there. Besides more than doubling our current space and meeting every parking need you could possibly imagine, this location sits like a city on the hill.
Joel Brooks:I love it. It literally straddles the mountain that separates the city from the suburbs. And we believe that if Redeemer was here, we would be strategically positioned to reach Birmingham and impact it for generations to come. Now, as you can see, those buildings don't look like much like they don't look like much right now. We've seen worse.
Joel Brooks:I mean, how many of you were here when one of our front columns just fell to the ground? Or when our downstairs children area was a flooded dungeon. I mean, that's essentially what it looked like. But we are Redeemer Community Church. We believe in a Redeemer.
Joel Brooks:We redeem things, And, we believe that we can redeem this former hospital that has been a blight to the city of Birmingham for almost a decade now. And, it can once again become a city on a hill. To be clear, turning this site into a new home for Redeemer is gonna take nothing short of a whole lot of work and a miracle. I know you guys have tons of questions. I have more, probably.
Joel Brooks:They're just swirling around your head. We're gonna you're gonna hear more about this in the coming weeks and the months ahead. But months ago, as we begin narrowing down on this location here, we had a retreat of our elders. And if you remember, I asked you all to be praying and fasting for that time. Well, during that time, one one of our pastors, he shared this story.
Joel Brooks:He said he had this kind of picture, this metaphor, and it was of the Israelites being pinned up against the Red Sea. And he said, it's like we're being pinned up against the Red Sea, and we're just we just keep walking along the shoreline looking for a bridge. And we For years, we've just been walking. Gosh, we gotta find a bridge. We gotta find a bridge.
Joel Brooks:We gotta find a bridge. But what if we're not supposed to look for a bridge? What if we're supposed to stop and pray that God does a miracle? And we're like, that's where we are. We need to stop and we need to pray that God does a miracle.
Joel Brooks:That's what I'm inviting you into today. We earnestly desire your fervent prayers for this, that God would guide us over the coming weeks and the months ahead, as we seek to be a faithful flock, and as we seek to hold on to the convictions that he has given us. Pray that he would give wisdom to our team of elders, to the engineers, to the architects, to the planners who have already been working for a long time, but will continue to work on this project. Pray for our entire church that we would be unified in this. And pray that God will show you specifically what is your part in this.
Joel Brooks:What role are you to play? And finally, pray this. That whether the Lord gives us this place and we're able to build there or he doesn't, that Christ would be the center of all of it. Redeemer Community Church is not dependent upon a facility. We're his people.
Joel Brooks:We're God's people. Our identity is based on our Redeemer, not on our facility. Now, like I said before, we're gonna have more information about this in the coming weeks. But in light of our desire to just cover this with prayer, we're gonna have our first prayer time next Sunday. So next Sunday, after the 04:00 service at 05:30, I'm inviting all of you to meet on location there at site for us to pray that the Lord would give us that facility and that we would be able to build there.
Joel Brooks:So 05:30 next week on-site, and of course, we will send you more information about that.
