Greetings!
Lots of things going on right now as far as the church plant is concerned. Just a quick update...
Moving toward a worship service in September! Lord willing, we will be having our first Christ Redeemer Church worship service in September. How incredible is that?!! God has pulled so many things together so quickly. He is good! Thank you for all your help and prayers.
Now let me quickly attempt to manage some expectations! The months from September until after Christmas will be a "transition" period for Christ Redeemer Church. So yes, we will be worshiping together beginning in September. But the worship service will be a very simplistic, scaled-down type of service. We will also still be discussing some vision and making some plans for the public launch of the church which will take place sometime after Christmas.
Here's what you might expect at a Sunday evening meeting during the transition period. The meeting will probably open with a little longer time of announcements than you might expect at a normal service. That will give us the opportunity not only to make announcements, but also to continue discussing a little vision and laying out some plans for implementing various ministry components. And then we'll worship together - a time of worship in song, prayer, and a sermon.
Worship in song during the transition period. We will have different people leading us in worship in song during the transition period. That will give the worship leaders an opportunity to get to know us, and it will give us an opportunity to get to know them. That means our worship in song will probably lack a bit of continuity and quality during the transition period. That's church planting for you! Let's just set our hearts right now to worship the Lord in Spirit and in truth regardless, and we'll continue to ask the Lord to provide us with continuity and undisracting excellence in due time. We trust that He will.
Christ Redeemer Church is now officially incorporated! Praise the Lord! We were finally able to open our own bank account yesterday. That means we can now receive tithes and offerings made out to "Christ Redeemer Church." We also now have a P.O. box. So if you need to reach us via 'snail mail,' you can do so at Christ Redeemer Church, P.O. Box 5854, Woodbury, MN 55125.
Website. We registered a domain name for Christ Redeemer's official website. You won't find anything there yet, but here it is for future reference: www.ChristRedeemerMN.org. We'll let you know as soon as it's up and running. A big thank you to Chris Paschen who has been so incredibly helpful in setting the site up for us.
When and where? We are currently meeting every Sunday evening at 6:00 pm at Central Park in Woodbury (8595 Central Park Place). Come on over! We'd love to see you.
That may be it for now. It's an absolute joy for Pastor Thomas and me to go on this journey with you. We cannot thank you enough for your diligent prayers and service during the initial stages of this church plant. Please continue to pray that God would be glorified and Christ would be treasured in everything we do at CRC!
For His glory and our joy,
Brett Louis
