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Outreach
Local Outreach
Everyone in the world needs the same thing -- the gospel of Jesus Christ in all its forms.
What can be easy to forget is that this is just as true for people who are already Christians as for people who are not. On a day to day basis, a Christian needs to live by God's grace in the gospel just as much as a non-believer needs to put their faith in Jesus Christ for their salvation. We're all in the same boat.
It's this knowledge that shapes our perspective on how we as a church "do" outreach. There's no doubt that it is utterly important for all Christians to be sharing the gospel to people they know. What we want to move away from, however, is thinking of outreach as just another "program" that the church provides. Instead, we want evangelism to be a thread on the tapestry of the entire church, fully integrated into the life of the church and its members.
That's not to say that we're opposed to outreach programs. Currently we schedule an outreach event in May and around Thanksgiving of each year. But much more than that, we want to teach our members to be living gospel-oriented lives Sunday through Saturday. We want people to know how to relate and care for all people, both fellow members of the church and all others in the world. Everyone needs to be encouraged with the realities of the gospel, it's just that people need to hear different aspects of it depending on where they are in their lives.
Our hope is to live genuine lives and truly care for people, so that the gospel will be shared naturally.
Global Missions
Believe it or not, the Great Commission is something that can be completed. The reason we can say this is because of what we understand missions work to be. We believe missions is work is best understood by what has come to be known as “frontier missions”—planting churches among people groups that the gospel has never reached.
Jesus commanded the disciples to go into all the nations, and that work is being continued by the church today. There are still many unreached people groups left, but what is exciting is that once the last group has been reached with the gospel, the Great Commission will have been fulfilled! That hasn't happened yet, so there's plenty of work to be done.
Our heart and passion is to be actively involved with frontier missions. We currently offer ministry aid to organizations and families who are doing just that. And we plan periodic missions trips for people from our church to serve alongside those we support financially.
We feel like we’re just getting started in the level of involvement we hope to achieve. It is our prayer that the Lord will allow us to see men from Redeemer called to serve him among the unreached peoples of the world.
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