“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.” Which means in Atlanta we have massive fluctuations in temperature and the heroes of Waffle House put on their antler hats. As we layer up towards the end of the year, we have some substantial changes coming to our Church Online experience Let us not waste time on any more pomp and circumstance. Pastor Doug you have the floor.
Hey Family, First Word/TL:DRIt will benefit you greatly to read everything below, because it is the story of your faithfulness and resilience through one of the most difficult times humanity has faced globally.But, for those who are bullet point people, here is the TL:DR (Too Long: Didn’t Read)Beginning January 2, 2022: Church At Home is returning to its original name of Church Online, Live streaming at 10a exclusively on YouTube. Church At Home is now evangelistically-focused small groups. _____________________________What a wild few years it has been. No one ever imagines that the era they will follow Jesus in would require such extraordinary resilience, creativity, and endurance, but here we are, doing our best to be faithful to what we have and to what the Lord has called us. Today, I want to share how we have begun and will continue to adapt one of our most far-reaching ministry tools, Church Online. But before we do that, I want to walk us through a timeline of how we have arrived where we are. Our Recent HistoryMarch 12, 2020 – Renovation Church Online Is BornWe in the states begin to realize the actual threat that COVID poses to humanity at large and Atlanta and our church specifically. Our leadership community decided to move our corporate worship and small groups to online exclusively. Our pastors, worship team, production team, and our friends from Clever Marketing work nonstop for three days to get it done. The final video for corporate worship for March 15 gets uploaded at 2 am. SUCCESS!!! We went from no digital expression of our community to a church online in 72 hours. We built something we knew we needed and then went on the journey of discovering what its long-term purpose would be. October 4, 2020 – Church At Home and Church At Home PodsAfter the summer of 2020, it became clear that this pandemic would last a lot longer than any of us wanted and foresaw. The need to be physically present with the people of God was becoming increasingly apparent. Many within our community just decided to self-organize “pods” of people gathering in homes every Sunday. It was beautiful to behold. We took the creativity from our community and adapted our digital expression to it. Church Online became Church At Home with Pods because that was what we were doing and what was needed to continue to endure the season well. Over the next several months, we discovered that this expression of gathering with a small number of people in a home around a tailor-made digital worship experience was a powerful way to invite those who are far from God to take a step into community with his people.We have shared many stories over the past year of how people came to know Jesus through this experience. These months showed us that if we wanted to be a church actively pursuing people far from God, we would continue to create digital and small physical environments for people to engage. April 4, 2021 – 394 days later, the glorious return of physical corporate worship.It was Easter Sunday, and for those of us who felt comfortable and safe enough to gather indoors with more people, we masked up, washed up, and temperature checked our way to worship for the first time together. Since then, we have continued to adjust, expand, and adapt our environments to meet the moment. Our ability to regularly physically gather with the people of God in small groups and Sunday gatherings allows for the continued refinement of our digital expressions towards their primary purpose: engaging people who are far from God with His Good News. All that in perspective, let’s dive into the meaningful ways our digital expressions are being refined to meet their primary purpose. What’s NextChurch At Home is returning to Church Online. A lesson the last couple of years has reinforced for me is “clarity over creativity.” If possible, anyone should be able to look at something and immediately discover its function. Church Online is our online church experience. As well, one of the areas that have been confusing for those who are engaging our church either digitally or physically has been the different “gathering” times. So to remove any confusion, the Church Online live stream will mirror our physical gathering time. We will also be condensing our platforms when the live stream is available. With the hope of Church Online being for people to Know God who are far from God, we will begin exclusively using the most accessible platform for them—YouTube. This means, starting January 2, 2022, we will no longer be streaming Church Online to Facebook or the Church Online platforms. January 2, 2022: Church Online 10a exclusively @ YouTube. We will continue to make our Church Online On-Demand available every week. Church At Home = Small GroupAs I mentioned earlier, one of the beautiful discoveries you made during this pandemic is that many people we know and love who are not ready to join us in our corporate worship space will gladly come to our homes to watch a worship experience. We want to continue to make this available as a tool for you to use in your ministry. Church At Home will become a type of small group that can be leveraged during the Small Group Semester as a means of evangelism. Like all other small groups, you can gather at whatever time works best for those you bring into your home. As we did with pods, Church At Home leaders will be supported with the resources necessary to make this experience all that it can be. We hope that this experience becomes a means the Spirit uses for those we know and love to take a step closer to knowing God and His people. Begin praying now about whether or not you will lead a Church At Home Small Group this coming Winter/Spring Semester. Church Online Coming Content ChangesAs we continue to make the Church Online experience better suited for its purpose, we have a series of updates that we are working to roll out in 2022.1: Ambassadors serving our online viewers. 2: Live hosting of our live streams. 3: Monthly new worship recordings4: On location and interactive sermons.5: A process for new Christians who do not live in Atlanta to find a local church. I am so grateful to be part of such a beautiful church. You are some of the most passionate and creative people I have ever met in my life, and it is truly an honor to be one of your pastors. If you have any questions or ideas for improving how we can help people Know God, be it through Church Online or At Home, please do not hesitate to email or call me.I love y’all. – Pastor Doug.
December 26th | Church Online Only
You are new! You are a disciple! You are a part of the community of Jesus! This is your chance to declare it and celebrate! Sign up here to be baptized on December 5th, 2021 during the 10 am gathering. Once you have filled out your application, we will reach out to answer any questions and fill you in on all the details (such as: wear dark clothing, bring a change of clothes, invite family and friends, etc). Don’t miss this opportunity to join the body of Christ in declaring – I AM NEW!
Hey Renovation Church, This is the season to be jolly! Fa, la, la, la, lala, la, laaaaaaa! Renovation Church and the Community Partners team are bringing Christmas cheer early to our neighbors. On December 5th from 3pm – 5pm we will visit the neighborhoods near Osbourne High School to sing our hearts out and enjoy our neighbors’ smiling faces. Don’t worry about pitch or tone. We got you covered. If singing isn’t enough to get you excited, we will have an after-party with smores and hot cocoa. You don’t want to miss this!! To register for this event, please follow the link and complete the form.
Serve In Giving (APEST)God’s story of redemption is told through the generosity of his people. We are reminded of that truth every time we see the impact that your ministry has on a child of God.SERVE IN GIVINGWomen’s Weekly (Teaching)If you would like to receive weekly discipleship materials written by and for the women of Renovation, subscribe to our Women’s Weekly Email List. Subscribe Here
Parent Discipleship Resources (Shepherding & Teaching)We have several resources for all our parents as we equip you to disciple your children. By popular demand, we have created a youtube playlist with all the worship songs we use for RKM. Parent Cue App: Download Now
Church At Home