The following statement from the Session was emailed to the Congregation by Pastor Michael Shover on May 10, 2022

Saints,

As we see our church being blessed with growth, we (the Session) are providing this statement to provide some clarity on how we see the role of the Church in the lives of the Saints of Christ the Redeemer Church.

The Primacy of Worship

God calls us to worship every Lord’s Day, and the Lord calls us all into His presence in this way. We expect to see everyone at Worship! 🙂

Church Calendar

CTR has weekly, bi-monthly and annual instruction times, services and events that are intended to teach, equip, and edify the Saints, and also serve as a means to minister to each other through regular fellowship. We highly encourage full participation in these events. While things do change over time, it is the Session’s desire to make church sponsored events stable and predictable. When considering the addition of a one-off event or a change to any existing events, one of our main concerns is that the “average family” would be able to participate in all of our church sponsored events, without it becoming a burden to do so. In this respect, we believe our current calendar is within that parameter. We desire our members to have time available for civic, political, social, and educational involvement and ministry in the broader community. When we hold a “church sponsored event” we desire to see a good sized crowd. We desire to promote a culture of Church Friendly Families, and that we also truly be a Family Friendly Church in this way.

Our Schedule

Here is our current list of regular church sponsored events:

Regular Schedule

•Weekly Lord’s Day worship

•Sunday School

•Summer Sunday School

•Wednesday Congregational services

•Monthly fellowship meals

•Women’s meeting

•Men’s forum

Annual services and events

•Christmas Eve Service

•Epiphany Service

•Maundy Thursday

•Good Friday

• Ascension Service

• Pentecost Feast with guest speaker

• Children’s Summer Music Week

• Theology Conference with guest speaker

• Thanksgiving Eve Service

Body Life

We desire to see our members involved in one another’s lives in a diversity of ways: ministering to one another, laboring in the world together, laboring in the Word together, schooling together, celebrating together, serving together, exercising hospitality together, exercising dominion together. In the near future, we plan to facilitate more “body life” communication by setting up a closed social media platform for use by our members to communicate and facilitate private and community events. For now, please continue to use the church email group list as needed for this purpose. Also, In the near future we will be creating a space in our building for members to post broader community information and events.

The Building

The Lord has blessed us with a building, and we want you to know that the church building space can be made available for use by our members for private use for activities that are not for profit and/or are Christian education based activities when not being used for a church event. Talk to one of the Deacons if you have an interest in reserving the building for such an activity.

In Summary

The Session has been having discussions for many months with each other, and other CREC church leaders around the primacy of worship, importance of doing our regular events well and encouraging full participation, and encouraging fruitful body-life full of hospitality and involvement in one another’s lives outside of ”Church events”. We desire intentionality in our activities and events, so as to not become “an activities based church”, or lose our focus of Word and Sacrament. We thank and praise the Lord for all of our recent growth and look forward to continuing to serve the Lord together in our church and community.

All of Christ for all of life!

The Session