History
Can a group of people be genetically predispositioned for church planting? If so, that would explain why church planting has been in our blood for over ten years for some, for others much longer. It seems that for so many years we have been asking the Lord...when? But, God is not slow in keeping His promises, and in reality God's timing has been perfect. While it seems like it has been a long time coming, really God has just been teaching us some important lessons before starting. How gracious is our Lord to teach us and give us awesome mentors!
So, we have been praying about this for years, but specifically we knew in October 2006 (after attending a conference on "The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern Culture" put on by Desiring God). Sitting in the conference it was as though the traffic light turned green in our hearts and we knew our dreams could become discussions and our discussions could become reality. Praise be to God for His timing!
After discussing for many years (at least since 1995), and then turning our hearts to prayer, we began meeting in April of 2007. A small group gathered to meet and discuss what Redeemer might look like and where we might meet. We then boarded a flight together and headed to a conference in Seattle at Mars Hill Church (Mark Driscoll) put on by the Acts 29 Network to find out what church planting was all about. Sitting in a hotel room in downtown Seattle eating pizza, we came up with the name "Redeemer" and love it! Redeemer explains in one word what starts and sustains our relationship with God! It's all about Him.
Wednesday was our regular meeting night for prayer and discussion, but it became quickly apparent that we needed to meet on Sundays; we were just hungry to start. So in June of 2007 we met in a garage at one of our Elders' homes. The following week we were able to move into our current location at 1328 H Street in Modesto. What a blessing this was--and it came with everything we needed (including cheap rent)!
So after many years of knowing God's calling, and waiting patiently for Him to say "Go", we are so grateful for this opportunity to bring Him joy by exposing all that we can about His glorious and Holy name! He is worthy to be praised.
Thank you Lord...your timing is perfect.