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Our Challenges
The members of Redeemer believe the church is challenged by:
The small size of our congregation and resulting inability to reach out
to the community to effectively. This becomes evident in finding
volunteers willing to do the needed work to keep ongoing programs
and annual events going. We have a backlog of opportunities we are
anxious to pursue as we grow into the future,
Providing an appropriate forum for our middle school and high school
youth relevant to their own style of worship, fellowship, and spiritual
growth,
The need to revise our Kids Church service to serve the very young
children, those who are growing older, as well as their parents who rely
on the Kids Church for their primary worship service,
Finding a way to create opportunities for our youth to participate in
outreach programs,
Stewardship and membership growth are significant issues – we have
a shrinking number of elders with all that implies,
A need to explore the future direction and content of our music
program,
To increase the dialogue with other Marin parishes to create a
cooperative Area Ministry relationship for programs such as youth
groups and sharing administrative services,
The fact that members of Redeemer see themselves as committed and
energetic, but also feel challenged by being overworked and tired by
years of service – too few workers in the vineyard,
We have had six priests in the last ten years. This instability drains the
enthusiasm from the entire church community even as we move
forward with specific projects such as building the labyrinth, instituting
Godly Play and establishing the lecture series as an ongoing effort.
The Church in Community
While Area Ministry as an integrated concept is new to the Diocese of California,
the implementation of Area Ministry in terms of embeddedness in the community
is not. One of the discoveries of discernment came during the cataloguing of all
of the various in-house, outreach and community-based programs the Church of
the Redeemer is actively involved in. The following are these activities, both
large and small:
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Redeemer Preschool
Mission Statement: “Redeemer Preschool, in response to
the growing needs of the community for quality child care
services, seeks to provide a safe environment for children
ages 2 through 6 and thereby makes a commitment,
through its professional staff and program, to nurture the
social, emotional, and cognitive development of the
children entrusted to its care.”
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