On Sunday September 6 (Labor Day weekend) Renew will be hosting The Prayer Experience from 10 am to noon at Stony Creek Park in Lansdale.
This unique prayer experience will involve several different forms of prayer in several different places around the park (a prayer labyrinth, guided meditation, prayer walk, etc). Guided. Personal. Participatory.
Being an expert in prayer is not required.

Bring your lunch and we’ll enjoy hanging out and eating together after we’re done.

No RSVP is required and this event is open to everyone.
Parents: of course, children are most welcome!
If you have questions contact us at info@renewcommunity.org

Directions to Stony Creek Park:
From Marjeanes (corner of Broad Street and Hancock) head south on Hancock for 0.3 miles. Park will be on your right. Meet us under the pavilion.

Renew and The Well are co-hosting the Scripture & Culture Seminar on Saturday October 24, 2009 from 10 am to 4 pm at The Well in Feasterville, PA.

Theologian Karl Barth once said, “Christians should have their Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.” This seminar was created on that premise – that the Church should be standing at the crossroads of faith and culture. The one-day event will feature two esteemed and nationally recognized missional thinkers.

In the morning, Dr. Darrell Guder (Dean of Academic Affairs at Princeton Theological Seminary and author of The Missional Church) will answer the question: How do we read and interact with Scripture as communities of faith? After lunch, Andy Crouch, author of the book Culture Making, will wrestle with the question: How do we read and interact with culture as communities of faith? (You can read more about Andy here).

This event is open to everyone, especially those looking to engage the culture with the message of Jesus – as we are striving to do at Renew. A group of people from Renew will be attending and we would love for you to join us. More information about the seminar can be found here.

And the best part is that it only costs $15.

You can register online here.

The dream of Renew has never been to start a church to solely meet for a service on Sundays.

In fact, we never really intended to set out to start another church.

The last thing the North Penn region needs is another church (there are a lot of good ones already in existence). Instead, the dream of birthing The Renew Community is to see fresh expressions and fresh extensions of God’s kingdom unleashed every day of the week in decentralized, organic and connected ways. We long to invite people into a way of life –the life of Jesus – rather than simply invite people to a building for an hour and a half once a week.

Our passion is to ask the question “How are we blessing the neighborhood?” not “How can we get more people to come to service on Sunday?”

We are a faith community of serious skeptics and courageous dreamers.

For the first year of our existence the Renew Launch Team met to pray, plan, dream, serve and cultivate that seven-day-a-week ethos. It wasn’t – and still isn’t – easy. In many ways we had to re-think, re-wire and unlearn ways that we were familiar with but we knew deep down were incomplete, compartmentalized and misguided.

We began by looking at the person of Jesus and embracing his story.

We listened to each other’s stories and sharing our own.

We celebrated in each other’s homes.

We served in a variety of ways throughout the week.

We built relationships in our neighborhoods.

We developed partnerships with organizations in our community and began serving alongside of them.

We spearheaded events like the Lansdale Farmers Market and monthly events we call Doubt Night.

As we attempted to de-emphasize the Sunday gatherings and re-emphasize the importance of Monday through Saturday, we were convinced we needed to move forward with great intention – with a “slow burn” approach – making sure we didn’t sprint the marathon and burn ourselves out in the process.

Author and professor Eddie Gibbs said that missional churches should have strategies for gathering and strategies for scattering. We’re convinced that Renew needs to cultivate organic gathering/scattering structures that are flexible and adaptable.

We decided on two things:

1. Scattering: We birthed our first wave of six Jesus communities called house churches. Since November, these geographically based house churches have been meeting weekly on various nights of the week all over the North Penn region. Each one is intentionally unique and small and engage in three clearly defined rhythms of exploring, celebrating and serving together. The goal of each house church is to easily reproduce itself into other functioning house churches that engage in the same three rhythms.

2. Gathering: We started our first monthly large-group gathering in April. These gatherings (consisting of people involved in our house churches and anyone else interested in finding out who we are and what we’re all about) have been held at Marjean’s Caterers [320 S Broad Street Lansdale, PA 19446] a wedding reception hall (we find the location extremely symbolic. We’ve gathered together as an entire community to explore the Scriptures, worship, connect with God and others and be sent out to join with God’s mission in seeing renewal happen.

Smaller Jesus communities (house churches) and community-wide services (gatherings) make up what we call a “dual expression of church.” Like two blades on a pair of scissors or two wings on a plane, both are equally important and vital to the mission of Renew. We feel strongly that if people are only experiencing one of the two expressions of Renew they aren’t getting a full picture of the life and ethos of our faith community. Our desire is for people to participate in both expressions.

While house churches have continued to meet weekly, we believed that in order to maintain a sustainable pace we would hold large group gatherings once a month for the first six months. We did this in order to emphasize the importance of house churches, to continue to cultivate the Monday-through-Saturday emphasis of Renew and to work through all the logistics that are required to hold a large event. After striving to develop an ethos of focus of community engagement over an extended period of time, the last thing we wanted to do was to revert back to our old ways by devoting the majority of our time in a given week to pulling off an hour and a half service on Sunday.

The fall is quickly approaching and we’ve held monthly gatherings for the past six months.

And we’re convinced that we’re ready to take another step forward.

We believe we can have greater regularity with our gatherings without losing the focus on our unique mission. It won’t stunt our mission; it will only catalyze it.

Beginning September 13 we’re going to be changing the rhythm of our faith community in two ways:

1. Gatherings will be held every other week on Sunday morning. Now that we have developed a bit of a rhythm and identity, worked out the logistical kinks and developed teams that help pull these gatherings off we are ready to double the frequency of our gatherings.

2. House churches will meet the opposite weeks on Sunday mornings in various homes across the region for times of exploring the Scriptures together. Changing from different weeknights to similar Sunday mornings the continuity of our house churches will be further developed. House churches will also be meeting (on average) two additional times per month: one time to celebrate (we believe that hosting and throwing parties are necessary and important to Jesus communities) and one time to serve beyond themselves (we believe that true purpose in life happens when we live for something greater than ourselves).

Will Renew be meeting every Sunday morning at any point?

Yes…but not all together in the same room.

Will we ever have just large gatherings all together on a Sunday morning?

Maybe not. This is what makes Renew unique in its mission and expression.

But then again who knows…

Specifically, the rhythm of our times of exploration as a community on Sunday mornings through the end of the year will be the following:

Sept 13: Gathering

Sept 20: house church

Sept 27: gathering

Oct 4: house church

Oct 11: gathering

Oct 18: house church

Oct 25: gathering

Nov 1: house church

Nov 8: gathering

Nov 15: house church

Nov 22: gathering

Nov 29: house church

Dec 6: gathering

Dec 13: house church

Dec 20: gathering

Dec 27: house church

*All dates are listed on the Renew calendar above.

This large gathering/small communities rhythm is something we’re quite excited about!

We believe that this will allow us as a community of faith to build stronger momentum, clearer identity and deeper community as we grow and mature as a faith community in the coming months.

Again, this new rhythm will start officially on September 13.

If you have any questions let us know by clicking the “Contact Us” link at the top of this page.

And if you’re curious about what Renew is all about check out one of our house churches or participate with us in one of our upcoming gatherings. We’d love for to observe and participate in the life of our community, regardless of your background or where you are at on your spiritual journey. The only rule we have is that no perfect people are allowed.

Click play to hear the teaching from Sunday, August 2, 2009 by J.R. Briggs

We’ve been spending time in our first several Renew-wide Gatherings exploring the Grand Story that we find ourselves in. We’re convinced that we can’t know God’s mission – nor can we know how we can join Him in that mission – until we first know the Story we live in.

N.T. Wright writes that the Story of God and Humankind is like a Five-Act Drama:
Act I: Creation [the beginning of time]
Act II: The Fall [humanity's fall from greatness]
Act III: Redemption [the solution to the brokenness]
Act IV:
Act V: Reconciliation [all of Creation being reconciled to the Creator]

Wright says that we know the beginning of the Story (Act I-Act III) and we know the end of the Story (Act V) but we live as characters in the Story right now in Act IV.

New York Times Bestselling author Donald Miller writes about the significance of understanding the true story we live in – and what our role is in the story. Check it out here: http://donmilleris.com/2009/07/31/how-the-stories-you-believe-are-screwing-with-your-mind/

What are your thoughts?
Do you agree or disagree with what he writes?