Hi!
We have started a new series at Ren Church we are calling Stories of God. If you missed the first few you can go back and listen to them on our website here. When we started the series, I didn’t plan out how long the series would extend. There are a lot of stories in the Bible! In fact, the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and the New Testament consist mostly of stories. It seems that God has seen it fit, in his wisdom, that truth would be communicated through storytelling.
One of the great challenges, that I hope we will all grow in, is how to interpret the stories found in the Scriptures. What is God telling us through this story? What was the original author really communicating? What application might the story have for us today? These seem like simple questions, but answering them requires serious excavation. What I’m saying is that it’s easy to take a Bible story and, sort of, make it fit into some relevant message we want to get across to people. But we don’t want to do that. Instead, we want to practice the most important skill in reading: listening. We have to let the Scriptures say what they say and resist the temptation to twist them into nice, neat little inspirational messages. There is complexity and ambiguity and mystery in our Bibles. May we embrace this, and may we mine the riches that God intends for us to find. I invite you to journey with us in 2025!
Core Invitation
Every year, in the month of February, we “open the window” for people to become Core members of Ren Church. It’s also a time for those who were members the previous year to renew their membership. Now, I’ll be honest and say … I don’t love the word—“membership.” It makes me think of gym membership or zoo membership or some kind of enterprise we are part of that gives us benefits in exchange for dues. Church membership is not that at all.
The main reason we practice church membership is because it’s biblical. As Christians, we are members of the Church (big “C”) that spans across the globe and extends back 2000 years to the first century when the Church was born (Acts 2). So there’s that. But there’s also this idea found in the New Testament of membership in a local church. People belonged to a particular community of Christians in a particular geographical location. People were under the care of specific elders (pastors). A first century Christian was a member of a local body of believers that would provide spiritual nourishment through the practice of the “one anothers” of Scripture.
Sadly, many people today have fallen away from this important biblical practice. They bounce around to different churches. They listen to a variety of online teachers. They get a little church here and there through social media. Or, they are occasional consumers of a local church but never serve or form deep relationships. The Scriptures provide a very different and much more robust vision of what a Christian’s experience of church should be. So, we are after God’s idea of church and not the strange modern day version.
If you are a local believer who has not yet experienced the fullness of church membership as God intended it, I invite you to join the Ren family. Now, there are many other wonderful, life-giving church communities in greater Providence. Perhaps the Lord will lead you to one of those. My encouragement, though, is to pick one. Don’t wander year after year in a, sort of, church shopping mode. Let me help you—you won’t find a perfect church. Just pick one. I am most certainly biased, but I think that Ren Church would be an excellent choice :) So if you’ve never been a Core member at Ren Church, I invite you to be part of us. And if you were a member of Ren last year, I invite you to renew.
Winter Worship
One last thing I wanted to mention is that we’ve been opening our space at 10 Tripps Lane on Friday evenings for what we’ve been calling “Winter Worship.” It’s, essentially, an unplugged worship circle time of praying, singing, and reading Scripture. It starts at 7 pm and runs to 9:30 pm. The longer block is intentional to help us to really slow down to be still and hear God’s voice. All are welcome to join this time of seeking and refreshing. The darkness and coldness of winter can be hard to bear. Opportunities like this provide us with spiritual light and warmth to carry us through.
There are lots of other small groups and gatherings that are happening or are starting up soon, mostly in homes all around the area. I’ll dedicate a whole newsletter soon to give you details, however, if you are eager to find a small group or gathering right away to be part of—just respond back to this email info@renchurchri.org and our staff will help you find something that works with your schedule and is, hopefully, close to where you live.
Dreaming big for the days ahead!
Pastor Scott