Deck the halls 2016 was one of the funnest events we have had! There was food, laughter, games, decorating and yes there was a snowball fight (fake snowballs of course). Below you will find a few of our favorite pictures from the event. 

If you don't find your picture within this photo stream or would like to download your picture for your family Christmas card, click here and you can find all the photos from the night. 

We would ask that if you do share your picture on social media that you would use the #RedeemerDeckTheHalls so we can see the compilation of photos and messages throughout the social media world. 

We hope you enjoy all the fun photos. See you all next year. 

This week's post by Brandon Adent, a deacon at Redeemer Church. He likes words and music, and as soon as he hits publish will pour himself another cup of coffee and listen to an old Switchfoot album.

Fine. 

Given the question “How are you doing?”, a response meant to communicate a mental state somewhere between “decent” and “I can’t complain”.

But “fine” is lazier, somehow; I find it to be an effective substitute for “I don’t want to get into it”.

“Fine”. What a terrible word.

And yet it is the word I choose most often.

Perhaps I go with this awful word due to a lack of time or energy. Or maybe I’m trying to be considerate; I know someone else is going through a much tougher time, and it doesn’t make sense to talk about how I’m bored at work or school.

For me, though, the main reason is not that I’m doing well or poorly, it’s that I haven’t stopped think about it. I get so caught up in finding and making distractions that I lose sight of what I’m avoiding.

I don’t want to stop the hamster wheel of distraction, either. (They’ve gotta know that all that work is getting them nowhere, right?). I’m scared of which adjective is true. Actually. I’m scared of saying which adjective is true, of admitting to myself and others how I truly am.

But, as Christians, the Gospel frees us up to be honest with ourselves and others. We know that God sees behind every facade we create, every little lie we tell ourselves, every flaw or weakness we try to cover:

“O God, you know my folly,” the Psalmist says, “the wrongs I have done are not hidden from you.” (Psalm 69:5)

Because the only Person who does not have opinions knows us for who we really are - and died for us knowing our worst - we can be honest with ourselves and others. We don’t have to resort to “fine”.

Like any word, “fine” does have it’s place in life and conversation. But don’t let it take the place of honesty.

Given the question “How are you doing?”, maybe pick a different response than “fine”.

This blog is by Ashley Bowie, who pairs well with coffee and a good story.

Life is really hard. I’m sure you have noticed that. Sometimes in life you have to deal with people who don’t like you, or with people you don’t like. You have to work during times you would rather be with your family. People say mean things or do terrible things, loved ones die or we have to stand by as they face trials we don’t know how to help with. Life is really hard.

It does not become perfectly easy as a Christ follower. I’m sure you’ve noticed that too. People still hurt you, bosses still exist, tragedies happen to us or the people we love and you can still get weary and depressed. In our own community right now there are people facing loss and hardship that seems unfair, and more than most of us know what to do with.

The world will offer a few solutions to your problems, they come in little inspirational slogans on a backdrop of a sunset or waterfall. ‘Pull yourself up’ is the general idea in most of them. If you can’t manage that, then try to keep your sorrows to yourself and not weigh down the rest of the world. You’ll get better, give it time.

The people of God have another option. We have one another. The New Testament has 55 “One Another” statements. These verses call out how we are to treat one another. We are called the body of Christ; we are one body. The hand does not despise the foot, the eye does not despise the heart, we are all in this together. When one member suffers, all suffer, when one rejoices, all rejoice. That means we don’t abandon people when they are sad because it makes us too sad. We don’t grow envious of one another’s victories because we didn’t get a victory. We share in these things with one another. You are no freer to walk away from a member of the body of Christ than you are to cut off your own hand. Sure you could, but only at a great detriment to yourself.

A few weeks ago, the women of Redeemer gathered together for breakfast, prayer and good conversation. Usually there is a teaching during these quarterly gatherings but not this week. We gathered intentionally, to bear one another’s burdens.

Galatians 6:2 “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

There is no instruction on how to do this. But as the body of Christ, that has the spirit of Christ, you don’t have to know. Sometimes the thing to do is just be there, sometimes it’s offering prayer, or to take a task off their hands. The thing is, Christ knows what is needed, and we as His body, simply act in love. Language does not contain the right words in times of sorrow, and it is hard to know what do or say when your friend loses someone, or faces a tragedy. But still we are called to bear with one another.

I think in the simplest of terms, this means just not walking away, not cutting off your hand. For us, on that sunny Saturday morning, this meant we spent time just talking with one another, listening to one another’s stories, and sharing our own. This meant that when we prayed for a friend we all wept together for the struggle she is facing. This means we remember one another’s trials and we continue to pray. You don’t have to know what to do because God does know, and He will see to it. Bearing with one another means hand to hand praying, one foot after the other, brain communicating with heart, lungs handling the rhythm of breath while the tear ducts empty.

No one is in this alone. The world has nothing to offer because the world is “every man for himself.” Among the body of Christ it is, “every man is myself.” 

This week's post by Brandon Adent, a deacon at Redeemer Church. He loves words, music, and words about music. And napping.

I love and hate summer.

I love that it’s warm and not hot. I love that people seem to get social all of a sudden, making up for all the time we spent binging on Netflix in January.

But I hate that it’s only July, and I’m wiped out. Our calendar says we’ll be gone the next three weekends. That’s fine with me; I just want sleep, to completely unplug from life in my normal environment and dive into a mountain paper and words. Just for a little bit.

Rest and Community

There’s a time for that. God built the need for rest into the DNA of creation (Genesis 2.1-3, Exodus 20.8-11), and it’s important to recognize that we are finite beings with constraints on our energy and time. We need rest, in the form of days off, vacations, and free evenings. Sometimes, we see Sunday services and small midweek gatherings as impediments to rest. And sometimes they are.

But, at the same time, God has made us family. He knows that we also need one another and as a result places a high importance on meeting together (Hebrews 10.25, for example). However, we often forget our church families or the implications of our absence when we plan for time away.

I’m not at all saying we shouldn’t take vacations, or that we shouldn’t ever miss a Sunday gathering. Again, God knows we need periods of rest, and sometimes that looks like time away and unplugged.

Staying Connected

Even if we’re going to be away for awhile, it’s possible - and important - to stay connected with what’s going on in your church community. That takes a bunch of different forms:

• Pray for everyone serving on a Sunday, for visitors, and for the needs of members of the church.
• Listen to the sermons that you miss. You can find those on the website, or on iTunes.
• Keep in touch with other people in the church to make sure you are aware of how you can be praying for them, and how they can be praying for you. If you’re in town midweek, don’t skimp on meeting if you can help it. (I say this as one often guilty of the “prep skip”).
• Check your notification settings on the City to make sure you’re aware of what’s going on in the ministries you serve in, and contribute to the discussion if you can. (This is specific to Redeemer. If you are part of Redeemer, are not on the City, and want to be, send us an email at info@redeemernw.org, and we’ll get you squared away).

Again, by all means, if you need to unplug completely, do it. Personally, I love camping way outside cell phone range, or just turning my phone off altogether. It just gives my mind a break from all the noise.

Even without being connected by the web, we can still be connected to the life of the church by praying for services and the needs of the people we know.

Ultimately, Jesus struck this balance between rest and engagement flawlessly. We have perfect rest and community in Him, so we don’t have to be afraid or despair the repercussions of our failure.

This definitely is not a call to skip vacation, just a reminder to remember your church while you are vacationing.

This week's blog was written by Theresa Adams, a wife and mother who loves to tap dance. 

Showing up. Getting into it. How much about this do any of us really get?

How do we turn up for someone when they are in a crisis? When they are suffering?

Showing up can be hard, messy, difficult, uncomfortable, and did I say hard? When you purposefully choose to meet someone in a difficult place it is anything but simple.

You may question yourself, fend off insecurities and wonder what you did that day that made you sound like an idiot/uncaring/self-absorbed person. Showing up is something that all of us, no matter the stage of life we are in, will one day experience.

We will either make the choice to show up or we will need people to show up for us. Maybe it's just me, but I'd like to be a lot better at giving and receiving so that when the time comes I won't be immobilized. I won't think that they have people closer to them that have it. I won't allow the lack of relationship to hold me back. Nor, when I find myself in need for me or my family, will I freeze and not know how to welcome them in. I've already done that.

Opening Up

For years it seemed like my family was living in lean times. People close to us knew. It was obvious that my husband lost his job. That we weren't able to join in when people went on fun outings or out to dinner. We always wore the same clothes. We kept the smiles plastered to our faces. The thing about being in hard times was that we knew it was hard. We were living it. We didn't want to spend any time talking about it. We didn't want it to get more airtime than it deserved. We thought that if we kept the smile in place and the questions at bay that the difficult time we were enduring would be easier to live with.

And that worked. For a time.

Until, finally, I just had to get it out. To admit how hard it was to not even be able to buy toothpaste. To admit how humbling it was to be at the food bank. And once I started letting people in and sharing how tough of a place it truly was to be losing our home, to know we didn't know where we were going to go, to know we just wanted to be able to celebrate Christmas with our kids then things started feeling a bit easier.

Nothing changed in our day to day circumstances, mind you. We still had the same amount in our bank account but it became a little easier to breath. People who had been watching us from afar were invited closer. They were relieved to be able to "do something”. They loved on us in countless ways from listening, to anonymous checks in the mail, to providing housing for us, to providing Christmas for our family.

By letting people in our tanks, which had been on empty, were suddenly overflowing. Those full-to-the-brim tanks enabled us to continue on, to be encouraged, fueling us for the remainder of that tough season.

So, may I just encourage you that if you are in a hard place it is completely okay to let people in on it. There is no bravery in keeping it to yourself. There is no gold star at the end for being stoic. It is, rather, a sign of courage to let others in. To invite them into the trenches. To have them mourn alongside you. They won't always get it right, but it's far better than going at it alone.

Showing Up

At times we will find ourselves not on the receiving end, but on the end where we want to give. We want to show up, but we aren't sure how. We say "Let me know if I can do anything" but often that blanket offer of help can be overwhelming to those hearing it. They may not even know what their needs are much less how you can help. Here are a couple of things that just might help us know to to show-up a little better.

Pray.

Seems obvious, right? But so often when our people are going through something difficult we want to do something tangible for them. Something more that "just" pray. Or sometimes the stuff our people are going through is long. We pray for a while and then we sense their situation will be one of long suffering and we give up on prayer for we don't see any relief. coming their way. Prayer can not only equip us to show up better it can also work on behalf of our people. It is a way that God has given us to give our burdens over to Him. He doesn't always answer according to our timeline nor according to our wishes, but each time we lift up a prayer to Him He is hearing it with fresh ears. He never tires of our requests, so why should we?

Meals.

Another obvious one, right? I think we all know that meals can be a huge way we can show up for people. Whether they've had a baby, are going through a divorce, just received a difficult diagnosis or lost someone dear to them, no matter what it is they are eventually going to need to eat. And not having to think about planning or preparing said meal can be a huge relief.

If cooking isn't your jam then think gift cards which can be an immense blessing. Or try bringing breakfast foods instead of a dinner. Someone dear to me was going through chemo and she said one way she was shown great love was when others brought their kids sack lunches. Sandwiches, fruit, cheese, maybe a juice box. Brilliant. Helpful. And no culinary degree required.

Keep in mind if there may be many people contributing meals so an excessively large meal is not necessary as there will also be many leftovers. This is not something I've ever thought about before, but my “Showing Up Adviser” told me how much time and energy it can take to package, freeze or store the leftovers.

Don't Ask. Just Do.

When I asked my person who had fought cancer what advice she would offer to those wanting to help, her sage advice was "If you really want to help, don't ask. Kindly, but firmly say what it is you are going to come help with. For example: ‘I would like to come over and clean your bathrooms, or do your laundry or clean up your kitchen. What is a good day for me to do this?’. The person probably feels physically pretty crummy and discouraged about how much they can't do, but human nature makes it really hard for us to accept the offer of help. But when a friend says, ‘I love you and I am coming to do this for you’… that's a gift."

These suggestions are not exhaustive by any means. But they are a start for when we know we want to show up but have no idea where to begin.

I think an important piece of the puzzle is to remember you won't get it right every time. You don't need to have the polished words, the perfect verse or the best cup of coffee. Sometimes you just need to be there. To listen. To not say anything at all or to just simply sit in silence.

Regardless of how you show up or how others show up for you it's the love behind it that really stands out.

This week's post by Brandon Adent, a deacon at Redeemer Church. He likes music, words, and words about music.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote on listening to sermons, about being attentive to what God is speaking through His Word and how to work towards getting the most out of it. As a part of that post, I touched on my fondness for paper Bibles. Specifically my paper Bible with rips, creases and coffee stains accumulated over nearly a decade of use.

It reminded me how much I love things I can feel.

We live in a world of automation, of comfort and ease. If you don’t own, don’t want to carry, or just straight up forgot a paper Bible on a Sunday, you can downIoad one to your phone in an instant. Most of the time, if you don’t want to go into the bank you don’t have to, and you can make a transfer in seconds. If you don’t want to read the newspaper, you can jump on the web to get the highlights, curated and tailored to your specific interests. If you don’t want to chop vegetables, you can get a machine that will do it for you, and do it better than you could.

God created us as physical beings to live and interact with physical objects, to create and steward and manage them for His glory and the good of everyone. And yet, it seems to me that we go to great lengths to rid ourselves of these cumbersome physical processes. Or, at least to get physical things that make life easier. I really, really don’t think that’s bad. But I do think we take them for granted, and miss out on opportunities to thank God for His provision.

Telling Stories

At many points in the gospels, we can hear Jesus speak in parables, basically stories with a moral or spiritual lesson. Often, He uses everyday objects and processes as illustrations. He references vine pruning, wine pressing, bird watching, bread baking, fishing, reaping and sowing. These are jobs that, if people didn’t do them themselves, they were at least aware of what they entailed.

Jesus then connects these mundane, arduous, physical processes, and uses them to say something about God and what He's doing.

When I eat bread I know that it tastes good, but I am so far disconnected from the physical process of making it that I completely forget the hours and care and ingredients went into it.

Some friends of mine recently started baking bread the old fashion way, beginning with the starter. They mix flour and water and let it sit for awhile, “feeding” it more flour as the starter expands until finally they have enough leaven to make a couple loaves of bread.

Because they’ve gone through the process of making bread and I haven’t, Jesus saying “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened”, is going to mean a lot more to them than it is to me. (Matt 13.33)

What We’re "Missing"

So, what am I suggesting? Just that we be mindful people that take the time to understand what we're missing, that know the time and effort it took someone to make what they did and be grateful to God for whatever agony they saved us.

For example, rather than write my own definition of a parable, I used Google to find a definition in about six seconds.

Google is easy, right? Just punch in what you want and see where it takes you. But, what process is that replacing?

Twenty years ago, my parents would have told me to go find a dictionary, which would have taken me a whole five minutes, and if we didn’t have a dictionary or it wasn’t in there, I would have had to ask everyone I knew until I found an answer. If those efforts proved fruitless, I would have had to carefully read all the parables, distill them down to their core elements, and come up with a definition myself. For what it’s worth, I think that process is really fun.

But I don’t have time to do it right now. So. Praise God for Google! He gave someone a vision for what internet searching could be, and gave them the mind to make it.

I’ve got another friend who’s really into woodworking, and he uses all hand tools to do it. One of his earlier projects was to make a workbench, crafted to his exact needs. I don't recall how long it took, but I know it was awhile. He came out the other side of the project with something he was proud of and a greater understanding of woodworking.

My friend loves woodworking. I do not. If I want a workbench, I will go buy a workbench. Shoot, if I want a wooden stool, I'll go buy a wooden stool.

But because of my friend, I would appreciate that stool more, knowing how much time and effort went into it, even if it was a five dollar stool machined by someone in China. Which, as an aside, is also crazy. Because that means someone figured out to make a stool that would cost me five dollars and make enough money to stay in business.

These are all examples of people, made in the image of God, doing what people do, being creators and stewards and managers of the world around them. We don’t always have the best of intentions when we do this, but God gives a lot of grace for our endeavors to work out for the benefit of others.

Being Thankful

I don't think we always have to go through the process of figuring out what we're "missing". Sometimes, we just don't care; we just need to get the thing done and move on. And that's okay.

One thing we should understand, though, is that God Himself didn't just send His Son to save us from an inconvenience, but from an impossibility.

The debt we owe for our sin is so great that no amount of mere human toil could overcome or pay it back. Jesus lived perfectly, died sacrificially, and rose victoriously for people who were and are unaware of what they owe apart from Christ.

For all of this, let's be marked by a constant gratefulness just to be alive, for the convenience and luxury we often take for granted, and the new life that we have in Jesus.