A lunchroom that smelled like tacos.
We held our first service on September 7, 2003, a church plant sent out from Heartland Community Church along the K-10 corridor west of Kansas City. Kevin Cloud and Tim Suttle led us.
We started as a seeker-model church called “The K-10 Project,” meeting in the lunchroom of Meadow Lane Elementary. Two families became a few more.
The portable years.
Growth meant moving: first to Prairie Trail Middle School, then to Olathe Northwest High School. Being a portable church meant we arrived before 6am to build everything out of a trailer, then tore it all back down after worship.
Down the K-10 to Lawrence.
Many of us drove in from Lawrence, thirty minutes down the highway and home to KU. So we started a second Sunday-evening service on campus. But suburban Johnson County and Lawrence’s student community were different worlds.
After two years, we sent it off to become its own congregation. Today it’s Vintage Church.
When the novelty wore off.
We had grown from two families to around four hundred. Then we stalled. Commitments expired, a young staff member was arrested, and Heartland began raising $10 million for a building just down the road.
Most of us stayed, and kept serving.
We didn’t want a model at all.
We stopped chasing the seeker model. We renamed ourselves Redemption and went looking for something deeper than a strategy. We partnered with Daniel Bocanegra and Via de Esperanza, started a food pantry, and turned toward mercy and justice in our neighborhood.
We lost a lot of people along the way.
“We didn’t want a model at all. We wanted to learn who God had made us to be as a community.”Tim Suttle
Faithful instead of impressive.
Kevin Cloud stepped off staff and Tim Suttle became our senior pastor. We were down to about 125. We made a decision we’ve held onto ever since: concern ourselves with being faithful, and leave the numbers to God.
“Faithfulness instead of growth.”
Into the neighborhood.
We bought an old Lutheran church in one of Johnson County’s only pockets of dense poverty and diversity. About 45 of our families committed to give extra over three years, a bank financed the rest, and we moved into a neighborhood most people were leaving.
After renovating on a shoestring, we moved in during the fall of 2011.
Common table.
On Sundays, our neighbors come early for showers, coffee, and donuts starting around 7:00, before we gather at 10 for singing, scripture, blessing the children, teaching, and communion.
Redemption Español, led by Jose Salas, gathers in the same room afterward. Same table, two languages.
Instead of a mission statement, four pursuits.
These aren’t requirements or accomplishments, just the practices we keep coming back to. Tap one.
We gather Sundays around word, song, table, and prayer, practicing the rhythms that form us.
Read about worship →Come find us on a Sunday.
Doors open early. Our neighbors come for showers, coffee, and donuts starting around 7:00. Redemption Español gathers in the same room afterward.