Will You Help Us Learn How to Serve Houston?

We're buying breakfast or lunch or coffee for anyone who would be willing to sit down with us and tell us about Houston (see our Let's Have Lunch page). Even though we are particularly focused on the southwest corner of Houston's inner loop (Bellaire, West University Place, Rice University, Texas Medical Center, etc.), we would love to hear about any part of Houston, or even Houston "as a whole." We want to learn about the people in Houston: What do they care about? What are they afraid of? What do they need? What do they want out of life? In essence, we want to really know who the people around us are. We want to know them because we want to learn how to serve them.

Our only agenda is to listen. Because we know we have a lot to learn about our area of Houston and the people who live and work here.

These Lunches are not some secret way of us trying to trick people into coming to our church. We obviously want people to come to our church because we believe that the church offers the only real hope that the people around us need. We would be desperately lost without this hope, so we want to share it with others. And so we want the people around us to find this hope in the safe community of the church. But these Lunches do not contain some secret agenda to get people to come to our church. No hidden scheme. Yes, we think that these Lunches will probably help us network with people in our community. But our main hope for these Lunches is to learn how to serve the people around us.

These Lunches are all about us learning how to become a certain kind of church - one that exists for the good of the people around us.

We want to love people well. We're serious about this. We want to actually contribute to our community. And to learn how to be and to do this, we think it is vitally important to hear firsthand from people in our community. Many of these people probably think that starting a new church inside Houston's inner loop is a crazy idea. That's okay. Even though many of them are disillusioned with the church, we still want to listen to them. We think their insight can really help us meet the needs of people around us - even in practical ways. We think these Lunches can help us learn how to share hope with people around us in ways that they find compelling. We won't make it awkward. We're not intimidating. And we'll do much more listening than talking.

For the sake of Houston, will you help us find people to meet with?

Maybe you're one of them. Or maybe you know someone who could help us learn about people who live and work in Houston. He or she doesn't have to be an "expert." Just someone who cares about Houston. And he or she doesn't have to be a Christian. In fact, we want to listen to what non-Christians really have to say. If you know anybody who you think would be willing to do this, please send them our way. Email us (info@redemptionhou.com) or fill out the form on our Let's Have Lunch page. Will you help us?