What is This Is The Way?

As a local church, the unique thing that Redeemer exists to do is make disciples of Jesus Christ.  A disciple is a follower, or an apprentice, or a student of the Way of Jesus.  A follower of the Way makes it their number one priority in life to be with Jesus, become like Jesus and do life as Jesus did.  This holds many great and precious promises, Jesus in the Gospel of John said:

John 10:10 “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

This Is The Way is the primary tool that we as a church use to help people discover and follow the Way of Jesus and find this life to the full.  It has three key elements:

  1. Laying Good Foundations – what does it mean to become a follower of Jesus?
  2. Forming Rhythms of Grace – how do we sustain and maintain following him over our whole lives?
  3. Fighting for Life to the Full – how do we become free of our past and step into everything that God has for us?

Here you can find a little bit of an introduction to these things.

  • Laying Good Foundations

    Starting to follow Jesus or becoming a Christian, is well following Jesus, i.e. following his ways not our own.  We do not get to define what this looks like or that would just be following ourselves, wouldn’t it?  We see in the Bible that there are certain things that we need to do to begin this journey and things also to continue it if we are to grow into all that God has for us in this life.  We believe that the foundations of the Way of Jesus are repentance (turning from our own ways), faith (trusting God), water baptism, being filled with the Spirit and becoming a member of a local church where we serve, give financially and witness to Jesus.

  • Forming Rhythms of Grace

    Rhythms of grace are a set of personal practices and relational routines that allow us to be with Jesus, become more like him and do what he would do.  As a follower of Jesus, we want to live purposefully and intentionally and this requires looking at these habits, practices and rhythms that we have in our lives and assessing whether they are delivering the life we want.  Building in rhythms of grace is a long-term process to slowly re-engineer our lives to live in line with God’s purpose for us and our own deepest desires.

  • Fighting for Life to the Full

    Every follower of Jesus has a past of not following Jesus.  When we begin to follow Jesus we are told that we are born again (John 3:3), we are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), we are to put off our old life and begin a new life (Ephesians 4:22).  This requires a renewal and transformation of our thinking so that we can live a life pleasing to God (Romans 12:1-2).  We are given the authority as believers to overcome (Luke 10:19) every thought pattern, belief and habit that would hold us back from life to the full, however, we must exercise our God-given authority and fight against the enemies of the soul (Ephesians 6:10-11): our biological appetites (The Bible calls this: “the flesh”, Galatians 5:16), deceptive thoughts and ideas (The Bible calls this: “the devil, John 8:44)” and cultural practices (The Bible calls this: “the world”, 1 John 2:15) that are against what God has revealed to be true.

Getting Started

Download "This Is The Way" Booklet
Download "This Is The Way" Workbook

You first need to make the definitive step to follow Jesus.  This means you leave your old life behind and start a new life.  If you have not begun your journey with Jesus already, we recommend that you attend our next Alpha Course.

If you have not yet been baptized in water (after you believed in Jesus), you should be baptized by immersion.  We organize baptisms periodically and have a period of preparation for these.  Please contact us on a Sunday or drop us an email.

Even if you have been a follower of Jesus a long time, you may be unfamiliar with partnering with the Holy Spirit.  The Bible commands us to be filled  with Spirit continually (Ephesians 5:18) and walk with Him daily (Galatians 5:16) as the key to following Jesus.  If you would like to speak with someone more about this please drop us an email or chat to one of the leaders on Sunday.

The next step is to build in some personal and corporate practices that help sustain your walk with Jesus.  If you choose to be part of Redeemer, we recommend you to commit to our Shared Rhythms as a church.

We want to help you grow in following Jesus and become free of your old thinking and unhelpful habits.  We periodically run groups called “Freedom in Christ” which focus on these elements of finding freedom, see the Community Groups page.   Otherwise, we are more than happy to meet up and discover together what help you need.  Please send an email to our Pastoral Care Co-Coordinator.

Redeemer’s Shared Rhythms

We believe some practices are good for all of us.  We want to encourage all followers of Jesus in the following rhythms:

Click to zoom.