Welcome To Redemption Groups
We are starting redemption groups soon to serve those at Legacy Church with intense struggles with sin who desire a gospel-centered group to link arms and grow with. These groups will meet in seasons of about 3 months at a time and will involve intense teaching, sharing, relating, praying, and gospel application. They are for various sins such as anger, depression, sexual addiction, same-sex attraction, abortion, sexual abuse, past trauma, eating disorders, and many others we are sure. The goal is to grow and equip the addicted and the abused as we, together, lift our eyes and hearts in fresh trust to Jesus to behold what He has done for us and to work out what it means for our everyday struggles.
It is not so much the nature or struggle that will likely lead people to redemption groups since we all struggle with sin until we die. If anyone among us does not struggle against sin on a daily basis, they are either at those times blinded to sin or are not fighting it. Redemption groups are for those who feel particularly ensnared, overcome, or perhaps inadequately equipped to deal with something new that has arisen in their lives. We should all be at this place at some point, and there is no shame in even the spiritually more mature coming, if they are overcome by something new or a reappearance of something old. To be saved on this side of Christ’s return is to repent daily, even hourly, and lift our eyes to Christ afresh.
For those who do not feel overcome or only moderately so, it is the purpose of Legacy’s gospel communities to provide a place to talk about these issues, share in gospel application, and grow together on mission to lift up God in Knoxville, TN and the world abroad. Redemption groups are much safer place for severe struggles and very shameful struggles. The goal is for redemption groups to interact directly with gospel communities in several ways.
- Redemption groups help the ashamed trust in Christ’s covering and share their struggles with their gospel community to help people come free from their shame and breathe realism and authenticity into the gospel communities.
- Redemption groups equip the struggling with a great many resources to learn how to fight sin and love Christ more in a practical way. This equipping is meant to translate into gospel communities to better equip us all apply the gospel well.
- Redemption groups, being multi-struggle groups, take blinders off our eyes to see the totality of our sin in many aspects of our lives. This will help those in redemption groups to relate to their gospel communities more clearly.
- Gospel communities give a gospel context of belonging and joining God’s mission that cannot come from redemption groups alone. This further removes the blinders that pretend the world revolves around our prominent sin struggles.
- Interactions within gospel communities will much better show how our laziness and falling into sin so terribly impacts those around us since we are a body and rely on one another. Redemption groups alone only give narrow glimpses of this.
- Community groups offer a real life, “less safe” venue to learn more fully that safety is ultimately in Christ alone no matter how messy, offensive, or upheaved life becomes (Psalm 46).
- The only way out of our shackles is for our thoughts, desires, motives, our whole world, to revolve around who God is — His glory. In this, we already join His mission to spread His fame, and community groups are the outlet for doing this in a tangible way.