Last week, R2 premiered THIS VIDEO, a retrospective of where we’ve been as a church.  You really should check it out.  Our Design Team outdid itself.

Following is the script:

   We came out of the wilderness, wandering through life, wondering if this is life. We are sons and daughters, husbands and wives, divorced, sinners, has-beens, could-have-beens, and vagabonds. We came out of the wilderness. Sunburned. Isolated. Thirsty. Thirsty for a different God than what we had experienced. Thirsty to be given a chance without, first, being judged. Thirsty not to judge. So we started running. Like John the Baptist of old, we came out of that wilderness declaring the Way of our God embracing our run as a journey of new births and free, artistic worship. Calling ourselves Renaissance Road, in September of 2008, we ran to Southwest Guilford High School’s auditorium, carrying all of our “church props” in for worship and then out when worship was over. It was an exhausting part of our journey, but God was with on this Renaissance Road, and others discerning God with us began running alongside.

Determined to reach out to a generation of high school students left behind by the people around them, God led us to a place near the epicenter of activity in the northern part of High Point, North Carolina, and in May 2009, we struck a deal in our trek and acquired a space for our students to encounter God. The leaders of this ministry branded themselves with the name “Relevate.” We wanted to let our students know that God’s desire for them is to begin preparing for their journey even now, and these Relevators commenced running with us. We began to wonder if our journey was taking us, the whole church, to this new, exciting location. In July 2009, Renaissance Road would relocate and follow Relevate, the younger, in an ironic twist of fate, leading the older. The rigors of the run gave way to a safe place, a place where friendships were forged and families could laugh. In this new place, God formalized his call for us to bring people far from God back to God so that they could know life change. Students from the local universities joined in the run, bringing their creativity to the table. We heard their need, and a new ministry was forged that we called The Well, a place for the the thirsty young adult to find respite. Then suddenly out of nowhere, little children began to flood us. Small children with parents and without showed up at our front doors, and we opened our hearts to them, showing them the Road even before they were able to run it. God was surely moving among the children and the students in our midst.

In 2010, we kept knocking down walls and opening up space to accommodate our family of runners. Finally, in January of 2011, something happened. The heavens snapped. The veil between this place and that place lifted, and a thin place was uncovered, a place where God would move and change life after life after life. There were Baptisms. There was repentance. There was life change en masse. And for a minute, God rewarded the runners by quenching their thirst. As always though, God called us on, reminding us that we are not in a sprint but a life-race, reminding us that he has told us to be more. We are a people of the wilderness. We are a people who have seen God move. Yet, we still run because the move of yesterday does not quench the thirst of today. We are the runners along this Renaissance Road, and we’re just beginning.