The Church is US

Redemption Church in Carson City, Nevada, has experienced what it means for the church to follow God’s lead in uncertain times and how to be a blessing to their community in unconventional ways. 

Stephen Garman, lead pastor, came to Redemption Church as part of a revitalization in 2017, and began asking God for a financial miracle on behalf of the church.

“Shortly after moving here, I began to pray and ask God to give me something for this church as far as direction and where He was leading us,” Garman says. “And I felt like God gave me the simple phrase, ‘We are Carson's church.’”

At the time, Redemption Church had the largest church facility in the city with multiple buildings, acreage, and a large auditorium. The church began to grow over the next couple of years, but after some unexpected costs, they abruptly lost the property in February 2019.

That following Sunday morning, without any time to share the news with the congregation, church leaders waved the members arriving for church into a field across the street where they had set up a flatbed trailer as a stage.

Mitch Pier, a long-time church member and former member of the board, shares about that memorable day.

“I remember thinking that this is going to be miserable. It's freezing cold. It's snowing,” he recalls. “And the snow stopped and the sun came out, and it was beautiful. And we had church on the side of the road. And then when we got done, we wrapped everything up just as it started snowing again. We knew immediately that God was with us and to keep going and just to follow Him.”

By the next weekend, the church had found a temporary meeting space in the Boys and Girls Club. This began their seven-year journey as a pop-up church, meeting in spaces around the community, including the local middle school, online meetings during the 2020 pandemic, the children’s museum, and then another middle school, their current location.

Through it all, they found God’s direction and provision.

Garman shares, “Without the stability of even a yearlong lease, we've learned to just walk with the Lord and just say, ‘God, as You lead, help us to be faithful behind You.’”

Even meeting in the schools had seemed miraculous, because, as Garman states, “The school district had not allowed a church to meet in their schools in over 10 years because they had had a bad experience. But the superintendent offered us a place, and the door just opened wide.”

While the constant moving and changing venues was a challenge, it also ended up creating many opportunities for Redemption. Garman says, “in all these situations, we've partnered with these organizations and developed relationships in town because we're a pop-up church.”

In every building, the church found an opportunity to meet needs in the community.

“Through all these times, we found ourselves in really cool situations where we didn't have a home, but we had people that wanted to serve,” Pier says. “And so we would serve the school district with backpack drives and the Boys and Girls Club with coat drives and glove drives and outreaches during Christmas. We began to serve the kids museum and do things for them and even decorate for different activities they were having.”

Garman began to find meaning in the phrase God had given him.

“We are Carson's church,” he says. “We have great relationships in the community, and now we're being asked to help them in practical ways, and we're able to step in and just share the love of Christ in that way.”

Recently, the community began seeking additional help from the church.

According to Garman, “We got a call from the principal of the school where we were meeting on Nov. 3, when the food stamps and the government assistance had been shut off, letting us know that there were families in our school who didn't have any food, and asking if there was anything our church could do to help.” In that week, the church was able to partner with some other organizations in town and put together 100 meal bags for families at the school. School staff, church members, and people from the community all came together to distribute the meals.

For Thanksgiving, the church hosted another meal drive and created 30 full Thanksgiving meals with turkeys for families at the school. And at Christmas, the church provided resources and gifts for families needing support.

Throughout this season, Garman says, “We've had to model through our faithfulness and our outreach that a church doesn't need a building to honor Christ and to please Him. Buildings are nice and all of us would absolutely take a building tomorrow if God would open the doors. But it hasn't slowed us down. For this time, being a pop-up church has served the work that God has called us to very effectively.”

A congregant shared with Garman her greatest takeaway from the experience, and he felt like it captured the essence of this time for their church.

“She said, ‘As a church, we're in a season of blessing.’ And for her, it wasn't the church receiving blessings, but it was the church being able to give.”

Pier shared that not only have they been able to give to their community, but they have been able to sponsor missionaries and church projects in other countries.

As Redemption Church moves through this season and looks to the future, their focus remains on following God’s direction and loving their community.

“Through seven years of sojourning and being a pop-up church in our community, we have really learned in the deepest possible ways that the church is us, that the church is the people — it's the gathering together of the saints,” Garman says. “It doesn't matter what roof is over our head. It doesn't matter if there's not a roof over our head. All that matters is that we gather and live out our faith together in community.”