Sewing the seeds with hard work and patience

Michele Marr

The Bible sometimes speaks of spiritual matters in agrarian terms.

In a story known as the parable of the mustard seed, Jesus said,

“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and

sowed in his field.”

And St. Paul told Christians in the early church, “Whatever a man

sows, that he will also reap.” He was quick to add that the harvest

would come “in due season ... if [you] do not lose heart.”

If planting a field crop and seeing it to harvest takes patience

and hard work, planting and harvesting spiritual things takes every

bit as much. Jim Belcher, senior pastor of Redeemer Church, can

attest to that.

Belcher had served with three congregations of the Presbyterian

Church in America in Southern California when he was sent to Costa

Mesa two years ago on a mission to plant a new church.

Since then, a Bible study of six to eight young adults meeting in

private homes has grown into a diverse, multigenerational

congregation of more than 80 members.

Those who attended that early Bible study and those who were the

church’s early members were by and large young college-age and

working singles or married couples. A few were young families with

infant and preschool children.

The church has now attracted more families whose children are in

high school and who come to church with them. There are also parents

who have already raised their children and couples who are now

grandparents.

“We have much more of an age spread now. We are becoming a

multigenerational church and coming out of a Gen-X program, I didn’t

want to be a generational pastor,” Belcher said. “I wanted a church

filled with not only ethnic diversity, but also generational

diversity, and we are starting to see that.”

A number of the church’s young married couples have had their

first children in the past two years, and Belcher is anticipating

more newborns in the next few years.

“I think we are going to go through a huge baby boom in the next

two or three years,” he said.

Belcher is seeing the fruits of his labors, as well as the fruits

of the commitment and tenacity of the church’s members, but only nine

months ago the small congregation had little more than 40 members,

and they were scraping at times to make ends meet.

It was hard for them to pay their pastor, to pay their rent for

the rooms they meet in at the Westin Hotel, South Coast Plaza, and to

pay for the professional musicians who play for their worship

services each week. But they never lost hope.

Recent Holy Week services drew record numbers and garnered more

new members.

“We are still tiny, even a minuscule church compared the

mega-churches whose shadows we are in, but we’ve doubled in size each

year,” Belcher said.

Belcher sees some advantages to being relatively small. People get

to know each other more easily and more intimately. During the week,

members meet in even smaller community groups to study the Bible or

other topics of interest from a biblical point of view.

One group has been studying the concept of just war, and another

is studying biblical principles for handling family finances. Next

week, a group of graduate students will launch a discussion group for

skeptics at the UC Irvine.

Members also get together regularly for social events such as

barbecues and potluck dinners.

While the congregation grows, its mission, by design, remains much

the same. From the beginning, the church aimed to worship in a way at

once ancient and modern to connect with the immense history and

culture of the Christian Church.

Belcher is convinced that Christians from many of today’s

generations long to be rooted in and nourished by the rich traditions

and spiritually of the 2,000-year-old Christian church.

To that end, the hymns and prayers of the church’s worship may

sometimes be as old as the church itself or fairly contemporary.

Music is accompanied by grand piano, sax and flute and sometimes

violin.

Belcher describes the music as having a jazzy, classical feel. In

the coming months, he hopes to introduce music from Christianity’s

Celtic and Scottish traditions, including bagpipes playing hymns such

as “Amazing Grace.”

His sermons are expository. Last fall he preached through the Old

Testament book of Ecclesiastes, and in the spring he preached from

chapter 11 of the New Testament book of Hebrews, sometimes called the

hall of faith.

In the weeks before Easter, he went through the passion

narratives, the story of Jesus’ last week on Earth.

This Sunday, mothers will be honored and thanked for the work they

do caring for their families and raising their children.

“Our goal, though, is to build strong covenant, healthy families,

not just once a year on Mother’s Day, but hopefully we are building

the foundations for being good moms and parents every Sunday by

giving them in-depth teaching in God’s word,” Belcher said.

Belcher will soon start a sermon series on “The Life of Joy and

Peace,” based on the book of Philippians.

“I think people are hungry for depth in Scripture teaching,” he

said. “We are trying to reclaim that in depth, historical,

expositional preaching. It’s done most places anymore.”