Happy Birthday to Us

 A♥ via Compfight

It’s hard to believe, but it was on this day (June 30) one year ago that we launched the ReKnew website. Happy Birthday ReKnew!!

As reflected in the ReKnew Manifesto, our goal is to stimulate Christians to rethink foundational aspects of the faith they embrace and to motivate skeptics to take a new look at aspects of the faith they reject. ReKnew also wants to provide theological and practical resources for the tribe of radical Reformers that is rising up out of the ruins of the old and tired religion of Christendom – the alleged “Church triumphant” that (mistakenly) thought it was supposed to conquer the world for Christ. And, finally, ReKnew endeavors to help form this “rising revolution” into an identifiable movement by serving as a hub that allows kingdom revolutionaries to begin to network with one another.

The ReKnew team is aware that, for us to have as much impact as possible, we need to think of the best way to influence the rising kingdom movement not just at the present time, but over the next several decades.  We are also aware that the lasting impact of a ministry will never outrun the depth of its foundation. For this reason, we’ve spent most of this last year laying the foundation for ReKnew. In fact, it will in all likelihood take another year of foundation building before ReKnew really begins to take off in ways that can be noticed in public. Yet, while most of what we’ve been working on is not visible, it has been a truly awesome year, and we thank God for every aspect of it!

Beyond addressing foundational issues, here are some of the noteworthy things that we’ve accomplished over the first year of this ministry.

• Thanks to Joel Pilger, ReKnew produced its first professional video and first poster introducing people to our ministry.  Another video is already in production.
• Our reader base has steadily risen to the point that we now have several thousand regular readers and even more new visitors to our site each week.
• We’ve received numerous testimonies of people being ministered to by this site, often in ways that “saved their faith.”
• Before this year, ReKnew had only a handful of people who supported it financially on a regular basis. We now have over 150 monthly supporters and many other other one-time or occasional givers.
• The global reach of this ministry is reflected in the fact that our support comes from 24 countries outside the United States.
• We hired Terri Churchill as the editor-in-chief of the ReKnew site (hasn’t she been doing a fantastic job?!).
• We have made several upgrades to our site, with several other major upgrades planned for the near future.
• In April, ReKnew helped host its first conference (the Open2013 conference at Woodland Hills Church).
• ReKnew has begun forging the kingdom network as Greg has been regularly meeting with potential leaders and other ministries related to the “rising revolution.”
• With the editorial help of Terri, Greg wrote Benefit of the Doubt, to be published by Baker this coming September.
• Greg continued work on (and is nearing completion of) his much anticipated The Crucifixion of the Warrior God, to be published by InterVarsity.

I hope you can see why we say it’s been an incredible first year! Yet, as we said, we’re just getting warmed up! We at ReKnew want to thank all of you who have been invested in this important ministry and who are helping us carry out the vision God has given to us. The fact of the matter is that we are at the cusp of a theological revolution that we are confident is going to completely transform the face of Christianity over the next 50 years, and as has proven true of the previous Reformations the Church has undergone, decisions that are made in the earliest years determine the role people will have in shaping that Reformation.  We all have a rare opportunity to help shape a Reformation that we believe will be more revolutionary than the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. We encourage you to seek God’s will about what role he would have you play in this Reformation and, if he so leads you, to partner with us in doing it.

We thank God for all he has done, and we’re excited about all he is going to do in the year that lies before us! Stay tuned!

Bless you,

Greg and the ReKnew Team