Welcome!

The following overview will serve as a road map to introduce you to Redemption Groups™, the Redemption book and the process of starting up Redemption Groups in your own church, counseling center, charity organization, military chapel, or other ministry organization.

If you’re an individual, interested in Redemption Groups for your own personal edification, read this instead.

Step 1: Get familiar with Redemption Groups and their curriculum

The structure of Redemption Groups:

• Here is a brief written description of Redemption Groups.
• This video also addresses the basics about Redemption Groups, as well as the structure and strategy of the ministry within Mars Hill Church. Similar best practices are followed by other churches.

• Read the Redemption book, which serves as the curriculum.
• This document is a summary of the whole book, chapter by chapter.
• In this video, Mike Wilkerson summarizes the book’s key ideas.
• Here are some audio and video samples of Redemption main session teaching.

Step 2: Apply

We want to partner with churches and other ministries to help them equip their leadership teams to launch Redemption Groups. An essential part of that equipping is providing Redemption Group experiences. Time, trial and error and have shown that for leaders to lead Redemption Groups well, they need to go through a Redemption Group themselves first.

The primary way we offer Redemption Group experiences for new ministries, is through a Redemption Group Immersion. Because space is so limited at Immersions, we want to ensure that our partners are placed first. These are churches and ministries who have comprehensive plans for equipping leaders and preparing their churches to launch Redemption Groups. Dr. Bob Kellemen has written an excellent, step-by-step guide for this planning and development process: Equipping Counselors for your Church.

Application and March 2012 Immersion Pre-registration: If you’re applying now in hopes of getting into the March 2012 Immersion in Seattle, use this application form, as it combines your application with pre-registration for this Immersion. If you don’t intend to pre-register for the March 2012 Immersion, apply here instead—we’ll keep you posted of future Immersion opportunities.

Once your application is approved, we’ll add you to the waiting list to be trained at a Redemption Group Immersion. (In some cases, we may be able to connect you with churches in your area who also run Redemption Groups—your team may be able to get Redemption Group experience by partnering with another ministry for a season). In the meantime, you should be recruiting and training leaders as biblical counselors, which brings us to the next step.

Step 3: Train

Ministries seeking to launch Redemption Groups should expect to spend six to twelve months preparing their leaders and organizations. Here are some guidelines for training Redemption Group leaders.

The Redemption Group Immersion could fall anywhere within that training period. While training at an Immersion is required before launching Redemption Groups, you are expected to be assessing and training your leaders as biblical counselors before and after the Immersion.

At the Immersion, your leaders will be assessed using criteria like those on this assessment form. If it seems to our leaders and supervisors that your leaders are ready to launch Redemption Groups, we’ll give you the green light. Otherwise, we’ll offer guidance on how to continue preparing them.

Step 4: Launch

Churches or ministries who successfully implement their training plans are granted a license to use the group materials, name and branding and continue to receive priority placement at Immersions for training future leaders.

Redemption Group™, Redemption Groups™ and Redemption Group Immersion™ are trademarks of the The Redemption Group Network, and may not be used without a licensing agreement.

As of January 2012, we are still in an “early adopter” phase. A number of churches have successfully launched Redemption Groups and we are learning how to streamline the development process. In this phase, no fees are being paid to The Redemption Group Network. In the next phase, which we expect to begin later in 2012, fees will be collected based on participation volume. We are still exploring pricing models that will help your ministry and ours thrive together.