Those of us over age 40 remember returning glass soda bottles to the store to receive deposit money. Bottling companies would buy their bottles back, clean them, refill them, and send them back out, a process called redemption (some states still practice this today).

Redemption is different from recycling in at least one important way. While recycling destroys something in order to reuse it, redemption buys something back for its original design and purpose.

Charleston Outreach in South Carolina is committed to redemption—restoring the world around us to God's good design and purpose. God's purposes include a person's eternal destiny and the quality of their life on earth. So we work to ensure that people's lives are whole and healthy, and that they develop right relationships with God and with each other.

Church congregations are essential to this task. They meet spiritual needs as bearers of God's life-restoring story. And they can round out the redemptive process by partnering ...