Ummmmm, Yah!!!

As promised, Cory Demmel and his team totally ROCKED the house at Remnant last night. They had a dance team, a funny couple of skits, and then some stories that really moved us towards the heart of the Father. Cory preached about the Prodigal Son story, and he emphasized on the "older brother" and the Fathers love for us who have turned away from God.

It was a powerful time to realize that no matter what we have done, there is a God who is wanting to restore you and shower you with love and forgiveness. Pastor Herbie also shared his story that we could all relate to. He is one of the other great communicators of our nation. If you were there, you know what I'm talking about.

At the end, we had their team just pray over all of our students that were wanting to start living out their faith for the right reasons. It was an amazing time and one of our best no doubt! I am waiting with excitement to see what God is going to do in this ministry in the next few months.

Cory Demmel is in the House!!

Tonight at Remnant, we are going to get to have one of the nations best leaders in the house. Cory Demmel and his Masters Commission from Bellevue, Nebraska is going to be with us. They have such an amazing team and I can't wait for them to model what it means to really go after people and just own the room.

I've asked him to share his heart on the difference between 'appreciating' or 'enjoying' the spiritual environment in the room vs. being the one that steps out and 'creates' the environment. Its easy to enjoy the fruits of someone else's labor. Its hard to be the one that creates it. When everyone jumps in though, something electric happens in the room.

I can't wait for what God uses Cory to pour into Remnant!! Get ready!!

Remnant Discipleship

I'm so excited to start a new season of discipleship with Remnant. Our great team of leaders which includes Jolene Campbell, Dan & Stacey Martin, and my own beautiful wife Brenda, have really come together to form an amazing series of true discipleship.

Our goal will be to turn believers in Christ into genuine followers of Christ. Even in Jesus' day, many believed, but few learned the way of Christ. We want to raise a generation of informed, authentic, educated, grounded, humble, broken, caring, and passionate followers of the way of Jesus Christ. We want to teach them how to consider their actions, their beliefs, and their thoughts as they pursue the deeper components of their faith. We want to show them how they can grow THEIR OWN passion and deepen their own wells. I can't wait for Sundays @ 10:15a. It will be at Lee Pollard, where our South Hills Extended Church meets.

Get ready Remnant, this is going to get GOOD!!

We Are Whats Left...

Recently I've been having some people ask me about the viewpoint or idea I have regarding Christianity, Christ, or spirituality. I figured I outta write my thoughts, and then I remembered that I already did back in September last year. As I shared them with our team, they believed in them enough, that we designed our Remnant T-Shirt with the words in them. (btw, they are $10 & $3 of every shirt goes to Haiti Relief) Here is the overall message of love, Christ, hope, & real revival as I understand it.

"For years people have been walking away from Christianity, and for good reason too. The message of love has no heart. The message of Grace has too infrequently been used by His followers. The voice of God is muted by judgmental elitists who condemn and yell at those 'in sin.' The sound of a people who worship together is silenced by the noise of racial indifference. Remnant is a people who've not bowed their knee to another god, even the god of religious Christianity. We love those we don't understand. We celebrate everyone because we believe that everyone matters. To us, church is not a place, its a people. We are the church. Remnant is a people who think Jesus meant it when he said: love your neighbor as yourself, and they will know you are my disciples when you love each other. Its time to redefine what people think about followers of Christ. We need Jesus just as much as anyone else. It's not about what we do, it's about who we are. We Are What's Left from what should have been the message of Christ all along...and theres room for you. Welcome to the family."

Who Does Jesus Believe in?

We are in the middle of our "Miracles" Series at Remnant. We've been praying over the prayer walls for the past few weeks and learning how to pursue the heart of Christ the way the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years did. She did something physical and believed something deep within her heart. God has been asnwering a lot of our prayers and its been such a great reminder that we can be used by Christ to do unbelievable things.

Tomorrow at Remnant, we are going to learn what was really going on when Jesus called on people to become His followers, specifically His disciples. We believe that the stories of Jesus always have a deeper meaning than what we have normally read from the stories. I often say: "we can't understand the words of Jesus, until we understand the world of Jesus. Come find out what He believed when it came to choosing the ones who would carry His message of hope & redemption to the world. Tomorrow night @ 7p!

Sleeping Giant & a Walking Beggar

At Remnant, we had the amazing honor of having some real men of God with us. The hard-core band Sleeping Giant was with us tonight. We are in our "Miracles" series and so we asked them to share their experiences of seeing God do the miraculous in their presence. It was so encouraging and faith-filling to hear the real-life stories of the God we all say is all-powerful doing the all-powerful. The guys helped with our altar call until 10p & we let students out right around 8:35p. We even had a special call for those with addictions and Jesus began the process of helping them be free tonight!!

Tonight we learned about a beggar who really needed a miracle but had friends just relegating him to his usually vice of coping with his pain. The ending of our service had people stand up on their seat to state what Miracle they really had in their heart. THAT WAS POWERFUL!! So often we walk right by the very people that God has strategically & purposelly placed us around. A GRIP of students just weren't ready to leave the spiritual & sacred night we were getting to experience.

 Remnant continues to grow spiritually and with passion towards the deeper things of God.  I pray that we don't 'hoard' these experiences, but that we share them with anyone we know or meet that needs to have it as well. If we do this, the months ahead are going to be RIDICULOUS!!
Lord, Remnant is yours, do what you will.

Miracles Part II

Remnants March series is on "Miracles." Last Tuesday we learned about what the Bible teaches us when it comes to the pursuit of a miracle. Often times, people are looking to God to 'touch' them, but we see a few times with Jesus that the people wanted to just touch the hem of His garment. The idea is that God wants to do miraculous things in our lives and sometimes they take place as 'we' reach out to touch Jesus.

The question then becomes what touches the heart of Christ in such a way that His power moves on our behalf? What are the things that touches Christ's heart and invokes His response to us? I know its not as simple as 2+2=4, but God has always responded to the cry of His people.

There is something about the passionate & trusting pursuit of Gods goodness that allows for God to dictate His response. When we really believe that the Miracle is up to Him, and that our role is to seek to touch the heart of God without an agenda, Miracles begin to take place in our hearts & lives.