Sweet 16

All I can say is God is good. On Sunday, February 8, Remnant Church had our official launch. Our attendance goal was 100, and we had 93 people come! It was truly a day I'll never forget. Before I tell you what happened, let me tell you about the week leading up to our launch.

Over the course of the week before the launch, we:

• Gave out about 5,500 door hangers letting people know about Remnant Church. Our team covered neighborhoods and apartment complexes at all hours of the day and night, in the sun and pouring rain, and through some areas that might not have exactly been considered safe.
• Staffed a table at the mall for 1.5 days handing out information about Remnant Church
• Bought crazy amounts of sound equipment that none of us really knew how to operate
• Planned creative media and a set that churches 10 times our size might use
• Found a worship band
• Made the worship experience run from start to finish with 7 volunteers and 7 Remnant staff members--may not sound like a big accomplishment, but you try running a portable church with this many people, and then you'll understand
• Began small groups for men, women, and couples

I am sure that I'm probably forgetting some things, but that is just a sampling of the kind of hours the team put in last week. I'm so proud to be a part of Remnant Church. There is no substitute for a group of people who are totally head over heals in love with Jesus AND driven by a compelling mission. Our mission is, "So people far from God fall in love with Jesus." Every minute we worked last week was focused to see our mission accomplished.

Now for the Sunday worship experience:

We all arrived with the U-Haul pre-loaded at the movie theater by 7:00am. We immediately started unloading the truck and setting everything up. By 8:40am almost everything was set up, and we started our volunteer huddles. God was so present as we casted vision about the launch and prayed for the people coming to our worship experience and all of the details to go right. I had the privilege of honoring Remnant's first volunteer of the month, Maria, during the huddle.

At 9:15am, we started our dry run to rehearse all of the volunteer's roles and everything that would be happening up on stage with the worship band, announcements, the message, etc. By 9:30am, all of the volunteers were in place ready for our guests. We were all believing that God was going to bring the people. At 9:40am, no one was there. Then five minutes later, our first new guests began to arrive. On the inside, I was doing back handsprings or something. At least we had one new family. From there, the people just kept coming. At 9:57am, we opened the doors to the worship experience and seated everyone. Children were checked into BIG, our children's ministry. The worship band started playing, David did the welcome and announcements, and the worship band finished their set. Pastor Mark got up to preach. You can listen to the message here: http://www.remnantloves.me/pod/. I wasn't able to come into the worship experience until about half way through the message because I was busy greeting late guests, re-arranging our lobby set up, and a million other details. However when I came in, the entire theater was totally captivated as Pastor Mark preached the Word of God. It was really powerful. When he invited people to give their lives to Jesus, we knew that some people raised their hands, but none of us on staff were really able to see the entire crowd to count.

When the worship experience was over at 11:00am, we gave away free movie tickets to everyone who came. It was such a great way to bless the community, especially because I know that some of those people couldn't afford to take their families out to the movies. As the kids came out of BIG, you could tell they had a blast. They were all smiling and excited. I heard all kinds of comments like, "I'll be back next week," and "I'm bringing one of my friends next week!" Finally, we did a crazy-fast tear down because we have to be out of the theater by 11:30am.

David is the Plug-In Pastor at Remnant, so he connects with every new guest. When we got home, we looked through the connection cards and found that SIXTEEN people had checked the box on the connection card that they gave their life to Christ. 16!!!!!!!! This is so significant because all week, our focus had been, "So people far from God fall in love with Jesus." And they did.

I am so amazed and honored to be a part of Remnant Church. Thank you to everyone who has prayed, given, and supported us. Your reward is eternal.