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Archive for the ‘preaching’ Category

Love, Hate, & Embrace

Posted: May 20, 2013 by mikehanafee in Uncategorized, Restore Church, preaching, the gospel, Mission Teams, Acts 29

Listen here for a strong pastoral word on true love as Pastor Clete preaches on Love, Hate, & Embrace. If you are going to love, you have to be a hater! And biblical love is a verb, it is deliberate action that flows from a heart gripped by grace. What a needful message in an age when “love” has been hijacked to mean a thousand things that are far from biblical! Let’s recapture authentic love! You can also check out Sunday’s announcements here.

We would like to give a big shout out to the mission team from Riverview Church in Lansing. I’m not a Spartan fan, but these men and women showed out the green and white as they worked hard on our facility:) Thank you Riverview!

I had the opportunity to preach at New Living Bible Church in Indianapolis from my favorite text, Revelation 7:9 on the gospel, glory, and race. You can check it out here. (I also enjoyed some of the best soul food I have ever eaten!) I can’t wait to have Pastor Norell, his wife Nicole, and some others from NLBC join us for a service this summer!

Finally, we’ll celebrate Church Planting Sunday on June 2. We’ll introduce some of our supporting churches as well as share ways we have been able to help a few other church plants. As part of partnering with other churches we will take an offering for Freedom Church in Baltimore, pastored by Michael Crawford, who preached at Restore a few months ago. Check out the video below about their exciting building fund drive. They have a great opportunity before them and we want to help them reach their goal.

Freedom Church Baltimore Building Vision from Freedom Church Baltimore on Vimeo.

Wanna be drenched in God’s love?

Posted: May 7, 2013 by mikehanafee in Holy Spirit series, Internship, preaching, Restore Church, spiritual warfare, the gospel, Trinity, Uncategorized

Between the ditches of dead intellectualism & empty emotionalism is an authentic experience of knowing AND feeling God’s love for us in the Gospel. Check out this message if you want to know how the Holy Spirit positionally and personally drenches us with the Father’s love through Jesus. You’ll also hear about the incredible union the Spirit creates across ethnic lines, providing a real time picture of the future, in the gritty here and now, through the Church.

Sunday we also had the joy of announcing our first summer intern at Restore Church, Nick Lee. Nick is a student at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary in Boston and will be arriving June 12.

Please pray for Pastor Clete as he preaches Thursday the funeral of a father (of a young man in our church) who lost his life last week. And please carry this grieving family to the throne of grace!

God in us!

Posted: April 25, 2013 by mikehanafee in Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit series, preaching, Restore Church, Uncategorized

One of the most mind-blowing truths for a Christian, and one that has helped sustain me even this week, is that God the Holy Spirit indwells us! The God of the universe inside us! And the way it happened, given the petrified state of our hearts outside of grace, tells us that the Holy Spirit can do His heart transplant on anyone! Once He makes us new, He begins a lifetime of doing beautiful things in and through us, so that we look more and more like Jesus as we grow in an awareness of the Father’s love for us. You can check out this sermon from Sunday April 21 here.

Clete on The Trinity, B’More Trip

Posted: April 11, 2013 by mikehanafee in Holy Spirit, preaching, Restore Church, Trinity, Uncategorized

Clete killed a difficult but foundational doctrine in Sunday’s sermon, the Trinity. Great message! He sounds like a seminary professor, except with a bit more energy;) Check out his high speed diagrams & message below (The last part is missing due to technical error). He laid a great foundation for our Holy Spirit series which kicks off this Sunday!

Seven of us went to Baltimore where I preached at the Unplugged Conference at Morgan State on Saturday & then together we attended worship service on Sunday at Freedom Church. We love Freedom, Pastor Mike, and his family! Maybe an Unplugged Detroit 2014?

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Your Broken Life Now (& a weekend trifecta)

Posted: March 4, 2013 by mikehanafee in Mark series, Mission Teams, preaching, Restore Church, the gospel

Your broken life now is your best life, now and forever. So what does the broken life look like? Find out from a woman who gave her costliest for the Lord, because she knew He would give His costliest for her. You can watch below.

In addition to lots of stuff going on during the week as we host a mission team from Mosaic Church Ann Arbor, we have three big events lined up for the coming weekend. EVERYONE IS INVITED!

Friday 6:30 PM - Praise/Pizza/Fowling Party. We are kicking off a long awaited cadence of Friday night parties at The PO for the entire Restore fam & neighborhood.

Saturday noon - neighborhood canvassing for our Easter Egg Hunt. 10,000 cards to hand out. Yep, that’s right, no typo, TEN THOUSAND cards! (Thanks Mosaic!) Bring your friends, their friends, and their friends!

Sunday 11AM - our first worship service downstairs at The PO. In a miracle almost on par with the Red Sea Crossing we started on time Sunday & intend to continue to do so to better serve one another better! We are asking for a second miracle as daylight savings time begins Sunday. To put a carrot out there and provide an opportunity for fellowship, we’ll do coffee and donuts (maybe breakfast) at 10AM Sunday. Perhaps we are looking for a third miracle;)

Finally, in Sunday’s service we also celebrated Matt & Maja Golden moving into the neighborhood. If you want to hear how it all happened, starting at Slow’s BBQ 2 years ago, watch their testimony below.

The Bishop of Baltimore brings it in Detroit

Posted: February 18, 2013 by mikehanafee in Church Planting, Core Values, Freedom Church Baltimore, Leadership, Mission Teams, new facility, preaching, race riots, racism, suffering, the gospel, Uncategorized, Vision, worship

If you care about reaching your city, your time will not be wasted in watching this message by Michael Crawford of Freedom Church in Baltimore. If I had a bishop, it would be Mike! I love this brother’s gospel fueled passion for making disciples in the urban core. Something really special went down this weekend! Restore Church looks forward to learning from and walking with Freedom Church as we seek to make disciple making disciples and plant church planting churches. In this message Mike shares 5 recommendations for Restore Church. And perhaps yours.

Please pray for our upcoming series in Mark, our first week long mission team coming in to help prep for building renovation and the far bigger goal of building relationships, and for a massive Easter Egg Hunt we are planning.

ONE Series: Wrecking Ball or Cotton Ball Gospel?

Posted: January 29, 2013 by mikehanafee in preaching, racism, Restore Church, the gospel

The common portrayals of Jesus as a white man or a black man reveals the cultural captivity of the gospel. Such cotton ball gospels reinforce and build up the walls of ethnic separation. The wrecking ball gospel drops these walls by showing God’s love for all ethnicities, uniting enemies into one body, making Jesus our primary identity (not assimilation), and freeing us from the sin of racism and the reflex of bitterness. You can watch the sermon below.

Please join us Sunday at 10:30AM as Alvin Sanders of the EFCA preaches the 3rd message in our ONE series. Saturday 4-6PM we’ll host a pizza dinner at the PO as Alvin shares his experience planting a church in inner city Cincinnati.

Also, Sunday we will be commissioning our fourth Dgroup!

ONE series kickoff: Imago Dei, & an amazing day!

Posted: January 22, 2013 by mikehanafee in Black History Month, Detroit History, Discipleship Groups, new facility, preaching, race riots, racism, Restore Church, the gospel, Vision, worship

“These premises shall not be occupied by a negro or colored person” reads the original deed to our building. Our history as a nation is drenched in racism and every one of our stories, whether you realize or not, has been shaped by racism. Yesterday, we began our ONE series by looking at how the truth of Imago Dei dismantles the very basis of racism. From conception, every human of every color is made in the image of God – therefore, every human is valuable, beautiful, & equal. But there is also something else we all are, sinful. Sin has marred our Imago Dei like graffiti. And we have all been tagged in two ways – by the sin of others, & by our own sin. Thankfully Jesus came as the perfect Imago Dei. He was not marred by sin but for sin, in our place. He suffered at the hands of men the injustice many have experienced and then suffered at the hand of God for the sins all of us have committed. He redeems His people, gathers us into His eternal family by His blood, & begins a life of transforming us so that our Imago Dei can increasingly show off & show out His glory!

The room was way too hot and the sermon the longest I have ever preached (I’m going to stewy away from that record in the future!) but the Spirit really seemed to show up. And during communion several people stood and bore bold, broken, public repentance. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever witnessed in 43 years of life, 17 years as a Christian. We feel as if we are being swept up in something much bigger than us. What is certain is that what is happening is something only God can do. Only God. We tremble at His grace & power. I invite you to listen in on a topic that we are passionate about and that leads right to the heart of God in the gospel.

With about 115 in attendance on Sunday we are pretty close to being maxed out in the upper room. Moving the nursery downstairs has created a little bit of space but we need to get the building renovated as quickly as possible. Would you come for lunch on Feb 26 at The PO to hear a bit of our story and how you might be able to renovate the building with us? You can reference the information card below.

We are launching our 4th Dgroup the first week of February on Lawrence St (across from Central High on Linwood) under the leadership of Clete & Ruth. Also, the very first couple who committed to Restore, 2 years ago when we weren’t much more than a dream, will now serve as apprentice Dgroup leaders. I’m thrilled about this! We need to launch 2 more Dgroups in the near future, so please pray for wisdom & provision.

Real Faith – the story of zeroes who became heroes

Posted: January 17, 2013 by mikehanafee in preaching, Restore Church, the gospel, Uncategorized

How can a dude who got wasted, another guy who was OK with people sleeping with his wife to save his neck, a murderer, an adulterer, a prostitute, a scoffer, and on and on and on, be commended for their faith? That’s the story of Hebrews 11. So how?! Through the True Hero who turns zeroes into heroes. In this incredible chapter we see what real faith in Him looks like.

Please pray for our ONE series starting on Sunday.

Cagefighting (& canvassing)

Posted: January 9, 2013 by mikehanafee in DNA Crews, preaching, racism, the gospel

Sunday we kicked off our DNA crews by looking at Ultimate Fighting – the battle against unbelief. Here the stakes are far higher than broken noses and concussions! In Hebrews 3 & 4 there are 4 vital truths that we must hold onto as we move through the octagon of life. Thankfully God sent – not a therapist, motivational speaker, or management guru – a Great High Priest! You can check out the message below.

This Saturday (January 12) at noon we are meeting at the PO (2701 Joy Road, 48206) to canvass our neighborhood with 5,000 invite cards for our upcoming ONE series beginning the day before MLK day. We’d love to have you join us!