An Eventful House....

While in Israel I had a chance to visit the house of Caiaphas, who was the high priest in Jesus' day. We walked steps that Jesus himself walked the night before his crucifixion. We stood in the dungeon where Jesus was kept and the place where Jesus would have been beaten & flogged that night by the Jewish authorities. This experience was a humbling one and I shot a video so that I could share it with my blog readers.

Hole through which Jesus was thrown

The Dungeon where Jesus was held overnight.

Video:

The room where Jesus was flogged and mocked. Later Peter and John were also flogged here.

This prison in the bottom of Caiaphas' house was also one of the prisons that Peter and John where would be held in the book of Acts. This brings up an interesting thought, which is that one night Peter denies knowing Jesus outside this house. But about two months later he is at the same house for boldly preaching the Gospel.

The religious dudes of the day missed the Savior of the world who came and began a new movement called Christianity. Although the worship of places is not important to Christianity (the living Christ is), I was reminded while visiting Caiaphas' house of the sacrifice and dedication shown by all members of the early church.


My Prayer is that I will follow in the footsteps of Jesus, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despised the shame and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Heb. 12:2) John and Peter who are heroes of the faith continued this movement by follow the example set by Christ. Today Christians have the responsibility of continuing to share the same good news about Jesus.

Movement....

Friday and Saturday was a great time of personal refreshing as God gave me a glimpse of the work He is doing.

On Friday I got to hang out with and challenge 30 Campus Crusade for Christ leaders from various college campuses in New Orleans. The next generation of leaders, business and politically, will come from the people on college campuses today. I believe that this is reason enough to be engaged in trying to reach this generation for Christ. There are great rewards for the future of America if we can reach and mold them to become followers of Jesus Christ.


Saturday one of our pastor's (Page) home church came to help serve our community. We spent the day cleaning Laurence Square, which is a park close to where our church meets on Sunday. We raked leafs, cleaned up Mardi Gras beads, gave out free waters and met some people from the community. The weather was a beautiful 78 degrees.





As I served in these opportunities God showed me that I'm involved in His movement, which is all about loving people for the purpose of sharing Jesus Christ. Living in New Orleans is great because you can see God doing so many different things. But even cooler than that is that this same God is moving all over, in every city and town. Join up with a church or ministry and start getting dirty serving people like Jesus would do.

Mardi Gras Mambo....

It's been almost two weeks, but I'm still trying to recover from the Mardi Gras Season. Driving around Uptown is cool because you can still see the left overs from the crazy, fun time.

Beads still in trees

Houses still decorated

Vintage Church Mardi Gras Outreach
on Magazine Street

This year 6 major parades changed their routes to go down a section of Magazine right in front of Vintage Church. This means we got a great chance to connect with our community. Sunday February 22 was the big day since there were three parades.






The "Green" Machine known as Vintage Church set-up at a sister church/next door neighbor. We provided clean toilets which we cleaned after every person. We also gave out free grilled burgers, sausages and waters. While we were not serving we danced in the streets with all the New Orleanians. It was a great outreach for our church and one fun way to spend a Sunday!




Video:

Vintage Mardi Gras 2009 from Travis Manint on Vimeo.

Church Website: http://vintagenola.org/

A tradition has started that we hope will glorify God and lead an entire community to the Lord.

Our Church's Prayer:
"May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us, establish the work of our hands for us- yes, establish the work of our hands." --Psalm 90:17