“Microchurch” might not be a familiar phrase to most people.
“I get that question at least once a day,” Pastor Ryan Armstrong said, laughingly. “Microchurch is the simplest unit of a church. It’s a group of people who have three practices in common – worship, community and mission. Whether you have a group of people practicing those three things, that’s a church.”
Armstrong is now the lead pastor of Remnant Church and a second generation church planter. He moved to Leesburg with his family in 2015. It all began a year later, and his family was commissioned to plant a church in Leesburg in 2019.
“It was in 2016 when God was calling on me and my family to work in the community,” Armstrong said. “It was a matter of loving where we live and sharing that love with the community.”
On its website, Remnant Church represents itself as a “gospel-centered, multi-ethnic micro church movement.” Its seeds were sown in 2016 when Armstrong first met Pastor Cam Triggs. The church in Leesburg held its first worship service in January.
“I met Pastor Cam and helped him launch a church in Orlando called Grace Alive Church, where he now is the lead Pastor,” Armstrong said.
Grace Alive Church intensely focuses on church planting. Since its inception in 2017, Grace Alive has planted two other churches: New City Church in Tampa and Redemption Heights Church in Philadelphia.
“We believe God has called us to be a church-planting church,” Triggs said. “We always encourage our Grace Alive congregants to pray for and support our church plants.”
Remnant has partnered with Acts 29, a California-based organization that offers church leaders training, guidance and tools for successful church planting.
They also have strong ties with Send Network, a Georgia-based church planting organization affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. Florida Baptist Convention, which seeks to plant 75 churches a year as part of its “Challenge 2025” initiative, is also working in sync with Remnant. According to the Florida Baptist Convention website, Remnant church is one of the latest area churches participating in this initiative.
“For us, the biggest thing is we want to simplify to multiply,” Armstrong said. “We’re not production-oriented. We want people to see what we do. We want to help people become disciples in their own right. Perhaps create their own microchurches.”
Remnant Church congregants frequently meet at the homes of either Armstrong or Executive Pastor Darren Goodrich. There are plans for them and other associated microchurches to come together once a month for a large worship service.
For attending a Remnant Church service, RSVP ahead of time by emailing at remnantleesburg@gmail.com.
