11.6.22 Message: Love Always Wins

We all have anxieties about what happens at the end of our lives. Where do we go? What does that look like? Who’s there with us? Where is God during that process?
Honestly, we don’t have what we’d like to call firm and absolute answers…we tend to have more questions than answers, but we do have traditions and beliefs that have upheld the church for generations. These traditions and beliefs can be a comfort to us, but we are also allowed to push back on them and see how they hold up with what we know about God in our lives today.
But one thing that we do know is that Love Always Wins because God has been in our past, is in our present, and will always be in our future.

10.30.22 Message: Our Money Story

 

Our Money Story: Restore (Genesis 33:1-17)

Today we finished our sermon series, Our Money Story. We all have a money story, whether we recognize it or not. Perhaps we are living from a story of fear or shame. Or a story that our actions won’t have an impact. Or a story that we don’t have enough. Where might God be speaking a new narrative into the limited ones we have told ourselves? This sermon series invites us to discover and tell our money stories in light of God’s money story of liberation and justice. This series encourages us to transform our stewardship practices into more full expressions of who we are and what we believe.

10.23.22 Message: Our Money Story

Our Money Story: Reimagine (Mark 12:38-44)

Scriptures call us to reimagine a world where our social and economic systems are not built to disparage or impoverish, but instead to provide for and benefit all.

10.16.22 Message: Our Money Story

Today we continued our sermon series, Our Money Story. We all have a money story, whether we recognize it or not. Perhaps we are living from a story of fear or shame. Or a story that our actions won’t have an impact. Or a story that we don’t have enough. Where might God be speaking a new narrative into the limited ones we have told ourselves? This sermon series invites us to discover and tell our money stories in light of God’s money story of liberation and justice. This series encourages us to transform our stewardship practices into more full expressions of who we are and what we believe.

This morning, we practiced releasing shame, anxiety, guilt, greed, or anything that keeps us from freedom and wholeness. We release the elements of our money story that prevent us from fully living into God’s story.

10.9.22 Message: Our Money Story

Today we began our new sermon series, Our Money Story. We all have a money story, whether we recognize it or not. Perhaps we are living from a story of fear or shame. Or a story that our actions won’t have an impact. Or a story that we don’t have enough. Where might God be speaking a new narrative into the limited ones we have told ourselves? This sermon series invites us to discover and tell our money stories in light of God’s money story of liberation and justice. This series encourages us to transform our stewardship practices into more full expressions of who we are and what we believe.

This morning, we looked back at what our spoken and unspoken money stories have been and how those stories have impacted our practices of stewardship.

10.3.22 Message: World Communion Sunday

Every year on the first Sunday in October, Christians around the globe celebrate World Communion Sunday.

Romans 15:1-13, The Message

Those of us who are strong and able in the faith need to step in and lend a hand to those who falter, and not just do what is most convenient for us. Strength is for service, not status. Each one of us needs to look after the good of the people around us, asking ourselves, “How can I help?” That’s exactly what Jesus did. He didn’t make it easy for himself by avoiding people’s troubles, but waded right in and helped out. “I took on the troubles of the troubled,” is the way Scripture puts it. Even if it was written in Scripture long ago, you can be sure it’s written for us. God wants the combination of his steady, constant calling and warm, personal counsel in Scripture to come to characterize us, keeping us alert for whatever he will do next. May our dependably steady and warmly personal God develop maturity in you so that you get along with each other as well as Jesus gets along with us all. Then we’ll be a choir – not our voices only, but our very lives singing in harmony in a stunning anthem to the God and Father of our Master Jesus! So reach out and welcome one another to God’s glory. Jesus did it; now you do it!

Jesus, staying true to God’s purposes, reached out in a special way to the Jewish insiders so that the old ancestral promises would come true for them. As a result, the non-Jewish outsiders have been able to experience mercy and to show appreciation to God. Just think of all the Scriptures that will come true in what we do! For instance: Then I’ll join outsiders in a hymn-sing; I’ll sing to your name! And this one: Outsiders and insiders, rejoice together! And again: People of all nations, celebrate God! All colors and races, give hearty praise! And Isaiah’s word: There’s the root of our ancestor Jesse, breaking through the earth and growing tree tall, Tall enough for everyone everywhere to see and take hope! Oh! May the God of green hope fill you up with joy, fill you up with peace, so that your believing lives, filled with the life-giving energy of the Holy Spirit, will brim over with hope!

9.25.22 Message: Reboot – Re:Think Happiness

RE:Think Happiness (1 Timothy 6:6-12)
Advertising is a powerful tool that is designed specifically to tap into our needs and wants and get us to always want more. If we’re not aware of what we’re doing, we can constantly be running to get more of what we already have, what our friends have, what our neighbors have. If we’re not careful we can put ourselves in a race that ends nowhere.
Instead, what if we sought contentment? Contentment can help bring us peace with who we are and with what we have, the peace we’re so often desperately seeking while we chase after more. What does that kind of contentment and peace look like and feel like to you?

9.11.22 Message – Re:Boot

 

RE:Imagine Regret (1 Timothy 1:12-17)

Life is filled with moments where we do wonderful, amazing things and moments where we do exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time. What do we do with our mistakes as Christians? Do we pretend they never existed, or do we share them in the hopes of showing God’s love, grace, and mercy in our lives? Vulnerability is hard in a world of Instagram perfection, and things are far from perfect in our real lives…sometimes we make mistakes…What do we do with our regrets and can those stories be powerful enough to transform our faith into something even more beautiful?

9.4.22 Message: What’s it Worth to You?

 

What’s it Worth to You?” (Luke 14:25-33).

Our faith should change us in tangible and obvious ways. Following Jesus means that we think differently than we did before we made that choice, and our lives can show the results of that difference. And sometimes that’s hard to do…Does living a life of faith have a cost, and if so, what should it be? What is sacrifice in our modern time and why does God expect it of us?