Archive for category: News

We’ve all had those moments where life gets complicated, heavy, or completely upside down. We sit in the quiet, or we lay awake at night, crying out into the dark, “Where are you?” It is an honest, weary question that every human faces sooner or later. When the world feels fractured and we are navigating a tough season, it’s easy to look up at the sky and feel like we’ve been left to figure it out all on our own.

But this week, as the global church recognizes Ascension Sunday, we are reminded of a powerful truth: God is not a “peace out, y’all” kind of God. God is the God who stays.

“Before things got incredibly difficult, Jesus sat at the table with his friends, shared a final meal, and looked up to heaven to pray for them. He basically said: ‘Father, I’ve done what you asked, and now I’m coming back to you. But my friends are still out there in the thick of it. Protect them. Keep them close and keep them united, just like you and I are united. And I’m not just asking for the people sitting at this table right now—I’m praying for the ones who will believe down the road because of them. I want them to know they belong to us, that they are completely loved, and that they carry our joy inside them no matter what happens’.”

John’s gospel doesn’t give us a dramatic scene of Jesus floating up into the clouds while the disciples stand around staring blankly at the sky. Instead, it gives us an intimate table conversation. This prayer was spoken right on the edge of the most painful, grief-filled moments of the disciples’ lives. Jesus knew they were about to enter a confusing, liminal space.

He didn’t pray to take them out of the hard realities of the world; he prayed to sustain them through it.

When Jesus repeatedly tells God, “They are yours,” he is establishing an unbreakable boundary of ownership and love. You belong to God. That prayer didn’t stop in the upper room; it has traveled generation by generation, trailing after us through our happiest days and our most challenging nights, echoing all the way to us today in Shawnee, Kansas.

For centuries, we’ve called these final chapters of John the “Farewell Discourse”. But what if we changed our outlook? What if we called it the Beginning of the Conversation? The Ascension isn’t a story about abandonment or God becoming distant. It’s a transition of responsibility. We are a family of neighbors tasked with living out Jesus’s compassion, love, and healing in real-time. We aren’t doing it alone—we are riding on the coattails of a faith handed down to us, covered in prayer, and walking forward with the Holy Spirit. God goes with you to complete the work you’ve been given. Let’s step off the porch and get to work together.

YouTube Chapters

• 0:00 – The Vulnerable Front Porch: Sitting Beside Jesus
• 1:15 – The “I am in You and You are in Me” Breakdown
• 4:32 – Grounded Insight: What to Do When Life Goes Sideways
• 7:15 – Active Hope: Turning a Farewell into a New Beginning

 

Disappointment is simply unmet expectations, and it can feel incredibly heavy when life moves on a path we didn’t choose.

Think about that “picture-perfect” Thanksgiving dinner you spent weeks preparing for, only to have it fall apart because you couldn’t control what others said or did.

Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we often say, “But we had hoped,” treating hope as something that only exists in the past. Yet, even on our driest, most drought-filled roads, Christ shows up—often in ways we don’t immediately recognize.

YouTube Chapters

0:00 – The Weight of Disappointment
4:15 – The Thanksgiving Dinner Disaster
8:30 – Four Words that Break Your Heart
15:45 – God Always Shows Up

 

Life is full of things that seem too ridiculous to be true—like orcas being the natural predator of a moose. Sometimes, the hardest thing to believe isn’t a trivia fact, but that peace is actually possible in the middle of our heaviest seasons.

In her retelling of John 20, Pastor Tabatha reframes “Doubting Thomas” as “Honest Thomas”. He wasn’t being difficult; his heart was shattered, and he was simply trying to protect himself from more heartbreak by asking for the same experience his friends already had.

YouTube Chapters

0:00 – The Trivia of Truth: Why we need proof

04:12 – Thomas as “Honest Thomas”

08:45 – Grounded Insight: Doubting is not a sin

12:15 – Closing Prayer: A space for our fears and doubts

 

We often feel pressured to “get over” things—to find closure and move on. But for most of us, the

realities of grief or disappointment don’t just go away. This week, we’re talking about the paradox of faith: the reality that we can be scared and joyful at the exact same time.

If you look at the first Easter, it wasn’t a polished ceremony. It was an earthquake, a group of terrified friends, and a lot of unanswered questions. In the “Tabitha Version” of the story, the women ran from the tomb with “fear and great joy.” They didn’t have it all figured out; they just had each other.

Resurrection doesn’t mean the “pit” never happened. Even after he was raised, Jesus still had the scars on his hands. It’s a reminder that our stories of survival and exhaustion are sacred. We don’t offer “Christianese” platitudes here; we offer a hand to hold while we navigate the messy middle together.

Shawnee Community Christian Church is a place where we practice being good neighbors. We are an Open & Affirming family that believes hope is our strongest economy. Whether you’re a long-time resident or just looking for a place to rest, there is always a seat for you at our table.

YouTube Chapters

0:00 – The “More Than One Thing” Hook: Why we don’t need closure to find peace.
1:12 – A Neighborly Story: An ex-cop, two pastors, and the arrest that turned into a friendship.
3:47 – The Story in Our Language: Reading Matthew 28—The earthquake that changed everything.
5:27 – The “Tabitha Version”: Why being a “hot mess” doesn’t disqualify you from Easter.
12:49 – Gritty Insight: Why the resurrected Jesus kept his scars (and why yours matter, too).
17:44 – A Prayer for the Neighborhood

 

We carry secrets like stones in our pockets, certain that if they ever came to light, we’d be abandoned. We inhabit the “messy middle” of shame, waiting for the floor to drop out.

Imagine the smugness of the self-righteous, dragging a human being into the light just to use her as a “trap.” Jesus sees the setup, feels the fatigue of the “incessant ridiculousness,” and decides to play in the dirt instead of participating in the execution.

Mercy is brutal. It’s “inadvisably offered” and “brimming with foolish hope.” It’s inconvenient because we want it for ourselves but hesitate to give it to the person we think “merits” judgment.

You are God’s own. Not because you’re perfect, but because you are loved. If you’ve been gatekept by a version of faith that leads with a stone, come find a seat at our table this Sunday.

YouTube Chapters

0:00 – The Weight of the Secret (The Ache of Judgment)

2:24 – Tabitha Paraphrase: The Setup and the Dirt

6:35 – Gritty Hook: Jesus, Fatigued by the Ridiculousness

13:31 – The Inconvenience of Mercy

16:08 – Closing Prayer: You are God’s Own