“Broken: How Sin Affects Our View of Others” (March 24, 2019)

from Ephesians 2:11-22

By nature we have a tendency to form teams. We gravitate to or surround ourselves with people who share things like our ideals, our values, and our view of morality. While this is not inherently wrong, what happens when our forming teams becomes choosing sides and choosing sides sets us at odds with those who aren’t like us or don’t agree with us…those who are outside of our circle? When this happens in the church, how does the way we treat those who are “outside” have any hope of looking like the Gospel?

What if God is calling you into relationship with those not like you so that God can work in you…and God can work in those relationships?

w/ Vern Collins

“Life Together: Community” (April 15, 2018)

from Ephesians 2:11-22 and Psalm 133

As we begin a new series inspired by Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s classic work, Life Together, consider what makes you unique?  Or what is one unique thing about you?

All of us…all of humanity possess some unique quality that distinguishes us from others.  The question is, how is it that our distinctions can become the things that divide us?

It is perhaps one of the greatest arguments against the church…that the Body of Christ is often as fractured as the world around it.  What if, instead of defining ourselves by the things that set us apart, we find our distinction in the One thing that unites us?  Christ.

w/ Vern Collins

“As For You: Reconciled to Reconcile” (October 9, 2016)

from Ephesians 2:11-22

We could agree that walls are important in providing stability, creating a structure that is safe…and yet so often we erect walls that are harmful and divisive.

What if instead of building walls between you and the rest of the world, or adding bricks to those that already exist, you instead began to work to break them down, just as Christ has broken down the walls that separate us from God?

w/ David Hockett

“As For You: Grace” (October 2, 2016)

from Ephesians 2:1-10

We have somehow allowed the life of a Christ follower to be boiled down to doing more of the right things and less of the wrong things in hopes of looking like one is at least moderately connected to Jesus.  We make plans and ask God to bless them, and we go on living our lives keeping Jesus just close enough so that He is accessible in times of trouble.

What if, life were less about what you can get out of it and what you can accomplish and more about embracing the weight of the grace by which our small lives were saved?  Then perhaps it would be less about achieving your 5 year plan and more about realizing you have something to live for no matter where you land.

w/ Vern Collins