from Revelation 2:1-7
As we begin a new series through the letters to the churches in Revelation, we are invited to consider-both in the life of the church, and in your life as an individual…what might Jesus be pleased with? If you are a Christ follower, what are those things that are reflective of the life you have found in Him?
What might Jesus offer as a challenge?
Has your faith become little more than doing and saying the “right things?” What if you found yourself caught up in the love of God and love for God that is meant to be both the source and the driving force of who we are before Him and who we are for the world?
w/ Vern Collins
from Acts 2
We tend to land in one of two places when it comes to the Holy Spirit…either you crave the “signs and wonders,” above other expressions of the move of God, or the idea of a Holy Spirit that is present and active just plain makes you nervous.
Acts 2 offers us, perhaps a new understanding of just what the role and work of the Spirit of God is in this world, and how we might be a part of that work by creating space for the Holy Spirit to move.
w/ Vern Collins
from Acts 9:1-20
The final resurrection encounter we look at as we wrap up this series is perhaps one of the most well known in all of the New Testament. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that the world has been impacted with the Gospel over thousands of years in large part of the encounter that this one man had with Jesus.
Not only is this encounter so well known, but it challenges us in ways that many of us need to be challenged…it forces us to wrestle with the question in our own lives: “Am I living life WITH God…or am I living life FOR God?”
w/ Vern Collins
from John 21:1-17
Have you ever stopped to consider how our entertainment, experience, pursuit-of-satisfaction driven culture affects our expectations of what encountering the Lord ought to look like…ought to feel like?
While there are certainly times when an encounter with God evokes a physical and emotional response…while there are times when those encounters are fantastical…what about those times seeks to encounter us in the ordinary…in the familiar?
What if you began to look for God in the familiar? In the every day? Imagine how things might begin to be different…how different following Jesus might begin to look.
w/ Vern Collins
from John 20:24-29
Have you ever considered what the “locked doors” in your life might be when it comes to encountering Jesus? What are those things (either of your own making or as a result of your circumstances) that feel like a barrier between you and God? Those things that keep you from experiencing the power of the resurrection?
Have you ever considered that Jesus is willing to walk right in to that space…right in to your fear and your doubt and your disappointment…and once again, offer all of Who He is to you?
What if that were true? What if there was no amount of hiding that could keep Jesus away? Imagine the possibility.
w/ Vern Collins
from Numbers 22:22-35
On a special one-off Sunday (which serves as a perfect insert in our “Encounters With Jesus” series), we recognize that as a school year wraps up, as people are preparing for transition, as one chapter ends and a new one begins, the question often asked is, “what is God’s plan for my life?”
From Creation, to the Heavens, to God’s Spirit, God is speaking…drawing us in…revealing Who He is to us. The question is, can we hear Him? Are we able to recognize God’s voice when it comes?
w/ Lory Beth Huffman
from Luke 24:13-35
Without encounters with the Risen Christ, the empty tomb would be nothing more than the place where Jesus WAS…instead, as Luke and the other Gospel writers attest and as the early church bore witness to…the reality was Jesus was on the loose!
Does it feel that way in your life? Is Jesus on the loose, free to shake things up, free to redirect, free to reorient, and inspire, and challenge, and love, and meet you where you are…? Or has Jesus simply gone missing?
As we begin our new series, “Encountering Jesus,” we invite you open yourself up to the places that Jesus might just be showing up in your life…the place where He might already be at work.
w/ Vern Collins
from Luke 24:1-12
“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”
So often we think of what the Cross of Christ means we are saved FROM, but how often do you consider the empty tomb of Christ and ask the question, “what am I saved FOR?”
Why do we look for life in dead places? What if the resurrection isn’t just something that happened 2,000 years ago…what if the resurrection can happen in your life NOW?
w/ Vern Collins
from Mark 11:1-10
We spend a great deal of energy in our lives managing our expectations of the people around us. Whether your spouse, your children, a roommate, a significant other, or co-worker, or someone in leadership…there are expectations we place on people. Consider what happens, though, when those expectations aren’t met…we are left to adjust…to manage what we thought ought to be expected.
Have you ever considered that perhaps you do the same thing with God? There might be things you want from God, or things you expect God should do on your behalf? What happens when God doesn’t answer prayer the way you want, or when it feels like God isn’t coming through the way you hoped? What if the problem isn’t so much in Who God is, but who you expect God to be for you?
w/ Vern Collins
from Luke 12:13-21
We have a tendency to equate things like security, peace, worth, and identity with the accumulation of money or possessions. Or even more simply, maybe there’s just this one thing you feel like you have to have, and if you can somehow have that thing…
The question you must wrestle with is: While more wealth or more square footage or more possessions might change your circumstances, will they transform your heart?
We have from the beginning felt the tension of feeling like we need more…but what is it we really need more OF?
w/ Vern Collins
from Luke 21:25-36
If you knew how something would end, would it change the way you give yourself to being a part of it?
While, we might tend to think of such a question as it relates to a business opportunity, saying yes to a relationship, or a financial decision and the potential risks or rewards associated with any of the above…what if instead of decisions that are made based on how we think life should go, we make those decisions based on how the story of God at work in this world ends?
One of the ways we see sin create brokenness in our lives is in the way we view and use time. We worry that there isn’t enough. We waste the time we have. We don’t honor the time of others.
What if we stopped being so short-sighted and started taking a long view of the way we see God’s time and timing? What if that could change the way we live right now with the time we have?
w/ Luke Edwards
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
from Matthew 5:21-26
We are meant to be a reflection of God for the world around us. One of the things that is true about God is the relationship in which God exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So, why are relationships one of the most difficult places for us to reflect Who God is? What if we began to allow God to bring healing to the brokenness that exists in our relationships with those around us?
w/ Vern Collins
from Isaiah 30:8-18
As we begin this season of Lent and our new series, “Broken,” you are invited to come to terms with, to name the brokenness in your life. Sin is the great equalizer…not of are exempt from its effects, and yet in Christ we find that not only does God know something about our brokenness, but is willing to enter in to it.
Over the next several weeks we are going to consider how our sin creates brokenness in different areas of our lives…beginning with how it affects your relationship with God. While you are being invited to come to terms with your brokenness, know that God longs to bring healing…that God longs to and promises to take that which is broken and redeem it, turning it into something beautiful.
w/ Vern Collins
from John 20:19-22
From hearing from some of our missionaries, to a powerful message on Jesus’ commission of His disciples from John’s Gospel, to an important invitation following our denomination’s called General Conference vote, this is a powerful Sunday.
Even in the midst of our every day, busy, running from here to there lives…even in the midst of our doubt and our hurt and our own woundedness, we are invited to remember that Jesus not only walks into that with us, but calls us to follow Him in becoming partners in His work of healing brokenness and redeeming this world.
w/ Laura Byrch, Mason Heistand, Caitlin McVay, and Vern Collins
from 1 Corinthians 12:12-27
It is difficult to feel a sense of belonging when you don’t feel like you have anything to contribute to thing to which you have given yourself to belong. Even for those who would just as soon fly under the radar and are content with doing next to nothing, eventually the chasm of disconnect created is too much to navigate, and you are left feeling like there is no place for you.
In God’s Kingdom, in the Body of Christ…in the church, no gift offered is too small. In fact, Paul suggests that those who feel the least significant are perhaps the greatest gift to the church, and to what the church is called to be in this world.
What if your belonging included your willingness to use the gifts God has given you…no matter how small they may seem…to use the gifts God has given you in and through the church to transform the world?
w/ Vern Collins
from Acts 2:42-47
Somehow we have allowed ourselves to become convinced that busyness equals fruitfulness. The reality, however, is not that we are left admiring all that we’ve accomplished…rather, we are often left just trying to hang on. Though the invitation to a healthy rhythm and the command to rest, the truth is, many of us are simply committed to things we can’t readily drop or opt out of.
So rather than put off taking our next step in belonging…rather than waiting until we get through “this busy season” (which never seems to come)…what if we reimagined what it could look like to be connected….to BELONG to the Body of Christ? What if we allowed God to redefine how our time is spent?
w/ Vern Collins
from Romans 12:3-8
When you say yes to the gift of life made possible by Jesus on the cross, when you walk in salvation, when you are adopted into the family of God…you are NOT meant to be an only child! And yet far too many of us attempt to walk this journey of faith and life in isolation from those we are meant to walk alongside.
In this first week of our “Belonging” series, we consider why belonging in the midst of life’s transitions is not only good…it is vital to our remaining rooted in who we are in Christ and remaining connected in relationship to God and what God is doing in this world.
w/ Vern Collins
from Philippians 2:12-13, 3:10-14
In the final week of our “New Year Resolution” series, we wrestle with the question, “now what?” Perhaps you’ve embraced the hopeful truth that God’s grace exists for you before you are even aware of it…perhaps you’ve said “yes” to your need for the sacrifice that Jesus so willingly gave on the cross that you might live a new life…but what does it mean to live into that new life? How are you transformed? How do you become the “new creation” that Paul talks about?
While God’s grace is always at work, the exciting thing about the life ahead of you is that YOU are called to be a part of it…to be a part of what God is doing in making you new!
w/ Vern Collins
from Romans 5:1-11, Romans 3:20-26, John 4:1-18
The idea that God’s grace exists for us before we have done anything to earn it, that “Jesus Knows,” and that Jesus seeks us out is comforting. That kind of grace, that prevenient grace begins to get us on the track toward believing something about God’s love for us…but what happens when we are brought face to face with the extend God is willing to go in order bring that grace to work in our lives?
What do we do when the cross forces us to come face to face with our brokenness that necessitated such a sacrifice?
What if we simply started where we are? What if we simply said, “yes?”
w/ Vern Collins
