(December 27, 2020) “Familiar Practice and Pattern”

from Luke 2:22-40

As much as we look ahead at the coming year and want so much to be different..and rightly so…what if instead of wanting to change everything about the life we are living…we considered practicing some things that are so familiar that they have been a part of the lives of the faithful for generations…for millennia?

Perhaps the thing that needs to change for you in the coming year is to pick up some familiar practice and pattern, and see where God might meet you in that!

w/ Vern Collins

“A Stewardship Journey: Choosing to Follow” (November 18, 2018)

from Matthew 4:18-22

What kind of follower are you?  In an age of social media, we “follow” any number of people and organizations.  Are you simply an observer, are you one who engages hoping to prove your self right, or are you one who follows until you don’t like what you hear or see at which point you are quick to “unfollow.”

Have you ever considered how who and what and the manner in which you are following in culture is impacting how you understand what it means to follow Jesus?

We can know everything we need to about stewardship and what that means for discipleship, but until we are willing to follow, until we are willing to take our first step or our next step we cannot experience the fullness of what God has for us and wants to do through us.

w/ Vern Collins

“A Stewardship Journey: Most Important” (November 4, 2018)

from Mark 12:28-34

What does stewardship mean to you?  Often times we cringe at those words in church…here comes the ask, right?  More money.  More time.  More serving.

What if stewardship weren’t about what you GIVE, but about Who you understand God to be, and how you lived your life in response to that?

As we start this series inviting you to consider a new way of thinking about stewardship, what if you thought about the journey of stewardship as a journey?  When starting a journey, what is most important to have…in order to sustain a journey…what is most important to have?

w/ Vern Collins

“Framework for Faithfulness: Boldness” (September 30, 2018)

from Joshua 1:1-9

What are you afraid of?  What keeps you from taking your next step of faith…from being faithful to that which God is calling you to do?

Boldness is the catalyst for living in to who God has called you to be in this world.  What if you stopped “collecting” the characteristics for a faithful life, and you started living the life God has given you faithfully?  What if you stepped boldly into the work of bringing hope to this world?

Imagine the ways you might grow…imagine how the world around you could be transformed!

w/ Vern Collins

“Framework for Faithfulness: Christ at the Center” (September 23, 2018)

from Luke 10:38-42

We are conditioned, many of us, to compartmentalize our lives as a means of surviving the pace at which we tend to operate.  We can call it self-preservation, and while it might help us feel like we are keeping our heads above water, when that mentality creeps into our spiritual life it becomes dangerous.

Without realizing it, it means that define what is at the center of our lives by determining what Christ can touch and what He must leave alone.  We set aside time to connect with Him, and often in doing so, try to decide the parts of us that He gets to connect with.

What if everything we do is meant to be an act of worship, and act of placing and keeping Christ at the center of who we are?

w/ Vern Collins

“Framework for Faithfulness: Values” (September 9, 2018)

from Daniel 3:1-18

What drives your decisions?  What determines the way you spend your time, your resources, your energy, the things you pursue?  Follow the trail of those things and you’re not too far off from being able to determine what you value most.

If Vision (see the message from 9.2.18) determines the path on which we are journeying, then our Values determine HOW we journey that path.  The questions we must wrestle with in this are: Are the things we tend to value worth the value we assign them? And are the values by which we live in fact life giving or are they stealing life from us?

w/ Vern Collins

“Framework for Faithfulness: Vision” (September 2, 2018)

from Nehemiah 1:1-2:6

Much of our time, energy, and attention are spent reacting to someone else’s urgent or to our own need to achieve or acquire or accomplish.  We have deadlines to meet, meetings to make, assignments due, bills to pay and on top of all of that we set goals and have ideas for things we’d like to accomplish and overcome.

This is life, right?  But is this really the “full life” Jesus came to offer (John 10:10)?

What if the picture we grabbed on to for who we could be come or what our situation or the situation of the world around us could look like isn’t born out of our own need for validation or comfort or security…what if it is born out of something that God plants in us?

What if God has a vision for you?  A preferred future born out of His call to live life to bring Him glory and invite others into His story?

w/ Vern Collins

“Framework for Faithfulness: You Have a Role to Play” (August 26, 2018)

from Exodus 17:8-16

Alongside beginning this new series in which we consider those truths and characteristics that together build a life of faithfully following Jesus in the call He has on us as the Church, we also have the privilege of celebrating and praising God for 10 years of faithfulness and fruit in and through our Crossroads Worship Gathering.

As we celebrate all that God has done over the past 10 years, we are challenged to consider the truth that ALL of us are invited to play a role in God’s ongoing unfolding work in this world of inviting humanity into life through Jesus.

How will you say, “yes,” to the call?  Where is God calling you to take the next step and invest your life in all that He is doing in this world through the church?

w/ Vern Collins

“Summer Reading-John: Jesus Did Many Other Things” (August 19, 2018)

from John 21:15-25

John ends his Gospel with this curious last sentence: “Jesus did many other things as well.  If everyone of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.”

What is it that makes, “many other things,” possible?  Work harder?  Delegate more?  Accomplish more?  Sleepless nights?  Saying, “yes,” anytime you are asked to do something?  Sure, these are all possible elements to accomplishing many other things, but what if it begins by saying, “yes,” to a meal?  What if it begins by saying, “yes,” to relationship with Jesus?

And what if we allow Jesus to take us deeper?  What if we allow Jesus to ask more, rather than to work so hard to become what the world is suggesting we ought to be?

w/ Vern Collins and Jeff McClain

“Let the Journey Begin” (July 15, 2018)

from Genesis 12:1-9

In the first of a special two-part series (and brief break from our “Summer Reading” series), we welcome new Senior Pastor Lory Beth Huffman who challenges us to consider what it might look like for us to journey TOGETHER with the future that God is calling us in to.

God is calling.  Right where you are.   Will you follow?

w/ Lory Beth Huffman

“Life Together: The Day With Others” (April 22, 2018)

from Hebrews 10:23-25

Mission Celebration Sunday!  How is God calling you to deeper discipleship?  Deeper trust in His call?  Deeper dependence on His leading and His provision as He draws you deeper into the full life that Jesus promises in John 10?

w/ testimony from some of our very own Crossroads family and a word from Pastor Laura Byrch

“Set Free: Faithfulness” (November 5, 2017)

from Jeremiah 32:1-15

It’s not that we don’t want to respond faithfully to the life-changing gift that God has given us in Christ…it’s that too often faithfulness feels just too inconvenient.

What if instead of thinking about what it might mean for us now, we begin to think about what God is calling us to in terms of what it might mean for God’s Kingdom in the future?

What if you begin to think of both the little acts of faithfulness and the huge leaps of faithfulness as something might God use to teach you about Himself now as well as plant seeds for growth in the lives of others in the future?

w/ Vern Collins

“More to the Story: Ruth” (July 17, 2016)

from Ruth 4:13-22

Almost as an intermission between the story of Israel’s judges and the beginning of the time of her kings is the brief account of a woman named Ruth.

While this may not only seem like a strange placement for such a story, but also a curious addition to what we hold as Scripture, it is one of the most beautiful pictures of faithfulness we have in all of the Bible.

Not only does Ruth paint for us a picture of what undying faithfulness looks like, but challenges in the attention and compassion we give to those around us.

In the midst of your every day coming and going, triumphs and even struggles, are you paying attention to the lives of the hurting around you…and are you willing to enter in to them?

w/ Vern Collins

“More to the Story: Daniel” (July 10, 2016)

from Daniel 3

If someone asked you Who God is, how would you answer that question?  How would you describe God to the world around you?

Particularly now when this world is hurting, when so many questions surround the acts of hate and violence that seem so prevalent…what would you tell this world about who God is?  How would you describe God?

What if it wasn’t an explanation that this world needed, rather an introduction?

Do you know God in a way that you would allow you to introduce God to this world?

w/ Vern Collins

“Expectations: Things Will Change” (December 6, 2015)

from Zephaniah 3:14-20/Luke 1:46-55

Advent is about expectation…the expectation that God will continue to fulfill His promises.  And if God is still fulfilling His promises then isn’t God still acting…and if God is acting, then things will change?  Right?

Right.  The problem is we don’t often see it.  We look for change in our lives, but don’t see it, we expect our circumstances to improve, but aren’t seeing any thing different…so if God is acting, why aren’t things changing?  The question, perhaps, is not whether or not things are changing, but, “are you looking for change in the right place?”

w/ Vern Collins

“Expectations: God Will Act” (November 29, 2015)

from Jeremiah 33:14-16

The season of Advent is about waiting, it is about expectation, it is about hope…the hope that things will change, the hope that this is not all there is, the hope that God will act.

Whether it’s something in your life you’re dealing with, or the state of this world we live in…holding on to such hope can seem foolish…

And yet maybe that’s exactly what is needed…a bit more foolishness…a deeper investment in the hope that God will act…because God has been faithful to act before.

w/ Vern Collins

“Dreamers: Dreams Deferred” (September 13, 2015)

from Deuteronomy 34:1-12

How do you deal with disappointment?  Do you dwell on it, or move past it?  Does it make you angry or do you numb yourself to it just to keep functioning?  You’ve worked toward something, planned for something, dreamt for a long time of doing something…only to be let down?  How do you deal with the disappointment?
What about when it seems to be God Who is the One leaving you disappointed?  What happens when it is God Who is the reason for your dreams being dashed or deferred?
Rather than allowing it to shake the foundation of your faith, what if you took a bigger view of your life…and a bigger view of the work that God can do in and through it?
w/ Vern Collins