On this Fourth Sunday after Epiphany we continue our series on Encountering God.  The season of Epiphany focuses on Jesus Christ being revealed to the world - particularly through the Magi - and now today, through us.  Throughout Epiphany we are exploring how, in our encountering God, we manifest the life and ministry of Jesus, how we go about demonstrating the presence of God in the places we work and live among the persons we engage in our day to day lives.  

 

Connect to Encountered by God's Embrace: God Birthed in Us - Fulfillers of God's Word.  This week's message focuses upon how like Christ we live fulfilling the word of God in our lives.  As we reflect upon how God's Word - God's Story and Vision forms and shapes us, how it transforms us, we realize that in embodying God's Word in our lives - we live as ones who fulfill the purposes of God's word in our human contexts.  

Second Sunday After Epiphany: Encountered by God's Embrace - Sharing Gifts Which Reveal God

On this Second Sunday after Epiphany we continue our series on Encountering God.  The season of Epiphany focuses on Jesus Christ being revealed to the world - particularly through the Magi - and now today, through us.  Throughout Epiphany we are exploring how, in our encountering God, we manifest the life and ministry of Jesus, how we go about demonstrating the presence of God in the places we work and live among the persons we engage in our day to day lives.  

 

Connect to Encountered by God's Embrace: Sharing Gifts Which Reveal God.  This week's message focuses upon the outpouring of Spirit given gifts which manifest the presence and love of God in the world.  Too often we think of engaging in ministry for the left-over hours of our weeks - the hours we give to volunteering.  But we are called to be about sharing God's love and presence and making disciples not in the left-over hours of our week, but rather in the 100+ hours in our week in which we are working, being with family, doing what we do with the main hours of our lives.  It is in these times we minister in the power of the Spirit with Spirit-given gifts through which we reveal God's love for the world.  

First Sunday after Epiphany: Encountering God in Our Baptism - Being at Home with God and Revealing God's Presence

On this First Sunday after Epiphany we begin our new series on Encountering God.  The season of Epiphany focuses on Jesus Christ being revealed to the world - particularly through the Magi - and now today, through us.  Throughout Epiphany we are exploring how, in our encountering God, we manifest the life and ministry of Jesus, how we go about demonstrating the presence of God in the places we work and live among the persons we engage in our day to day lives.  

 

Connect to Being at Home with God: Revealing God's Presence.  This week's message focuses upon God's love for us is revealed in God creating us, naming us and being with us.  As the people of God we do not merely grasp hold of God's love for ourselves, but we reveal and demonstrate God's love for the world by living in ways which make God's presence known in our worlds.  

Fourth Sunday of Advent: Carried on a Flood of Reversal - From Insignificant Things

On this Fourth Sunday of Advent we continue focusing upon the floods of difficulties that overwhelm our lives, but equally we can experience the flood of God's grace and mercy.  Throughout Advent we our prayer is to receive God's overwhelming presence in the midst of our difficulties. 

Connect to Carried on a Flood of Reversal: From Insignificant Things.  This week's message focuses upon the reality that evil does not have the last word.  In the midst of a world filled with sorrow and injustice, God sends a flood of reversal to make things right, especially those who have been trampled upon: mercy for the poor, the hungry, the lowly.  Our Scripture passages reveal that God conquers evil from insignificant places, through insignificant persons, as revealed by Bethlehem and Mary.  

First Sunday of Advent: Wading into Faithfulness - Passing on Mercy and Grace

On this First Sunday of Advent we are focusing upon the floods of difficulties that overwhelm our lives, but equally we can experience the flood of God's grace and mercy.  Throughout Advent we our prayer is to receive God's overwhelming presence in the midst of our difficulties. 

Connect to Wading in Faithfulness: Passing on Mercy and Grace.  This week's message focuses upon our hope our anticipation of Jesus' return.  It is a hope not of escaping this place - because we were created to be human and we we given the earth as a gift for being our home.  So when God makes all things new we will be recreated as human beings (bodily resurrection) and our dwelling will be on earth - new earth with God's dwelling being with us.  In light of this our hope, our ministry is to be partners with God in God's activity of making all things new. 

Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost - Jesus, One of Us: Participating in God's Mercy and Grace

On this Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost we continue our final Fall series focus on the letter to the Hebrews.  This series is entitled: Salvation Comes Through Jesus and asks what is salvation?  We have many different understandings – perhaps negative, rather than positive. In this series through Hebrews, we are being challenged to explore salvation in a new light – salvation that comes through Jesus.

 

Connect to Jesus, One of Us: Participating in God's Mercy and Grace.  Jesus was one of us.  He became a human being, was tempted just as we are tempted - so experienced all what we go through - yet he did not sin - he did not align himself with the non-reign of God, but always gave allegiance to God and God's reign.  God "checked in" with us in becoming human to show the way and and be the way, and we help each other, in Christ, continue living as disciples of Jesus giving allegiance to God by "checking in" with each other as well.  

Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost - Hebrew Series: Salvation Comes Through Jesus

On this Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost we begin our final Fall series focus on the letter to the Hebrews.  This series is entitled: Salvation Comes Through Jesus and asks what is salvation?  We have many different understandings – perhaps negative, rather than positive. In this series through Hebrews, we are being challenged to explore salvation in a new light – salvation that comes through Jesus.

 

Connect to Salvation Comes Through Jesus: Jesus is the Atonement.  Salvation is more than just the cross. God speaks to us by his Son – what does it mean in Hebrews 2: 9 – “so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone?”  Atonement is not just the cross – atonement is in and through the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus in which in him we are no longer subject to the powers of sin and death.