Advent is all about the arrival of the Messiah, our Savior, Jesus. Jesus is the fulfillment of the law and Old Testament prophecy, but this humble king did not reign over a kingdom on earth. This King is the King of Heaven, and His advent (meaning arrival) marked the ushering in of that kingdom for all of humanity. The Upside Down Kingdom series will continue through the Advent season as we open the scroll of Isaiah to discover how Jesus has fulfilled the hope of a people in exile and how Jesus revealed His kingship that still reigns today.

Jesus was a different kind of king. He was always breaking the categories of who or what people wanted Him to be. And yet He was exactly what the world needed; He is exactly what our world needs, what our community needs. If we are paying close attention to Jesus, we realize He is always inviting, always challenging, always redeeming. His ways are higher than our ways, His thoughts higher than our thoughts, and therefore His kingdom is like no other. It is completely upside-down when compared to our way of doing things. So as a community following Jesus from fear to love, perhaps we ought to pay attention to what Jesus says about what His kingdom is like and who He is looking for to take part in it. For this we turn to, perhaps, Christ’s most seminal and famous teaching on the Kingdom of Heaven, The Sermon On The Mount. Join us as we unpack this crucial teaching during a crucial moment in history. 

We have a dream that one day, all people in our community would be fully embraced and fully transformed in Christ. But the problem is our world is driven by fear, so we create cultures of division, isolation, and shame. So, we will take the next four weeks to unpack what it looks like to foster a community that follows Jesus from fear to love. 

What is Church? This can be a really painful subject for many. For some of us, the Church has been a place of hurt. For some of us, the Church has been a place of abuse. In so many ways, it's easy to get discouraged and to feel like the Church has lost its way. But Jesus started the Church, and He has work for us to do!
What does it mean to be a part of the Church? Why does the Church exist? What is the Church supposed to be? What is it supposed to do? If we want to know where we are going, it helps to know where we come from. The same God who has been moving and speaking to His people all throughout the Scriptures is the same God who is with us today! What good news! Join us as we journey through the book of Acts and tell the story of the birth of the Church and how we find ourselves in the middle of this meaningful time of human existence being the Church!

Jesus is risen! And that changes everything! But what does this mean for us? What do we do now?

"Eastertide" or "Eastertime" is the season of the church calendar that occurs every year between Easter Sunday and Pentecost Sunday. This represents Jesus's time on the Earth before He ascended to be with the Father. This season culminates in a crescendo that occurs at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was given to His followers and the Church was born! Eastertide is a period marked by celebration, feasting, and rejoicing. During this series, we will reflect on what it means to be a rejoicing people. There are plenty of reasons to lament and grieve in our time, but even in our grief, we continue to rejoice. Jesus defeated death, and that changes everything.

Join us as we enter into this next chapter of the story and learn together what it means to rejoice and live out the joy of the resurrection.

It has been so meaningful to journey with one another through Lent and into Holy Week. All this has been building up to our joyous celebration of Christ's Resurrection! This is a moment in our yearly rhythms to focus on the story of the cross and the empty tomb. Everything concerning our Christian faith hinges on these loving acts of our Savior!

Life is full of really difficult questions. "Why would God allow this to happen? If God loves me, why would He put me through this? How can I trust God?" 

In all four gospel accounts in the New Testament, Jesus asked 307 questions, He was asked 183 questions, yet He only directly answered 8. Jesus was almost 40 times more likely to ask a question than provide a direct answer. It may be difficult to accept, but sometimes it may not be possible to know the answer to some of life's most difficult questions, but we do know that Jesus loves our questions. Sometimes He doesn't give us the answers we want. Rather, He gives us better questions to sit with. In the questioning, we find the acceptance of a God who understands us. 

Sometimes we withhold our questions because we are afraid of the answer or afraid that God won't answer, but the Scriptures give us plenty of examples of questions being lifted up to God as worship. Even Jesus Himself, while He hung on the cross, asked the Father a question, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken Me?" 

As the Church steps into Lent, we embrace this season of fasting and prayer by bringing everything to God, especially our hardest questions. Join us as we unpack subjects like doubt, lament, grief, and repentance. 

The Scriptures are a unique gift in that they are not just packed full of doctrine and rules. The Bible is rich with history, real people devoted to a real God and experiencing the breakthrough of Heaven on Earth. 

Much of this history is told through narrative and, as is the case with this sermon series, through letters. The Apostle Paul was radically changed when he encountered Jesus, and his call to serve the Church has made a lasting impact, even to the point where his letters to several churches have been preserved in the canon of scripture. 

Paul writes his letter to the church in Philippi from prison, yet this letter is rich with the themes of joy, gratitude, grace and peace. Together, we will mine the depths of God’s word in the book of Philippians to discover more about what it means to exist in this increasingly anxious, chaotic, and uncertain world as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, as agents of grace and peace.