January 13, 2019
Steve DeNeff - Luke 5:27-32. “Live in harmony with one another. Don’t be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position… Do not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another… Instead, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another… accept one another, just as Christ accepted you in order to bring praise to God… be devoted to one another in brotherly love (and) honor one another above yourselves… be kind and compassionate to one another… offer hospitality to one another without grumbling… and when you gather to eat, you should wait for each other.”
January 6, 2019
Steve DeNeff - John 17:20-26. In Jesus, God’s solution to a universal problem is a particular person and not just a person but a people through whom God will bless the earth. These people live with God and God lives through these people in ways that are peculiar, yet attractive to the rest of the world. Jesus, the Son of God, is the whole Church in the shape of a single person. What if a whole community moved toward this together, from slave to child? What if the Church was truly the Body, the physical Presence of Christ in the world? If we lived together as God lives within Himself, in the Trinity, how would we live And how would it be peculiar yet attractive to the way everyone else lives?
December 30, 2018
Eric Crisp - Luke 2:41-52; Colossians 3:1-3, 12-17. Many live life without noticing the absence of Jesus. Others notice Jesus’ absence and, as they begin to look for him, wonder why he isn’t there. We rediscover Jesus, however, when we are in the Father and about the Father’s business, dwelling in the word of Christ and putting on love, peace, and thankfulness.
December 23, 2018
Steve DeNeff - Isaiah 9:2-7; Luke 2:1-14. For many, the shift from Slave to Child is only self-actualization. They celebrate the privileges of a firstborn, yet forget their commensurate responsibility. Like Jesus, we are the Presence of God in this world. We live in the Father for the world. That is why Jesus’ birth and ours is “good news of great joy to all people.”
December 16, 2018
Emily Vermilya - John 1:1-2, 10-14; Colossians 2:9-10. When asked what God is like, most will say that He is “love” but do we know what this means? Jesus said, “The Father loves the Son” (John 5:20) and he prays “that the love you (the Father) have for me may be in them,” (John 17:26). In fact, the love of the Father for the Son and for us is the same love to the same degree. Just as the Father loved us through the Son, the Son will love others through us. God is not just the standard, but the Source of our love for others. This changes everything about the way we love one another.
December 9, 2018
Steve DeNeff - John 1:1-2, 10-14; Colossians 2:9-10. For many, their humanity is a weakness: “I’m only human,” they say to excuse their last failure, yet the more of these failures they have the less human they become. What if Jesus, and not somebody else, is the measure of our humanity? What if God took on our flesh so that we, in our flesh, can be like God? But how? In his humanity, God makes demands upon our humanity, yet He offers freely to give us all that He demands.
December 2, 2018
Steve DeNeff - Hosea 11:1-4, 8-11; Luke 1:26-32a. Fatherhood is an idea that many today find repulsive because it stirs up images of male dominance, of abuse or neglect, and so much of it is for good reason. Yet God is a Father and that’s how He wants to be known. What if fatherhood properly understood is the cure for fatherhood properly condemned. The relationship that Jesus had with his Father is the very relationship that we can have, not some other.
November 18, 2018
Steve DeNeff - Acts 1:4-8; 11:19-26. Organizations are often attracted to the obsolete, to things that should have worked but did not, to things that were once productive but no longer are. Then something happens - something unpredictable and unwelcome - that forces us to re-examine our assumptions, methods and goals. It’s a moment that calls us forward, from Jerusalem to Antioch, and if we go God will meet us there with new power and new opportunities. I believe our church is in an Antioch moment that calls for us to establish new presence in the community, outside these walls.
November 11, 2018
Emily Vermilya - Deuteronomy 6:1-25. The mission of God is timeless and unchanging. His "faithfulness continues from generation to generation,” (Ps. 119:90). Throughout the bible, we read of the home serving as a primary place of disciple making—a place where faith is birthed, scripture is revered, and discipleship is prioritized. The gathered church, then, serves as a supplementary disciple-making entity—a place where what is taught and modeled in the home is edified and supported. But in our contemporary culture, it seems too often this equation has been flipped and the “heavy lifting” of discipleship has been placed upon the church with little regard for the impact of what is or is not modeled in the home. In our charge to make more and better disciples who transform the community and resource the church, and in an attempt to continue to pass along this mission to the next generation, we must return to the model of discipleship that is rooted in the home and edified and supported in the gathered community.
November 4, 2018
Steve DeNeff - Mark 3:7-16a, 19b. As we discussed last week, we live in a time of unprecedented change. Traditions, values and mores that have governed our lives for years are met with suspicion from a public determined to “do what is right in their own eyes.” Even the institutions that have stabilized us in the past are, themselves, weakened by internal conflict and impotence. One of those is the Church. Never has the public been less interested in the Church; never have they needed it more. We must now ask, “what will the Church do? How will we adapt to these times? What changes are called for in making more and better disciples?" In this passage, Jesus gives us a formula for relevance in any age.
