Bay Area Community Church

We have a special guest visiting and bringing the word. Mark Norman is a longtime friend of Bay Area and was the Lead Pastor of Grace Community Church, our sister church in Columbia, for 27 years. He and Greg have been friends and ministry partners for over 20 years, and when Mark retired, he and his wife Lu began attending here. Mark has other ministry experience in the ministry he and his wife started where they mentor young pastors, and for the last 20 years Mark has served on the National board of Search, a ministry of lifestyle evangelism and discipleship to adults. You don't want to miss this Sunday!

We all have songs that immediately transport us - to a place, to a time or to a memory. Music has this incredible ability to stir our hearts and shape our souls, and that's why the longest book in the Bible is a collection of songs: the Psalms! Join us this Sunday as we kick off a Summer series in the Psalms and find out how the people of Israel used their travel playlist to achieve a quiet soul in the midst of the chaos of life.

Have you ever signed up for something you were convinced would promise you particular results and then part way through the process you started to doubt that you made the right decision? When this happens, it is a normal human experience to doubt and question the person you once believed or the product you put your hope in. Did they lie? Does it not work? Or is something just wrong with you? This week we will look at how Jesus interacts with someone who should have known better than to doubt Jesus, but he did. How does Jesus respond to doubt and how does his response inform how we should live? I am stoked to have the opportunity to walk us through how Jesus interacts with doubters this Sunday. See you there!

We all have weaknesses. Sometimes those weaknesses can inadvertently hurt other people. One of the challenges of becoming more like Jesus, is the fact that we are slow to grow and often resistant to change which means our weaknesses tend to hang around a lot longer than we want. The question is - how does Jesus want to help us in our weaknesses?

If you have been with us in our series Anatomy of a Savior, you know that we have been learning how Jesus behaved towards certain “challenging" people groups. These are the people that are hard to love or show compassion towards. They stretch us in our behavior towards them. And more than our behavior towards these people is the underlying truth of what we believe about them.

This Sunday, we’ll look at how Jesus behaved towards those who were unlovable both in stature and appearance with the hopes that He will grow us in an area of weakness.

Nobody ENJOYS paying their taxes, but in the ancient world, tax collectors were hated to a degree that the IRS cannot even fathom. These powerful, rich and corrupt people leveraged their power to exclusively help themselves - so how did Jesus treat them? Join us on Sunday as we learn from Jesus' response to this despised demographic. 

Kids these days...As it turns out, KIDS are viewed differently these days than they were 2,000 years ago! And why is that? A major reason for a transformation in how society views and values children is a single statement from Jesus in Luke 18. Join us this Sunday as look to Jesus to shows us how we ought to BEHAVE TOWARD and BELIEVE ABOUT children.

"Delegating a responsibility is so easy and saves you so much work!" That's a sentence that would NEVER be said by someone who's actually tried to delegate something before. As strange as it sounds, giving away work to others is hard! It requires clarity, patience and training. Thankfully, Jesus showed us what that process looks like when it comes to making disciples, and I'm excited to walk through it together. Once you've selected your WHO, it's time to move on to the HOW.