Christmas is meant to be a magical time. Snow, presents, time with your family. As an adult though, the pressure to make every Christmas perfect is exhausting. What’s meant to be magical is stressful. It’s exhausting. This exhaustion and stress is a much better picture of what the first Christmas was really like for Mary […]

This episode contains today’s sermon and all the lessons and carols from the service! God has always worked in surprising ways. It’s why, even though it was prophecied through the scriptures, Jesus’ life and death caught people off guard. Surprises have been around since the beginning, when God put order into chaos, gave a 99-year-old […]

[During the upload, the podcast audio for this episode was cut off. It has been re-uploaded here. Apologies for the inconvenience!] Christmas is meant to be a time of great joy, but everyone reaches a point when they realize Christmas morning can never be all it was cracked up to be. People move away, you […]

Christmas is meant to be a time of great joy, but everyone reaches a point when they realize Christmas morning can never be all it was cracked up to be. People move away, you grow older, or maybe you see the idealized version of Christmas on TV and just wish you had that for yourself. […]

Revelation is a book that needs special thoughtful attention and thoughtful response. Pastor Dean examines Revelation as a whole, and this passage in its context, to help reveal a couple of basic truths: Things are not always as they seem, and the Lamb is on the throne. For us, we can recognize that living between […]

Names are important. Nicknames say a lot about how you’ve been loved by those around you. Celebrities with titles like “Black Mamba,” “The Boss,” and “The Hardest Working Man in Show Business” all speak to their skills and how they want to be perceived. For us, today is Christ the King Sunday, and next week […]

Christians need encouragement, and we can’t do that on our own. It’s a modern-day lie that you don’t need anyone or that you should do it all by yourself. Instead, Christian fellowship is essential to enduring the hardships of life. The Hebrews Paul is writing to were persecuted by the Romans, and his question was […]

[Unfortunately, the audio file for this sermon was corrupted, a lower quality audio was able to be produced from the livestream. We apologize for the inconvenience.] Like a good shepherd, Peter watches over his flock and exhorts them in the Spirit, specifically calling upon the leaders in the church to lead as he does. Dean […]

Paul’s climactic hymn in his letter to the Philippians calls them to a life of other-centeredness–of humility and generosity. To live out their gospel identity and approach one another as Jesus did: not using his power for his own advantage, but emptying himself in obedience to the Father and for the good of the world.

For the diversity of the Body, God has a unique calling for everyone in it. Sam Pascoe, a returning friend and pastor, explains some ways of looking at the kinds of roles God gives the members of the body to properly divide the responsibilities of the church. Even in the Old Testament, God divides the […]