Ekklesia Church at Raleigh

Though most of the fruits of the spirit are consistent across translations, this one gets translated many ways: patience, forbearance, long suffering, etc. Why is this word so hard to translate, and what does its meaning teach us about becoming patient in an increasingly impatient world?

In Hebrew, you don’t ask, “How are you?” You ask, “How is your shalom?” Through honest market scales, a burned field in Exodus, a father-son board game, and the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina’s reckoning with its first bishop, we explore what it means to be whole, and why real peace can never come at someone else’s expense. Peace, it turns out, is a group activity.

It often seems like we live in a joyless society. Even in the church, Joy often seems to be in short supply. Why is this and what is the way forward? And, most importantly, what does this have to do with Taylor Swift?

We think we’re fluent in love — we’ve been studying it in every movie and love song our whole lives. But in Part 4 of our Galatians series, we see that the love Paul lists first isn’t the love that comes easy. It’s agape: love aimed at the people outside our circle, the ones who can't pay us back.

In our last week of background sermons before delving into the individual “fruits” of the spirit, we ask the question, “Why fruit?” Why, with the world of metaphors at his fingertips, did Paul use Fruit as his chosen image for the spiritual life?

What if true freedom isn't about escaping obligations, but leaning into them? In Two Soils (part two of our series), we look at ancient purity codes, Pixar’s Monsters, Inc., and why a freedom that isolates you isn't freedom at all.

This Sunday we begin a new series on the fruit of the spirit. But before we discuss the fruit, we need to discuss the letter that Paul wrote them in. What is the letter to the Galatians about? And what does it have to say to us today?

The Sermon on the Mount isn't just a collection of beautiful words to admire—it's a life to embody. In the final episode of our summer series, we look at the true source of Jesus’ authority and explore how ordinary, everyday acts of goodness move us from admiring God's Kingdom to actually living it out. Featuring a special guest conversation with Kathy of The Bridge International.

For many of us, the faith of our past failed to last because it was built upon the unstable foundations of easy answers or cynical criticism. But is there a better foundation upon which we can reconstruct our faith in a way that will endure the storms of life? By reflecting on Jesus’s parable of the two builders, Pastor Greg invites us to ponder that very question as we consider the type of faith that we’re building for ourselves as well as for future generations.

As Jesus concludes his sermon on the mount, he tells us that not everyone who says "Lord Lord," will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of his father in heaven. This is a challenging text, particularly in a culture that highly values what we think and say. How can this text inspire us to prioritize our incarnational self over our conscious self?