Why should we even care about politics in the first place?

A lot of times when we rebuild something things can go wrong. There can be design flaws or the old way of doing things does not work because things have changed.

We’ve been in the middle of this series about rebuilding, where we are looking at the story of the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem in the book of Nehemiah, because we think in a way it parallels the current moment we are living where so many of us find ourselves “rebuilding”  in the aftermath of the lockdown. We feel like we are rebuilding the life of our church, but also our family life, for many of you it is a new job, a new living situation, a new relationship. And we think that there are some lessons that we can draw from Nehemiah’s story that we can apply to our current circumstances.

In this message, we take a look at the idea of what happens when rebuilding starts going wrong?

What happens when you hit roadblocks? When you have a vision to rebuild and things don’t go according to plan? Or you face opposition? You have this vision for your life or for something you feel that God wants you to accomplish and just when you are trying to make that thing happen, it looks like things start falling apart before you even begin. This is what’s going on in Nehemiah, chapter 4.

Nehemiah and the people of Israel are trying to rebuild this wall and just as they are starting, people begin making fun of what it looks like. And not happy with the wall, the neighboring cities actually plot to attack and kill them.

And, hopefully, you are not facing that kind of opposition, where your neighbors are trying to form an angry mob to kill you but anybody that has ever tried to do something worth doing has faced this moment, or multiple moments where it starts to seem impossible to keep going. 

In this sermon, we take a look at what Nehemiah did when he faced opposition and see what we can learn from that.

Last week we started our new series titled REBuilding based on the concept of Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. We ended as Nehemiah comes before the king and gets approval to go to Jerusalem and rebuild the city. And God gives Nehemiah huge favor and finances the whole expedition and gives him permission to take years off to carry this out. This week we pick up the story as Nehemiah goes to Jerusalem to begin the rebuilding process. Pastor Joel speaks on how rebuilding takes unity, it takes starting, it takes others and it takes work.

Scripture: Nehemiah 2:11-3:32

In the fourth episode of our The Church We Can Be series, pastor Kenny Camacho of Revolution Church in Annapolis discusses our identity as one church, flourishing beyond ourselves, to the glory and purpose of God and how we should have a church-planting connection; looking beyond our own well-being as a congregation and individuals.

In the third episode of our series, The Church We Can Be, pastor Joel speaks on Matthew 11:1-19 and discusses the need for us to collaborate for the Kingdom with a vision beyond our personal benefit.

In the second episode of the our The Church We Can Be sermon series, pastor Michael Bartlett from Collective Church in Frederick, MD speaks on 1 Corinthians 3 and discusses Paul's call for harmony among believers.

In the first episode of our new series, "The Church We Can Be," pastor Scott Ancarrow from The Foundry Church in Baltimore explains how The Church (the global church) can be a connected church by connecting to the Hope of Jesus, connecting to one another and connecting to our cities.

We collaborated with multiple churches in our network to create this series. We are excited and hope you join us on the journey as we work and learn about the church we can be together.

What does it look like for a local church to work towards racial justice and peace? In this sermon, Scott Ancarrow from The Foundry Church in Baltimore shares some of the lessons he has learned from doing this work for several years in the city of Baltimore.