This week, Pastor Shaq Hager concludes the Spiritual Formation series by talking through the intersection of our formation into Christlikeness and suffering. We can approach our formation thinking it's always up and to the right, that we're always moving from weakness to strength and from failure to victory. Yet, it's in those places where we experience suffering that our theology oftentimes fails and we're left with nothing more than ourselves and Jesus. It's in these places that the depth and intimacy of our relationship with Him is what carries us through. And, it's in these seasons of darkness that we're shaped and formed, not in spite of our suffering, but through it.

This week, Dennis Allan talked through Jesus as the prototype for what it means to live a Christian life in the world today. We can look to Jesus and see the way He lived, the people He built relationships with, the power structures that He challenged, and the ways that He taught and see a pattern for what our lives are supposed to look like today. One of the most powerful ways we can model Jesus' life is through a radical kind of hospitality, where we invite people to our table and build friendships with them that span difference. We can proclaim the Gospel through our lives to our neighbors and neighborhoods, all the while looking to Jesus as our prototype.

This week, Dennis Allan talked through how we must learn Jesus' teachings if we are to become like Him and take on His character and ways. The journey of spiritual formation requires us to be reshaped and reformed until we resemble Jesus in every aspect of our lives—our thoughts, desires, choices, actions, and affections. If we're to be people whose lives point to the Kingdom while we live inside the American empire, and if the church is to be an outpost of the Kingdom in our neighborhoods, then we need to know Jesus' teaching. Jesus possess the words of eternal life. Everything we need and everything we need to know is found in HIm. To be Jesus' representatives, we must know, embody, and live out His Kingdom teaching, otherwise we won't know how to love mercy, do justice, or walk humbly with God.

This week, Pastor Shaq Hager talks through how spiritual formation begins with attachment. We do not become like Jesus through willpower, performance, or isolation—we are formed through relational nearness: to Jesus, and to the people He places around us. Belonging is not about achieving acceptance but receiving it, and letting that belonging rewire our sense of identity. Christian formation happens most powerfully through proximity and trust—embodied through practices like presence, confession, listening, and shared rhythms. True formation cannot happen apart from the vine—or apart from the body.

This week, Dennis Allan starts our new series on Spiritual Formation by discussing the ways each and every one of us is being shaped and formed every day. We tend not to notice, or maybe even convince ourselves that we can listen to whatever we want, read whatever we want, follow whomever we want, and not have it impact us in any way. But, the truth is everything we give our attention to changes who we are, either drawing us closer to Jesus or leading us away from Him. The question isn't are we being formed, but rather into what and by what. If we're going to be people who are becoming increasingly like Jesus (and our communities and world need us to), then we need to pay attention to Him more than anyone and anything else.

In the final week of our series, Faithful Exiles, Dennis Allan walks through Jesus' words to His closest followers to go and make disciples of all nations by baptizing and teaching every person who places their faith, hope, and trust in Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Jesus is able to send His followers (and us) onto this mission because all authority in heaven and earth belongs to Him, alone. It's not a mission any one of us gets to opt out of. In fact, making students and apprentices of Jesus is one of the primary ways we seek the well-being of our neighbors and neighborhoods. As faithful exiles living within the American empire we go on Jesus' mission as ambassadors of the future and coming Kingdom.

This week, Julia Allan walks through Daniel 12 focusing on the promised inheritance Daniel, and each of us will receive, through our faithful perseverance. In the midst of darkness, struggle, suffering, and injustice we can look ahead to the promise we each have in Jesus—one day we will enter into an eternal rest, where we will rise and receive our place as co-rulers alongside Jesus. This hope is meant to give strength and courage to press on in the midst of hardship. We keep going, doing the good works that have been set before us. What greater good – what greater glory – what greater inheritance could we ever receive than to live and breathe and remain in the presence of Jesus now and forever?

This week, Carrie Bucker walks through Daniel 9, where we see a picture of what faithful repentance can look like for exiles living in a broken world. Daniel confesses not just his own sins, but the sins of his people — acknowledging the communal and systemic nature of sin. In a culture obsessed with personal autonomy and private spirituality, this prayer reminds us that faithfulness to God requires honesty about both individual and corporate failure. Jesus Himself taught His followers to pray “Forgive us” — because we belong to one another. True repentance doesn’t lead to shame — it leads to restoration, renewal, and hope in God’s mercy. Faithful exiles are not marked by moral superiority, but by deep humility and courageous honesty before God.

This week, Dennis Allan talked through Daniel 7, the beginning of the apocalyptic section of the book. There, Daniel tells about a vision that included four beasts, ten horns, the Ancient of Days, and the Son of Man. It's a story that provided hope to the Israelites in exile under the Babylonian and then Persian empires that these evil and unjust empires would be judged and rendered powerless. It's a story that still provides hope today. We don't have to wonder who the Son of Man is, as Daniel's original audience did. We know the Son of Man is Jesus and we know that right now He is reigning at the right hand of God. We can trust in the hope that despite the injustice, oppression, and darkness we see in the world today, all of it will one day be judged and rendered powerless. Jesus has already come and He's already won.

What should followers of Jesus do when the government enacts laws that are unjust? In this sermon on Daniel 6, Dennis Allan explores how civil disobedience—like Daniel’s refusal to obey the king’s edict—is not rebellion for rebellion’s sake, but courageous loyalty to God and love for neighbor. Drawing insight from the Civil Rights legacy of John Lewis, we consider what faithful resistance looks like today when laws harm the vulnerable. If the state demands injustice, Christians are called not to comply but to obey God, even when it costs us.