The end of exile comes not just with a return to Jerusalem but with the promise of a new heart. In this message, we explore how Jesus is the way, and how his way is to call followers into a community of practice. Spiritual practice—training, discipline, holiness and wholeness—is what opens us to God’s transforming grace, fashioning a new heart within us.

Daniel is called into exile and groomed to be a courtier to the Babylonian king. He says “yes" to Babylonian education and culture, but he doesn’t say “yes” to everything. In this message about the tension of exile, we explore how to discern what we say “yes” to and what we say “no” to, in order to live well.

Israel is rebuked for trusting in Egypt rather than God, which falls into their pattern of looking to idols to save them. What does that mean in our context, when modern-day idolatry is alive and well but looks so different than it did when Isaiah was written? In this message, we explore how following Jesus means living in trust, and how trust always calls us away from worshipping idols.

The Hebrew concept of time means that are future and where we are heading is deeply connected to our past and where we’ve been. In this Vision Sunday message, we explore the sound of LBCF’s heartbeat over the last 35 years: our heart for community, our heart for the city, our heart of love and sacrifice. And we dream together about what might be because of what has been.

What can we learn from the Hebrew experience about how to live in exile from Christendom? Exile provides a season of reorientation to mission Dei. We learn that exiles: grieve, tell their most dangerous story, resist empire, make radical promises to empire, and sing dangerous songs. In response, to a broken world, we declare: here am I, send me.

The prophets were radically called by God and set apart to speak truth to power. But God’s continuing work, by His Spirit, is to call each of us out, to fulfill plans and purposes in His Kingdom. In this message, we explore how we can follow the Biblical pattern of saying “Here I am” as God calls us and invites us into His story.

In the midst of exile, God, through Jeremiah, calls the people to imagine a day of freedom. In this message, we explore the importance of dreaming and of prophetic imagination for living in the here and now with vibrance, abundance, and spiritual power.

We are brought by Jesus out of exile, but Scripture makes it clear that we still live in exile, as foreigners in the world. How do we live in the culture without being in the culture? How do live fully here — “planting gardens, building houses,” as God describes it— while living with longing and hope for a world re-born? In this message, we explore the biblical concept of exile as we launch a new series on living well in exile, in whatever form we may encounter it.

At Christmas we celebrate the coming of the Messianic Age. This means the end of old mythologies and the beginning of a new story. At the center of this new story, which is rooted in God’s Kingdom Come , is diversity, as Jews and Gentiles are brought together. This story of diversity continues through the age of the Church, and in this message we explore some aspects of Biblical diversity, how Jesus leads us into it, and how we can follow him wholeheartedly.