New Culture Church

Week seven of Create the Culture, and our eighth birthday. A short video tells the story of how New Culture began, and Abbie shares what the church has given through the Big Give. Then she opens Luke 19.

Zacchaeus finds a way to see Jesus. Jesus calls Zacchaeus by name and says He is coming to the house. Zacchaeus does not wait to clean up. He lets Jesus in, gives away what once made him feel secure, and says I'm all in. Abbie names three movements of consecration: receive Jesus coming close, release what we hold, and recommit to the work He has given us.

Jesus follows with the parable of the minas. What He entrusts to us is meant to be put to work, not buried. Abbie traces the same commission through Matthew 28 and Luke 24. Jesus comes close, then sends us to do what He did. Everyone leaves with an envelope holding $8 and an invitation to ask what Jesus would do with it.

So What: Consecration is our response to Jesus. We receive His closeness, release what we hold, and recommit to the mission He trusts us with.

Now What: Take your $8. Pray about what to do with it, how to multiply it, and who God is putting on your heart to come close to this week.

Scripture

• Luke 19:1-27 (Zacchaeus and the parable of the minas)
• Matthew 28:19-20 (The Great Commission)
• Luke 24:36-49 (Jesus appears and sends the disciples)
• Joshua 3:5 and 5 (Consecrate yourselves)

Week six of Create the Culture. Pastor Abbie takes us to Luke 11 and asks two questions. How did I get here? Who am I becoming?

Jesus tells the Pharisees that the outside of a cup can look clean while the inside is not. He is not against their practices. He wants those practices to form hearts of love. Abbie names four ways we are formed: what we hear, how we live, who is around us, and what happens to us. The stories we believe, the habits we repeat, our family and community, and our pain and suffering all shape us, whether we notice or not.

Being and doing are not in competition. Our being shapes our doing, and our doing forms our being. Look at your story. Look at your habits. Bring your pain to Jesus. Abbie closes with Psalm 139 and invites us to pray the examen every night.

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So What: We become what we behold and what we practice. Being and doing are complementary, not contradictory.

Now What: Spend time in your story, slow down to evaluate your habits, and let the Lord reshape you from the inside out.

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Scripture References:

- Luke 11:37-54 (Jesus and the Pharisees)

- Ezekiel 36:26 (A new heart)

- 2 Corinthians 5:17 (A new creation)

- Romans 12:2 (Transformed by the renewing of your minds)

- Luke 12:13-15 (The rich fool)

- Romans 5:1-5 (Suffering produces hope)

- 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 (The God of all comfort)

- Psalm 139 (Search me, O God)

Week five of Create the Culture. Ashleigh, from our teaching team, takes us to Luke 11, where Jesus says we are lamps meant to shine in the dark.

What we take in through our eyes shapes who we become. The word for a healthy eye, haplos, can mean simple, single, or whole. So does our time with Jesus have our whole attention? Ashleigh admits to praying with a show on in the background. Most of us have a version of that.

Martha and the older brother in the lost son story both worked hard and ended up bitter. They lost sight of why. Come back to Jesus first, let His love fill you, and serve from the overflow. Being with Him does not need a formula. A cute Bible and cute highlighters are fine, and so is a few words. The Lord's Prayer carries a lot of weight.

So What: Jesus desires us to be with Him and to be His light.

Now What: Be with Him wholly, notice the new ways you might be receiving Him, and serve from the overflow.

Scripture

• Luke 11:33-36 (Lamps and the healthy eye)
• Luke 15:11-32 (The lost son)
• Mark 1:35-39 (Jesus withdraws to pray)
• John 15:4-5 (Remain in the vine)
• Luke 11:1-4 (The Lord's Prayer)
• Luke 10:38-42 (Mary and Martha)

Read the full transcript: newculturechurch.com/series/create-the-culture/2026-10-04

Join a community group or form group: newculturechurch.com/communities

Build your rule of life: newculturechurch.com/rule-of-life/build

New Culture Church gathers Sundays at 11 AM at 301 S Bedford St, Suite 219, Madison, WI. Be with Jesus, become like Jesus, and do what Jesus did.

Week four of Create the Culture, and the front of the vision statement: what is the culture of Christ?

It starts on the beach at Devil’s Lake, where a group of kids goes from joy and delight to “you’re in my territory” in a few minutes. They listened to the people around them and started living it out. We are always being formed, and not everything that has formed us has to keep forming us.

The culture of Christ is a culture of withness. Jesus left heaven to commune with us, and He invites us to live with God, not under Him, over Him, from Him, or for Him. Luke 10:38-42 shows the difference. Martha opens her home and then gets lost in the work. Mary sits at His feet, and when she looks up, all she sees is Jesus.

That is why New Culture keeps a Rule of Life: scripture, prayer, fasting, Sabbath, Sunday worship, community, and serving the city. It is a practice, not a performance. Start small, be specific, share it with someone, and give yourself grace. Every day is a new day to say, Lord, I’m yours.

So What: The culture of Christ is a culture worth centering our lives around because it is what we were created for.

Now What: We develop a Rule of Life to intentionally organize our lives around Jesus.

Scripture References:

• Luke 10:38-42 (Martha and Mary)
• Philippians 2:1-11 (The mindset of Christ)
• Isaiah 7:14 and Matthew 1:23 (Emmanuel, God with us)
• Luke 11:1-4 (Jesus teaches His disciples to pray)
• Hebrews 12:2 (Fixing our eyes on Jesus)

Sign Up: Community groups and form groups at newculturechurch.com/communities. Build your rule of life at newculturechurch.com/rule-of-life/build.

Week three of the fall vision series, and the one taught out of order. One person, one place at a time. Then Madison. Now together. Abbie says they did it backwards and that it made more sense that way.

It opens in 2013 with a story she tells on herself. Eighteen, first week of college in Minneapolis, too proud to admit she could not parallel park, so she drops a car full of brand new friends at the Sculpture Garden and promises to find parking. She never comes back. She circles downtown until her phone dies, screaming and praying with the windows down, and prays for one light. One bar is open. She walks in, tells the bartender she is lost, and he pauses and asks whether she wants to go wash her face first. That is when she remembers the cat whiskers, and the word she let somebody write across her forehead for Capture the Flag. He gave her a charger, lemonade, breadsticks, and a pizza delivery driver to follow back to campus. Her Good Samaritan was a bartender who said go wash your face, honey.

Then Luke 10:25-37, read in full. An expert in the law asks what he must do to inherit eternal life, answers his own question with love God and love neighbor, and then tries to narrow the second half by asking who counts.

The argument runs in three moves. Community is required, and it goes back to Genesis, where God says let us make man in our image and then looks at the one man He has made and says it is not good for him to be alone. Community is risky, because rejection registers in the brain the same way physical pain does, which is why so many of us outsource the ask to a search bar. And community is rewarding, but only if you go back in after the first time it costs you something.

The fresh read is the middle of the parable. Abbie has preached this passage as loving the stranger many times. This week she noticed the order: the man was hurt by people, rejected by people, and then healed by people. We are hurt in relationship and we heal in relationship, and most of us stop halfway.

She spends real time on the two who crossed the road. The priest and the Levite were not villains. They had rituals they could not afford to trigger, so they kept walking, and a man stayed in the ditch for reasons that were perfectly defensible. The Samaritan had a better reason to keep walking and did not.

A study she saw the same week: the top two uses of AI right now are therapy advice and connection. Another one, out of Harvard, tracked men for seventy years and found the ones who stayed in close relationships lived longer and healthier than the ones who did not. Isolation is killing us faster than the thing everybody is worried about. None of the tools are evil, and she says so plainly. The question is who rules whom, and what we give up quietly when we stop having to ask a human being for directions.

She closes on the oil and the wine. Oil to heal, wine to cleanse, and a Samaritan who had to get close enough to the wound to use either one. That is what Jesus did. He did not shout it from a distance.

So What: We are hurt in relationship and we heal in relationship. Stopping at the first half is how a person ends up alone with a search bar and a list of reasons.

Now What: Receive the love of Jesus first, then go first with a person. Community groups start Tuesday.

Scripture References:

• Luke 10:25-37 (The expert in the law, and the parable of the Good Samaritan)
• Luke 10:27 (Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself)
• Luke 10:37 (Go and do likewise)
• Genesis 1:26 (Let us make man in our image)
• Genesis 2:18 (It is not good for him to be alone)
• 1 Corinthians 12:20-21 (Many parts, one body, and the eye cannot say I do not need you)
• 1 Corinthians 13:1 (A resounding gong or a clanging cymbal)
• 1 John 4:7-21 (Let us love one another, for love comes from God)
• 1 John 4:10 (Not that we loved God, but that He loved us)

Week two of the fall vision series. Last week was one person, one place at a time. This week is the place: Madison.

Nehemiah is cupbearer to the king in Susa, comfortable and far from the trouble, when word arrives that Jerusalem’s wall is broken down and its gates burned. He does four things in order, and they are the shape of the whole message. He gets the information and asks for more. He sits down and weeps. He prays. Then he participates, first by confessing sins that were not personally his, and later by rebuilding the wall.

Then Luke 10, where Jesus sends out the 72 and tells them the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest. The first instruction is prayer. The second is to stay put. Do not move around from house to house, because a meal in that world ran course after course, and staying long enough means you have to talk to people.

Madison keeps winning lists. Best place to live, best college town. Abbie shares every one of them, then asks who it is best for, and what the makeup of the survey was. The only way to know is to enter people’s stories.

She traced how New Culture learned this neighborhood. Doug Hunt had been praying over these blocks for years and kept a binder on the city planning and the redlining and who owned what. He said, these are the people you need to know. That led to Bayview and Neighborhood House, which started with deep breaths and Christmas cookies, and ended up last week with 200 kids getting school supplies when Neighborhood House had lost its biggest donor and most of its staff.

She also told on herself about the Doc Martens sitting in her cart for months, and the day Neighborhood House asked out of nowhere whether she was a size eight. As you serve, you are not left behind.

So What: The harvest is plentiful. Loving a city is four movements in order: know it, feel it, pray for it, then participate in it. Nehemiah did all four from a palace hundreds of miles away.

Now What: Walk your own neighborhood this week and pray for it. Then sign up for an hour at the Good Neighbor Gathering.

Scripture References:

• Nehemiah 1:1-11 (Cupbearer in Susa hears the wall is broken down)
• Nehemiah 1:4 (When I heard these things, I sat down and wept)
• Nehemiah 1:6 (I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself)
• Luke 10:1-12 (Jesus sends out the 72, two by two)
• Luke 10:2 (The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few)
• Luke 10:5-7 (Stay in that house, do not move around from house to house)
• Luke 19:41 (Jesus wept over the city)
• John 10:10 (Life, and life abundantly)

Week one of a new fall series. Jesus was on a mission to seek and save the lost, and He did it one person, one place at a time.

In Luke 8, Jairus begs Jesus to come heal his dying daughter. On the way the crowd nearly crushes Him, and a woman who has bled for twelve years reaches through it and touches His cloak. Jesus stops and asks who touched Him. Peter points out that everyone is touching Him. But Jesus felt one person in a crowd. Verse 47 is the line the message hangs on: seeing that she could not go unnoticed, she came trembling and fell at His feet.

Abbie told on herself twice. Once thanking a man on a plane for pulling down her backpack, feeling wonderfully seen, until he offered to get hers too. It was his bag. And once on her own patio studying this message, when her neighbor’s head came over the fence and she caught herself thinking, do you not know I am studying the holy word of God. The Spirit’s question back was better: what if that is not an interruption but an invitation.

Then Luke 9. Jesus gives the Twelve authority and sends them out with nothing, two by two. Showing up empty handed means having to receive hospitality, and we are not sent alone.

So What: Jesus felt one person in a crowd and stopped. He is never too busy for the one.

Now What: Pray for one person a day this week, and treat the next interruption as an invitation before you treat it as an inconvenience.

Scripture References:

• Luke 8:40-56 (Jairus’s daughter, and the woman who touched His cloak)
• Luke 8:47 (Seeing that she could not go unnoticed)
• Luke 9:1-6 (The Twelve given authority and sent out with nothing)
• Luke 10:1 (Sent out two by two)
• Luke 5:1-11 (The boat, the nets, and leaving it all behind)

This Week’s Practice: Midday prayer and intercession. Full nine week plan at newculturechurch.com/reading-plans.

Week four closed the Esther series with a guest. John Hunter and his wife Suzanne are missionaries with Youth With A Mission, part of the work this church supports. He is a potter, he is seventy six, and he opened with a map, because he says history has two eyes, chronology and geography. He and Suzanne set out to hitchhike to India in 1972 and got as far as Afghanistan. She came to faith in front of the two great Buddhas at Bamiyan. He came to faith at a house in Kabul.

That detour is the message. You set out for India and God stops you in Kabul. His word for it is interference. Esther did not grow up expecting to be queen of the largest empire on earth, and it was not on her bucket list. God jumps in, pulls somebody out of a bad situation, and changes things. John told on himself the same way. He moved his family to Virginia to start a school of evangelism and it collapsed before it opened. What came out of it was a homeschool room with slate blackboards and the book of Esther taught to two of his own kids.

Then he handed the room his method for studying a person in Scripture. Influences. Character, internal and external. Contribution. Esther’s influence was Mordecai, whose instruction she took without arguing. Her external character won a pageant she had no say in entering. Her internal character was courage. She did not let the conditions she found herself in dictate her behavior.

She also refused to carry it alone. She said yes, then told Mordecai to gather the Jews and fast. John spent years lead climbing with his sons, out on the pointy end of the rope, and somebody below was always holding it. He and Suzanne once stopped at a house in Pacific Grove and told two leaders of a Zen meditation center that Jesus is coming back. Both were saved that night, and the man went on to plant churches. He closed on the part we choose. Who we listen to, and who we let teach us.

So What: God interferes on purpose. The plan that fell apart on you is often the door into what He was doing all along.

Now What: Take the chart to your own life this week. Name your influences, name your character, and name what you are here to contribute.

Scripture References:

• Esther 2:1-18 (Taken into the palace and made queen of Persia)
• Esther 4:14 (For such a time as this)
• Esther 4:15-17 (Gather the Jews and fast for me)
• Esther 5:1-2 (The golden scepter held out to an uninvited queen)
• Esther 7:9-10 (Haman hanged on the gallows he built for Mordecai)
• Numbers 12:3 (Moses, the most humble man on earth)
• Acts 16:30 (What must we do to be saved)

Week three in Esther, and Pastor Abbie gave the series its verbs. Placed, present, positioned. By chapter five Esther has been in the palace five years. Not five days. Some of us are standing somewhere we did not choose, asking God whether this is it. Then she puts on her royal robes and walks into the inner court uninvited, a move that could have ended her life. The scepter goes out. And she does not ask. She invites the king and Haman to a banquet, and there invites them to another. Esther is not only beauty. She has brains. She wants the king alone and Haman in the room.

Haman leaves past Mordecai, who still will not rise. At home he lists his wealth, his sons, his promotions, his private invitation from the queen, and then says the line that undoes him. None of it satisfies him while that one man sits at the gate. God pours out blessing above and beyond, and the one thing we have not been given becomes the only thing we can see. He builds a gallows and goes to bed delighted. Then the king cannot sleep, calls for the chronicles, and the record lands on the night Mordecai saved his life. We call that a coincidence. See it in completion and make no mistake, God's presence was moving.

Chapter seven is the turn, and Esther does not stop at her own safety. Spare my people. Haman hangs on the gallows he built for Mordecai. She risked an earthly palace, which is a small picture of Philippians 2 and of Jesus, who left heaven to join us in our suffering and died to save all people. For most of us risk will not look like moving away. It looks like knocking on an office door, or asking who could come to dinner. And none of it happens alone. The book is named Esther and it ends on Mordecai. We are not the main characters.

She closed with her own ten years in Madison. One year was the plan. She barely unpacked, cried on the drive back for five years, and slept on an air mattress long enough that people still call her Air Mattress Abbie. Then a pandemic, and seasons where the place felt more bitter than blessed. Looking back over ten years, the sentence changes. God was here the whole time.

So What: God is present in the place He has you. Right here, right now.

Now What: Sit with three questions this week. Where am I placed. How can I stay present. Where do I need to get positioned.

Scripture References:

• Esther 5:1-14 (The gold scepter, two banquets, and the gallows Haman builds)
• Esther 4:15-17 (Fast for me, and if I perish, I perish)
• Esther 6:1-11 (A sleepless king, the chronicles, and Haman honoring Mordecai)
• Esther 7:1-10 (Spare my people; Haman hanged on his own gallows)
• Esther 9:1-5 (The tables are turned)
• Esther 10:1-3 (The book ends on the greatness of Mordecai)
• Philippians 2:6-11 (He made Himself nothing, obedient to death on a cross)
• Luke 3:21-22 (Father, Son, and Spirit together at the baptism of Jesus)
• Luke 9:1-6 (Take nothing for the journey, and learn to receive)

Week two in Esther, and Pastor Abbie went straight at the verse everyone quotes. Who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this. It is a beautiful verse. It gets tricky the moment we decide it means one moment. Because when that moment passes, we no longer know how to live or who we are. Two traps sit on either side of it. We spend our lives worried we will miss the moment, or we spend our lives worshiping the one we already had.

Esther 3 and 4 turn dark fast. Mordecai will not bow. Haman is enraged and decides that killing one man is not enough, so he plots to destroy every Jew in the empire. Pastor Abbie sat with Haman longer than most preachers do, and the reason matters. Offense left unchecked is dangerous. Our feelings are not bad and they are not to be dismissed, but as we listen we have to tell them where to go. Haman never asked why Mordecai had such a hold on him. We are formed by what we fixate on. He was not yet the villain in chapter three. He got there by choosing the same direction over and over.

Then the good news: we are constantly being formed and we are not finished. A diagnosis is not an identity. Circumstances do not define us. Pastor Abbie told her own stories of rooms that were not built for her, of crying in front of a man who told her the trip was for men only, of being 23 and saying she would take whatever leftovers she could get. The exact things she was trying to hide are the things God used. Esther buried her Jewish identity, and that identity became the doorway to deliverance for her whole people. Mordecai never gets a verse named after him and the story does not happen without him. You do not have to be the main character. None of us are. The main character is Jesus.

So What: God is forming you through every moment, not only the moments that feel important.

Now What: Notice God in your story. Pay attention to the ordinary moments, people, and opportunities He might be using to make you more like Jesus.

Scripture References:

• Esther 3:1-6 (Haman is elevated; Mordecai refuses to kneel; Haman plots to destroy all the Jews)
• Esther 4:1-17 (Mordecai in sackcloth; the golden scepter and the thirty days; for such a time as this; fast for me, and if I perish, I perish)
• 1 Samuel 17 (Saul’s armor does not fit David; God finds another way to win the battle)
• Genesis 1:27 (Created in the image of God to bear His image)
• 1 Corinthians 12:12-27 (One body, many members, different roles and the same mission)