New Life Downtown

In this conclusion to our series on the Gospel according to Mark, Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us follow the thread of Mark's key description of Jesus as the Son of God. The first human to recognize Jesus as such was the unlikely Roman centurion. Yet recognition is not the same as faith. What will we do with this revelation of Jesus as the Son of God? Mark urges his readers to repent and believe, and to go and tell.

How is this all going to end? We have various ideas-- conscious or subconscious-- about what will happen. Some place their hope in progress; others, in a form of escape. But what does Jesus say about the end of the world? Pastor Glenn Packiam unpacks Mark 13, an often misunderstood passage of Scripture, by drawing from a historic Christian vision of hope-- one that rests on Jesus' faithfulness.

In the heat of temple debate in Mark 12, a lone scribe humbly asks Jesus what the most important of the commands is. Which of Gods instructions most leads us in the way of flourishing life? Jesus' answer? Love.

What makes a person great? We think the answer lies in self-discovery and self-expression. Jesus does not rebuke our desire for greatness; He redefines what greatness is as self-giving. Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us look more closely at how Jesus defines greatness, why Jesus is the one who gets to define it, and how we can become like Him.

Religion is, in some sense, an attempt to answer the question of how humans can reach God. Yet in our age, more people seem to be asking why they would even need God. As Pastor Glenn Packiam teaches on the transfiguration and healing stories in Mark 9, we find good news in Jesus' identity and mission. He is God come down to dwell with us; and when God dwells with us, evil is defeated and we are delivered. All of this is possible only because of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

When we think of church or Christianity, many of us feel some combination of disappointment and duty - disappointment because religion has let us down in some way; duty because we still feel like we ought do the right thing. Both disappointment and duty were part of the very first Easter story. Pastor Glenn Packiam describes how the women came to the tomb in their disappointment and out of duty to honor a dead rabbi. What they found, instead, was a risen Savior, and that has made all the difference. Because Jesus lives, we have hope: hope for a world made new one day, and hope of a life made new today.

We are often rushed to make a decision about who Jesus is, to decided to convert or not. Yet faith is often a long journey of gradually gaining our sight. Pastor Glenn Packiam unpacks a paradigm of belonging before believing, and helps us see how our church can welcome others in. It takes a moment of grace to see Jesus for who He really is, but it will take a lifetime of grace to see what it fully means. We are challenged to lay down our image of who Jesus the Messiah should be, and embrace Him and His Kingdom in fullness.

What does it mean to be pure? How clean is clean enough to follow Jesus? We find ways to dismiss the nagging fears that we aren't good enough or don't quite fit in, but as we will discover, the situation is worse than we feared. Yet, Pastor Glenn demonstrates from three scenes in Mark 7 that grace reaches further than we think, and Jesus is better than we imagined.

Dr. Steven Todd unpacks the Feeding of the 5000, the only miracle story of Jesus that appears in all four Gospels. Mark places it right after the terrible story of Herod's feast and the comparisons are poignant. At whose banquet are we feasting? Only Jesus' will satisfy. In the angry culture war of American politics, we are reminded that Jesus calls us to sit at His table, not the table of the world's system!

The mission and ministry of Jesus continue through us. That may not seem like good news, because we feel inadequate to the task and unready for the cost. After outlining what we are sent to do, and how we are sent to do it, Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us see that it is the power and presence of Jesus that make it possible for us to be sent into each day.