New Life Downtown

What happens when you find yourself stuck in a place you didn't choose? What happens when your expectations were shattered because life derailed? Pastor Glenn Packiam invites us to take a closer look at the lives of Rahab and Ruth, imperfect characters who were in complicated situations. Yet their mustard seed of faith was met with the abundant grace of God, and somehow they become a crucial part of the story of how God took the once dead lineage of David and brought about the birth of the Messiah.

In this brief series on Advent, Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us face the shame we feel from failing to meet expectations - those others have of us, and those we have of ourselves. Not all shame is proportionate to our failure, but when shame rightly fits our shortcoming, what do we do? The joy of Christ's first arrival gives us hope for His return. Because Christ in His mercy took away our shame at His first coming, we can look to Him with confidence at His return.

To conclude our series on listening to God, Pastor Glenn Packiam addresses the haunting question of what to do when God is silent. We may have a false expectation of extraordinary spiritual experiences, failing to note how much time lapses between Biblical accounts of the supernatural. From the psalmists in the Old Testament to priests and prophets at the birth of Christ, we are given examples of how to wait in silence with hope.

In this short, Family Sunday sermon, Pastor Glenn Packiam and his wife Holly share about what it means to listen to God through beauty and story.

One of the ways God imparts wisdom to us is through the community of faith. Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us explore what it means to take the risk of vulnerability and how to find the right community. Above all, it is the Spirit of God who helps us be attentive to His work in one another, bringing the wisdom of the cross to bear on the circumstances of our lives.

If there's ever a situation where we want God to speak, it's when we need His guidance. Yet sometimes things are frustratingly unclear. How do we discern God's will? Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us see how God leads us into His 'big picture' will for our lives through the little whispers along the way.

One of the primary ways we listen to God is through the written Word. Yet the Bible can be confusing book because we aren't sure how to approach it. Pastor Glenn Packiam maps out the meta-narrative of the Bible and invites us to listen to God through Scripture by locating ourselves in God's Story. Along with practical questions to ask of the text, he offers ancient practices for letting the Spirit breathe these words to our hearts afresh.

Pastor Glenn Packiam lays the foundation for a new series on learning to listen to God. From speaking the world into existence to calling out to Adam in the garden and Abraham from his father's house, the God of Scripture is a speaking God. In Jesus, the Word became flesh. And now, the Spirit has been given so that Jesus might be revealed and His mission might continue through us.

The Fall is a beautiful season, and also a beautiful reminder of change. Pastor Evan walks us through the tougher side of change, and the discipline opportunities that comes through hardship.

As humans, we have to live with hope, with a sense of expectation. But what is Christian hope? For many in the Church, hope is simply a vision of heaven that represents evacuation and compensation; and for those outside the church, heaven is just a screen onto which we project our fantasies and wishes. But hope, as confessed in the Nicene Creed, is richer and more robust than we have imagined. Pastor Glenn Packiam unpacks what it means to look for our future bodily resurrection and a new creation to come, and how this vision of hope reveals the glorious faithfulness of God.