Pearl Church Sermons

Preaching: Ben Conachan

We tend to think of growth as a straight line—upward, onward, done. But the prophets of Israel knew better. Their books, read together, trace something closer to a spiral: naming what’s broken, feeling its weight, and finding a way back to life on the other side. Not accusation, punishment, and renewal as courtroom terms, but as the shape of how anything—a person, a people, a planet—actually changes. In this series, we'll walk through the book of Isaiah as a map for that spiral, exploring how this same re-ordering movement can re-order us: naming what's true, grieving what's gone wrong, and rising into something more whole.

This week, we begin with Accusation and ask why it so often leaves us ashamed and defensive instead of changed. Isaiah reads disaster as God's courtroom charge, but Jesus offers another picture—truth that arrives as light, gently showing us where we are and inviting us toward wholeness.

Pearl Church exists to express a sacred story and to extend a common table that animate life by love. A primary expression of our sacred story is the weekly sermon. If our sermons inspire you to ponder the sacred, to consider the mystery and love of God, and to live bountifully, would you consider supporting our work? You can donate easily and securely at our website: pearlchurch.org. Thank you for partnering with us in expressing this sacred story.

Preaching: Mike Roth

We tend to think of growth as a straight line—upward, onward, done. But the prophets of Israel knew better. Their books, read together, trace something closer to a spiral: naming what’s broken, feeling its weight, and finding a way back to life on the other side. Not accusation, punishment, and renewal as courtroom terms, but as the shape of how anything—a person, a people, a planet—actually changes. In this series, we'll walk through the book of Isaiah as a map for that spiral, exploring how this same re-ordering movement can re-order us: naming what's true, grieving what's gone wrong, and rising into something more whole.

This week Mike Roth asks what it looks like to hold onto hope when the world feels like it's coming undone. Drawing on Isaiah, he traces a pattern the prophets saw long before us—naming what's broken, feeling its weight, and trusting that even now, something is being made new.

Pearl Church exists to express a sacred story and to extend a common table that animate life by love. A primary expression of our sacred story is the weekly sermon. If our sermons inspire you to ponder the sacred, to consider the mystery and love of God, and to live bountifully, would you consider supporting our work? You can donate easily and securely at our website: pearlchurch.org. Thank you for partnering with us in expressing this sacred story.

Preaching: Mike Roth

In a tradition at Pearl for the month of September, we’re revisiting the story of the Bible. We’ll step back and consider the whole arc of the Bible, exploring this library of ancient, messy, intriguing and sacred stories that ground our community.

Pearl Church exists to express a sacred story and to extend a common table that animate life by love. A primary expression of our sacred story is the weekly sermon. If our sermons inspire you to ponder the sacred, to consider the mystery and love of God, and to live bountifully, would you consider supporting our work? You can donate easily and securely at our website: pearlchurch.org. Thank you for partnering with us in expressing this sacred story.

Preaching: Ben Conachan

It's an annual tradition each summer at Pearl Church for us to hear from the members of our Oversight Team. Our Oversight Team ensures that we are cultivating our rhythms according to our values, and oversees our practices, bylaws, budget, and pastors. Beginning August 2, each week a different Oversight Team member will take a turn to share, giving us a chance to know them more deeply and to hear what they dream of for Pearl.

To close our summer of Oversight Team reflections, this week traces one pastor's evolving relationship with prayer—from childhood petitions and their unsettling questions, through ancient fixed-hour rhythms and wordless silence, to a compassion that that holds everyone's suffering and joy as one.

Speaking: Jen Johnson

It's an annual tradition each summer at Pearl Church for us to hear from the members of our Oversight Team. Our Oversight Team ensures that we are cultivating our rhythms according to our values, and oversees our practices, bylaws, budget, and pastors. Beginning August 2, each week a different Oversight Team member will take a turn to share, giving us a chance to know them more deeply and to hear what they dream of for Pearl.

In this Oversight Team reflection, Jen Johnson traces family history, a piano career that took an unexpected turn, and a lifelong love of gardening to talk about what she's come to trust about Pearl—that tension can be held without resolving it, that imperfect gifts still fit, and that we grow best through the seasons, together.

Speaking: Mike & Phoebe Roth

It's an annual tradition each summer at Pearl Church for us to hear from the members of our Oversight Team. Our Oversight Team ensures that we are cultivating our rhythms according to our values, and oversees our practices, bylaws, budget, and pastors. Beginning August 2, each week a different Oversight Team member will take a turn to share, giving us a chance to know them more deeply and to hear what they dream of for Pearl.

This week, Mike Roth reflects on twenty-five years of Pearl's story—from its evangelical roots to the ongoing, sometimes painful work of tearing down walls of exclusion—and then sits down with his daughter Phoebe, who's grown up at Pearl and is headed off to college, to hear what she's noticed and hopes for the community she was raised in.

Pearl Church exists to express a sacred story and to extend a common table that animate life by love. A primary expression of our sacred story is the weekly sermon. If our sermons inspire you to ponder the sacred, to consider the mystery and love of God, and to live bountifully, would you consider supporting our work? You can donate easily and securely at our website: pearlchurch.org. Thank you for partnering with us in expressing this sacred story.

Speaking: Tym Andrews

It's an annual tradition each summer at Pearl Church for us to hear from the members of our Oversight Team. Our Oversight Team ensures that we are cultivating our rhythms according to our values, and oversees our practices, bylaws, budget, and pastors. Beginning August 2, each week a different Oversight Team member will take a turn to share, giving us a chance to know them more deeply and to hear what they dream of for Pearl.

This week's message comes from Tym Andrews, sharing his hot takes and his honest reckoning with the fear of being fully known—and how Pearl has creates space to learn that worth doesn't have to be earned.

Pearl Church exists to express a sacred story and to extend a common table that animate life by love. A primary expression of our sacred story is the weekly sermon. If our sermons inspire you to ponder the sacred, to consider the mystery and love of God, and to live bountifully, would you consider supporting our work? You can donate easily and securely at our website: pearlchurch.org. Thank you for partnering with us in expressing this sacred story.

Speaking: Leah Griffin

It's an annual tradition each summer at Pearl Church for us to hear from the members of our Oversight Team. Our Oversight Team ensures that we are cultivating our rhythms according to our values, and oversees our practices, bylaws, budget, and pastors. Beginning August 2, each week a different Oversight Team member will take a turn to share, giving us a chance to know them more deeply and to hear what they dream of for Pearl.

This week, Leah Griffin shares their experience of finding every part of themselves welcome and safe at our Common Table, where we are all invited to be more deeply ourselves.

Pearl Church exists to express a sacred story and to extend a common table that animate life by love. A primary expression of our sacred story is the weekly sermon. If our sermons inspire you to ponder the sacred, to consider the mystery and love of God, and to live bountifully, would you consider supporting our work? You can donate easily and securely at our website: pearlchurch.org. Thank you for partnering with us in expressing this sacred story.

Speaking: Dr. Valinda Harlan

It's an annual tradition each summer at Pearl Church for us to hear from the members of our Oversight Team. Our Oversight Team ensures that we are cultivating our rhythms according to our values, and oversees our practices, bylaws, budget, and pastors. Beginning August 2, each week a different Oversight Team member will take a turn to share, giving us a chance to know them more deeply and to hear what they dream of for Pearl.

This week, Dr. Valinda Harlan traces her own path—from a strict, us-versus-them upbringing to a large, diverse family—to describe what holds a community like Pearl's Oversight Team together: not sameness, but a shared commitment to listen to, believe, and be genuinely influenced by one another.

Pearl Church exists to express a sacred story and to extend a common table that animate life by love. A primary expression of our sacred story is the weekly sermon. If our sermons inspire you to ponder the sacred, to consider the mystery and love of God, and to live bountifully, would you consider supporting our work? You can donate easily and securely at our website: pearlchurch.org. Thank you for partnering with us in expressing this sacred story.

Preaching: Mike Roth

We live in a world in which things are always changing—certainty, health, relationships, even the version of faith we grew up with. And yet Paul, writing to a community tearing itself apart, lands on three things he insists will outlast everything else: faith, hope, and love. To be clear, these aren’t achievements to master or doctrines to defend, but the very shape of a life oriented toward God. In this series, we'll sit with these three ancient, yet lasting gifts and seek to rest deeply into them, even when everything else is stripped away.

This week, Mike closes out the series with love—not as a feeling to chase, but as the direction a life keeps turning toward. Drawing on 1 Corinthians 13 and 1 John's claim that God is love, we find that what's actually left standing once the old scaffolding of certainty and dogma comes down is not wreckage, but ground.

Pearl Church exists to express a sacred story and to extend a common table that animate life by love. A primary expression of our sacred story is the weekly sermon. If our sermons inspire you to ponder the sacred, to consider the mystery and love of God, and to live bountifully, would you consider supporting our work? You can donate easily and securely at our website: pearlchurch.org. Thank you for partnering with us in expressing this sacred story.