Real Peace. Real People.

Christian Cryptids are ideas, sayings, altruisms, and wive's tales that are associated with Christianity but are just plain un-Christian. This wouldn't be a big deal if it weren't for the false, frustrating, and dream-crushing results these lies make part of many Christian lives. Let's put our hope in real promises of God, promises that come from the Bible and not from a Facebook feed, and lets think about how we can share this real hope with those who are misled. This a sermon reflecting on the cryptid called the Beast of Bladenboro.

There’s a lot we can learn about bitterness from what we see here. A lot. And we could talk about it. We could talk about how we tend to carry it somewhere deep inside. That resentment. That anger. That feeling down there that life isn’t exactly as it should be. That thing or things that make your soul want to scrunch up its face like you just tasted something that makes your taste buds reel and makes you want to spit your own life out. There are many things we can learn from bitterness here and we will, but there is one thing we must learn. Listen in.

You can read the opening of this story in a Robert Frost kind of way - as a chance to ask yourself if you'll travel the road less traveled and hold onto someone who is valueless to you. You can also read the opening to this story as tragedy from beginning to end. You can even further read this story as the search for security or, more properly, insecure ways of trying to be secure. All of those readings, however, aren't the right ones. What is the right one? Listen in. You'll unlock security for your life with the narrator if you do.

On family, husbands, wives, children, and coming together

A sermon on the mission of the Church

The most bizarre thing about Ezekiel's bizarre vision is that it doesn't feel bizarre. We recognize it. We wish we wouldn't, but we do. There's something that's so real about it. We too stare at something that looks like an archaeological dig. We too can feel like we're trapped in a valley of death out of which we can't see a way. This is a sermon about how the Spirit gives people in a place like that faith that sees past the valley; hope against hope; and trust in life over death.

We look at some of the arguments around Jesus' resurrection from the dead.

This sermon is the capstone to a sermon series called called Complete Joy. In this sermon series based on the book of 1 John, we’ve let Jesus’ apostle John teach us what a joy-filled life with Jesus really looks like. It’s also worth mentioning that this sermon will not only conclude our work with 1 John, but will also serve as the capstone sermon for everything we’ve heard from John since the beginning of 2018. We’ve spent fourteen weeks of our year listening to John! This sermon is John's last word to us. It is a powerful word that places the resurrected and ascended Jesus firmly onto the throne of your heart.

We look at some of the arguments around Jesus' resurrection from the dead.

If there’s a term that’s scarier or more threatening or more off-putting for a Christian than antichrist I don’t know what it is. Because Christ is your Christ. And anything that is anti him - anything that’s trying to replace his saving work in your life is something that John knows will make your skin crawl, which is why John uses that term. So it does. Why does John think he needs to do that? Because naturally antichristian teaching won’t feel wrong. This is a sermon designed to make the listener spiritually wily to teaching that's antichristian and to give confidence that what they are getting is coming from the Spirit of God. Listen in!