How does a person change? What should we do when we feel like we’re not changing as we’d hoped? As we continue our series on the values of CCIW, we take a look at how grace frees us from try-harder Christianity and leads us into deep, heart-level change.

Culturally Engaged

It’s often tempting for Christians to either reject the culture around them on account of its evil, or embrace it wholeheartedly on account of its goodness. The Bible’s account of culture is more nuanced: culture is a human calling, a good gift of a good God; but it’s been damaged by the effects of sin. So, how should we navigate life in a world where evil and goodness coexist?

What is to proclaim the gospel? Why should we do it? And perhaps even more challenging, how should we do it. Explore these questions in this first of two sermons on our stance as a church towards those outside Christ.

It’s so counter-intuitive: service is greatness, the last will be first, death is life. And yet it is so powerful when you grasp it, or rather, this gospel shaped reality graps your heart, and turns you into a servant after Jesus’ heart.

If there’s one thing our society tells us about religion, it’s that it should be observed privately and in moderation. Extremism is out. And yet Jesus says that his followers must deny themselves, take up their cross, follow him, and even lose their lives for him. How are we to make sense of this outrageous demand? What is it about Jesus that makes this kind of full devotion to him possible — even desirable?

There are few things more sweet than a church community saturated in the gospel, soaked all the way through in God’s grace. As be begin this series on our gospel-shaped values as a church, we start we we need to start - with what the gospel itself is. And where better to go for that than to what is ‘of first importance’, from 1 Cor 15.

Children are some of the most effected and least powerful people in the face of injustice and oppression. Compassion Australia does wonderful work releasing children from poverty in Jesus name. Hear Compassion staffer, Spiro Cassis, teach about justice and the work of Compassion.

The resurrection of Jesus wasn’t just his vindication and enthronement. It also constitutes a crack in the wall of death, and the sin whose wages death is, which smothers so much of this world. It’s a crack that lets the light of God’s gracious and life giving reign in - the kingdom of God. 

Most people believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, even now. But then again, so does the Devil! The issue is, what does it mean, and what is its significance. And how does it change every minute of my life.