Every one of us is living inside some story we've told ourselves, whether we've named it or not. The self-made story. The scoreboard story. The someday story. But what if the true story is bigger, harder, and better than any of those?

In Acts 12, James is executed with a single sentence and no explanation. Peter is chained between two guards, hours from the same fate. And yet an angel walks him out of a locked prison while the church prays with a kind of desperate, stretched out intensity. Why does one apostle get a sword and the other get a miracle? This week we sit with that question honestly, without rushing past it.

We'll talk about what it means to live in the already and the not yet, the chains that don't come off through our own effort, and why the person with the least standing in the room (a servant girl named Rhoda) is the only one who believes what she's seeing. This is a message for anyone who has prayed hard for something that still hasn't opened, and anyone waiting on a door that hasn't swung wide yet.

Because the empire hasn't fully fallen. But the King has already won the decisive victory.

This is part of our ongoing series through the book of Acts, "What Now?"

What if the most important spiritual growth in your life isn't something you're forcing, but something you're being invited to notice?

In Acts 11, the gospel breaks out in Antioch not through apostles or official sending, but through unnamed refugees who simply started talking about Jesus. When Barnabas arrives to check things out, he doesn't bring correction. He brings encouragement, and stays for a year to help something fragile grow into something strong.

This week we look at what it means to cultivate the kingdom of heaven wherever we already are: at work, in our families, in the ordinary Tuesdays of our lives. We'll talk about the difference between exploiting growth and nurturing it, why the kingdom tends to break through at the edges rather than the center, and three simple practices for anyone who wants to become a greenhouse for what God is already doing around them.

This is part of our ongoing series through the book of Acts, "What Now?"

Tabitha didn’t work miracles. She worked material. Thread and needle, robes and clothing, made for the most vulnerable women in her community. And when she died, the widows didn’t describe her faith. They put on what she made.

That is her eulogy. Not words. Evidence.

This week we look at what the resurrection actually restores, and why the feeling that your ordinary life doesn’t add up to much is not a personality flaw. It’s a wound. One that Jesus came to heal. Because we are not waiting for the new creation. We are working toward it.

Saul wasn’t persecuting the church because he hated God. He was persecuting the church because he loved God. His certainty didn’t come from rebellion. It came from devotion. And that’s what makes his story so unsettling, and so close to home.

Jesus didn’t stop him with a better argument. He stopped him with light. And the question that landed on Saul lands on us too: in your zeal, in your conviction that you know how God works, is it possible that Jesus is somewhere ahead of you asking, “Why are you persecuting me?”

In Acts 8, the early church faces real persecution. People are dragged from their homes, imprisoned, and scattered. But something unexpected happens: the scattering doesn't silence them. It spreads them. The enemy's strategy to destroy the church ends up planting it in places it had never reached.

In this message, Pastor Derek looks at what it actually means to live as resurrection people not just in theory, but in the moment when someone says something cutting, a decision gets made without you, or a relationship goes sideways. If Jesus was raised from the dead, that changes what's available to you in the next sixty seconds. You don't have to defend. You don't have to win. You don't have to protect anything.

The sign of people who actually believe that? Not anger. Not bitterness. Joy.

Part of the ongoing series What Now? — walking through the book of Acts together at Summer Street Church on Nantucket.

What comes out of you when the pressure is on? When you're backed into a corner, when the crowd turns hostile, when the cost of following Jesus becomes real, what surfaces?

In Acts 7, Stephen stands before the Sanhedrin facing false accusations and a hostile crowd. He could have softened his message, managed his image, bought himself some time. Instead, what comes out of him is a Spirit-filled retelling of Israel's entire story and an unflinching declaration that Jesus is Lord. The pressure didn't corrupt him. It revealed him.

This message from Pastor Cory explores what it looks like to be so formed by the Spirit of the risen Jesus that even opposition becomes an opportunity for witness. Stephen didn't perform courage. He had been shaped by something deeper than fear. And when the moment came, that's what showed up.

The question Acts 7 puts to each of us is simple and searching: when life squeezes you, what comes out?

Part of the ongoing series What Now? — walking through the book of Acts together at Summer Street Church.

What kind of life are you reaching for? Most of us don't decide. We just look around and start moving toward what everyone else has. In this message from Acts 4:32–5:11, Pastor Derek explores what happens when a community is formed not by the world's values, but by the Spirit of the risen Jesus. The early church didn't just believe differently, it behaved differently. No needy persons among them. Resources released freely. People showing up honestly with whatever they had.

But the resurrection community gets tested. The story of Ananias and Sapphira isn't just a warning about lying. It's a diagnosis of something deeper: the belief that what we have isn't enough and the performance we put on to cover that up. The resurrection community doesn't need impressive people. It needs honest ones.

This is part of the ongoing series What Now? — a walk through the book of Acts asking what the risen Jesus is doing now, and what we're called to be in response.

In this teaching, Pastor Rich Leland takes us to Revelation for a surprising look at where this is all heading.

You've seen them. Someone in line at the grocery store or out and about whose life is hard right now. You feel something. And then you move on. Not because you don't care but because you don't know how it will go.

This week in Acts 3, Peter and John are on their way to the temple when they pass a man who has been lame from birth. And they do something most people don't. They move toward him. We explore what it looks like to live with courageous compassion and a simple, repeatable pattern any follower of Jesus can practice this week.

Something unprecedented happens in Acts 2. Not just wind and fire and three thousand baptisms. Someone arrives. And the question this week is not whether you believe in the Holy Spirit, but whether the Holy Spirit is at home in you. At Summer Street Church, we continue our series through the Book of Acts with the moment the Spirit falls on all believers, the church is born, and an entirely different kind of community becomes possible on Nantucket and everywhere else.