This was our Senior Sunday, celebrating our high school seniors. Phil continued his fearLESS sermon series with a message right at the heart of what many of these graduates face – the fear of the unknown. Phil explored the Holy Spirit’s role in mitigating this particular fear.

Phil continued our Fearless series with a message called Storm School. He will talked about what we learn about fear from the story of Jesus calming the storm, and how the church can play a key role in helping us overcome our fears.

Lamentations tells us the mercies of God are “new every morning.” That is good news. But the bad news is that right alongside those daily mercies is a daily unwelcomed guest. FEAR. Fear of the unknown. Fear of failure. Fear of dying. Fear that whatever I did yesterday made no difference in the world. Fear of my spouse leaving me. Fear of not being enough. Fear of what’s next. Fear of the world falling apart. For the next few weeks, we will engage in an important series called "fearLESS." Jesus talks about the subject a great deal, precisely because there is quite a bit to learn. Each week we will look at a particular fear and talk about practical ways to deal with it.

Phil presented our final lesson in the series "Make a Comeback." This sermon focused on the importance of outreach in God’s mission to reach the world. In the middle of Ezra, Israel is forced to stop work on the temple for 14 years. For many, this meant they were pretty out of practice when they finally started swinging hammers again. The sad reality is, many of our members are out of practice when it comes to our call to “be ambassadors." But Phil will help us realize that the pandemic did not alter this vocation. We still have this calling from God, and we must reclaim it for the sake of the kingdom.

Phil delivered the next installment in the "Make a Comeback" series. In this message, Phil explored an extraordinary action taken by Ezra in chapter 9. Ezra repents. This action normally wouldn’t be too remarkable, as it represents the typical response to those who sin in the Bible. What makes this repentance unique is that Ezra hadn’t committed any of the sins he was repenting for. His repentance came from grief over grief over the transgressions of his people, not himself. This message highlighted the value of corporate lament over the pain and transgressions of our world, regardless of our personal culpability within it.

Brian Plumb looked at Ezra 3 and an interesting moment where there was both crying and rejoicing. We will also look at Haggai 2 and the message he had for that group of people. The reminder is to take courage, get to work, and remind our world that His Love Endures Forever.

This sermon focused on why strategic thinking isn’t enough for a comeback. There was plenty of strategy in Ezra’s story, but it was something else that set them going in the right direction, something that we must adopt in our own church family if we want to see our comeback succeed.

Sunday was our annual Family Blessing service. In this service, we recognized babies born and children adopted into our church family this past year. This service featured several new dads participating in a variety of ways. Phil’s sermon offered wisdom to young parents from the life of King David.