If you've ever come home from a mountaintop experience — a mission trip, a conference, a breakthrough in counseling — only to watch that faith and clarity quietly evaporate within a couple of weeks, you're not imagining it. In "In This Together," Elliott shares a moment from a men's mission trip to Santiago, Dominican Republic, where the hardest conversation of the whole week wasn't on the field — it was the night before coming home. From there, he traces why we can be surrounded by people and still feel isolated, and why insight so often gets mistaken for change.

Drawing from Mark 2:1-5, the story of four friends who tore open a roof to lower a paralyzed man in front of Jesus, Elliott makes the case that this is exactly the kind of friendship discipleship requires — not people who hold your pain or hand you a pep talk, but people willing to carry you, and be carried, into the presence of Jesus. With Proverbs 17:17, Proverbs 18:24, and Galatians 6:2 as anchors, this message pushes past generic talk about Christian community into a direct challenge: faith fades in isolation, and the fix isn't more information, it's a Group small enough that someone notices when you're missing.

If you've been asking what real Christian friendship looks like, or wondering why your faith seems to fade after the big moments end, this message is for you.

If you've ever wondered what to do with pain you can't seem to put down, this message is for you. In the opening sermon of a new series called A Long Obedience, Elliott shares the story of his final in-person gathering with the men who've spent the last three years pointing him back to Jesus — and asks a question every one of us eventually has to answer: when the people and rhythms that used to catch you are gone, what do you do with the weight you're still carrying?

The answer starts in the wilderness. In Exodus 16:1-16, God feeds the newly freed Israelites with bread from heaven — but only enough for one day at a time. Not a month's supply. Not even a week's. Just enough, every single morning, so they'd learn to depend on Him instead of hoarding, hiding, or staying busy enough to ignore the ache underneath it all. Paul picks up the same thread in Romans 5:1-5, where suffering brought to God — not suffering endured alone — produces perseverance, character, and hope.
This message is an honest look at where you're actually taking your pain, and an invitation to bring it to God every day instead of carrying it yourself. It closes at the Table, where we remember that God's provision cost Him everything.

This is the first message in our A Long Obedience series. Watch or listen below.

If you've ever felt lonely in a crowd — surrounded by people at church, at work, online — but still couldn't say you have "your people," this message is for you. In Your People, Elliott looks at what happened right after the church was born in Acts 2:42-47 and points out something surprising: the first Christians never went looking for community. They were devoted to Jesus — to His teaching, to prayer, to breaking bread, and to each other — and the relationships they'd been longing for showed up as a byproduct of that devotion, not as the goal itself. Elliott traces why loneliness has become an epidemic even inside the church, unpacks the difference between attendance and devotion, and lands on a simple but hard truth: the right people are on the other side of the right purpose.

Whether you're wrestling with isolation, still searching for real Christian community, or trying to figure out where you fit at Swiss Cove, this message points you to the actual starting point — surrender to what Jesus has already called you to do. It's also a look at how that truth is playing out right now through the Ignite Initiative, as people who've said yes to the mission are finding each other along the way.

This week, Jeff Swearingen of Florida Church Planters joined us at Swiss Cove Christian Church to preach "Wreck the Roof," a message from Mark 2:1-12 — the story of four friends who carried a paralyzed man to Jesus, and when a crowd blocked the door, tore open the roof to lower him down anyway.

Jeff walks through what it cost those four friends to get their friend in front of Jesus — the roof they had to dig through, the crowd they had to work around, the risk they took just to get him seen. And when Jesus finally looks at the man lowered in front of Him, He does something unexpected first: He forgives his sins before He heals his body.

This message is about what it looks like to bring the people we love to Jesus even when the way is blocked — and about a Savior who cares for the whole person, not just the visible need. Whether you're the one carrying someone toward Jesus right now, or the one who needs someone to do the carrying, this message speaks to both.

If you've ever thrown out a board game to avoid a fight, you already know: the game was never the problem. In the finale of our Love and Marriage series, "The Fight Worth Having," Elliott looks at why so many couples treat the absence of conflict as the presence of peace — and why that trade usually costs more than the fight would have.

Drawing from Matthew 18:15-17, James 1:19-20, and Ephesians 4:26-27, 29-32, this message makes the case that Jesus never asked us to avoid conflict — He gave us a way through it. The goal was never to win the fight; it's to win the person. From learning to listen instead of waiting for your turn to talk, to refusing to let anger become a permanent posture, to fighting for your spouse instead of against them, this is a practical, Scripture-grounded look at what it actually takes to have the conversations we've been avoiding — the ones that decide whether a marriage drifts or grows.

If you've been wondering how to resolve conflict in marriage without wounding the person you love most, this message is for you.

In this message, "What You Need," Elliott looks at the difference between sincere love and studied love in marriage. Drawing from the story of Hannah and Elkanah in 1 Samuel 1, he shows how two people can love each other completely and still miss each other — because sincerity isn't the same as knowledge. Elkanah loved Hannah deeply, yet his words to her ("Don't I mean more to you than ten sons?") reopened the very wound he meant to heal. God, by contrast, "remembered" Hannah — a specific, knowing action rooted in intimate understanding of her pain.

Using Boaz's example in Ruth 2 and Peter's charge to husbands in 1 Peter 3:7, Elliott makes the case that Christian marriage calls us to study our spouse, not assume we already know them. He unpacks common blind spots: husbands who underestimate their need for companionship, and wives who need to be pursued and cherished, not just provided for. The message closes with a practical challenge — ask your spouse what makes them feel most loved, and give them a true answer in return — because you cannot make it easy for your spouse to love you until you know, and tell, the truth.

If you've ever wondered whether the feeling you had on your wedding day is gone for good, this message is for you. In What is Love?, part two of our Love and Marriage series, Elliott walks through what Scripture actually says about love — and why it was never meant to run on feelings alone.

Drawing from Song of Songs 1:2-4 and 8:6-7, 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, and the strange, uncomfortable story of the prophet Hosea, Elliott unpacks three ingredients Scripture points to for a marriage that lasts: passion, intimacy, and commitment. When one of these fades, it doesn't mean your marriage is broken — it might just mean you've entered a new season, and there's a way through it.

This message is honest about the seasons every marriage moves through — from Romance to Power Struggle to Cooperation, Mutuality, and finally Co-creativity — and offers a simple, practical starting point: make it easy for your spouse to love you. Because before any of us can love well, we have to go back to the source. As 1 John 4:19 puts it, we love because He first loved us.

Whether you're newly married, deep in a hard season, or just curious what the Bible actually teaches about love, this message will give you language for what you're experiencing — and a path forward.

If marriage has ever exposed a wound you thought you'd already dealt with, you're not alone — and you're not the first. In "Stop Running," the opening message in our new series, Love and Marriage, Elliott looks at the story of Jacob in Genesis 32:22-32, the night he wrestled with God at the Jabbok River and walked away with a limp and a new name. Jacob spent his whole life running — from his brother, from his father-in-law, from the consequences of his own choices. Marriage doesn't erase what we're running from; it exposes it. The patterns, the anger, the old wounds we thought we'd left behind are still there, and they surface most clearly in the person we're closest to. This message makes the case that your spouse can help you, but they can't heal you — that healing only comes through an honest wrestling match with God, one that might leave you limping but will also leave you renamed. Drawing from Romans 6:1-8, Elliott connects Jacob's story to the deeper invitation of the gospel: dying to your old self so a new life can begin. Whether you're newly married, decades in, or not married at all, this is a message about what happens when intimacy — with a spouse, with God — finally catches up to what you've been avoiding.

What do you do with the parts of your story you never chose — the door that slammed shut, the people who hurt you, the silence you can't explain? In this message from our Stories from the Beginning series, Elliott picks up Joseph's story in Genesis 39 and 50, tracing the long road from the pit, to slavery, to prison, to the moment Joseph finally looks his brothers in the eye and says, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good." Drawing on Romans 8:28 and Psalm 139, Elliott makes the case that God doesn't waste a single experience — not the ones that make sense, and not the ones that still don't. This message speaks directly to anyone wrestling with where God was in their pain, anyone still carrying something they haven't put down, and anyone wondering if forgiveness is actually possible after real betrayal. It closes by connecting Joseph's story to the cross, and by inviting anyone ready to take that step toward Christ to respond in baptism. This message is part of our Stories from the Beginning series, walking through the book of Genesis together.

Every father has had a "hat against the windshield" moment — the instant where frustration boils over and you see, with sudden clarity, exactly which parts of your own father you didn't want to become. In this Father's Day message, Elliott walks through one of Scripture's most painful family stories: Jacob's favoritism toward Joseph, and the jealousy and rage it cultivated in his other sons until they sold their own brother into slavery (Genesis 37:3-4, 18-24). It's an uncomfortable text, but an honest one — because it tells the truth about how a father's failures ripple through generations.

But the story doesn't end in the pit. Genesis 39:2-3 shows that even when Joseph was alone, betrayed, and enslaved in Egypt, God was with him. He never went passive. That truth anchors the entire message: while earthly fathers fail — sometimes badly — God the Father never has and never will (Zephaniah 3:17). For men carrying guilt over their own anger, absence, or failures as fathers, this message offers something better than self-improvement: freedom from the lie that those failures get the final word, and a call to stop earning worth and start being present.

This is a message for fathers, sons, and anyone wrestling with the weight of family history — on generational patterns, guilt, and what it means to reflect a Father who never abandons.