Stories of nuclear threats, oppression of refugees, and the racist, evil actions of the white supremacist “alt-right” in Charlottesville confront us with the fact that there is evil in the world and humans are often the perpetrators of it. What kind of world do we live in? Where is God in it? What are we […]

When the world falls apart for Job, Job’s friends come to help him. Okay, they really do. “They sat with Job on the ground seven days and seven nights, not speaking a word to him, for they saw that he was in excruciating pain.” Job 2:13 But then they help him. They regurgitate platitudes and rigid religion to Job […]

Job is one of the most confounding stories you will ever read. It’s the story about the suffering of a man who is, by reliable sources (God, for one), a righteous man. First, Job loses essentially everything by violence and natural disaster. And then, Job himself is afflicted with a terrible skin condition. Though Job […]

We welcomed guest speaker Zach Brown, a student at Indiana University, who shared what grace has come to mean for him. Zach admits that he really had no idea what “grace” was for most of his life, though he heard about it a lot about it. Zach had an experience in high school that made grace real–and […]

Pastor Brian shares a message about why welcoming–a particular spirit and practice of welcoming–is at the heart being a follower of Jesus. Jesus says, “and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple — truly I tell you, none of these will lose […]

At the conclusion of our Good Work series and at the conclusion at the of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, the issue is boiled down to this: What fruit do you bear with your work? What marks your life’s work? Does your life’s work point to all that matters? Paul says at the end of Galatians, “What […]

If we were honest, many of us feel “boxed in” by our work. Our work doesn’t energize us. It stifles us. But maybe it isn’t our work…or maybe it is. As we’ve talked about in this series, our work may not be the problem. The way we see work might be the culprit of our […]

We’ve all had the gift that sat on the shelf and gathered dust. Maybe we had grand intentions about using the gift, but we never enacted those intentions. It stayed on the shelf until we gave it away. God is a gift giver. God gives gifts to show us who God is and who we […]

I had a teacher once who was waaaay to excited about the quadratic equation…and derivatives and position and velocity and acceleration. He would teach about these things by singing about them to the tune of ’80’s songs. So picture a song about the quadratic equation in the tune of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” This […]

Many of us don’t like our work. Most of us–almost all of us–will spend most of our lives working. And it’s not close.  Are we all doomed to a life of work we don’t like? For those of us who like our jobs and our work, might there be something we’re still missing? Long ago in […]