What if the secret to happiness isn't what most of us are chasing? Opening a summer series in the Psalms, Dominic Jackson starts where the collection does—Psalm 1—and the question it puts on the table: what does it actually mean to be blessed? Along the way, the sermon moves from that question into a deeper one about formation: not just what we read, but what we chew on. What we consume shapes who we become, and Psalm 1 offers a clear-eyed theory of the difference between a life that's rooted and one that's just drifting. And as a bonus: a working definition of biblical meditation that involves cows.

Paul's instruction to build up one another turns out to be less about mentorship and more about the everyday texture of how we talk to each other—and whether we actually listen. Working through Ephesians 4:29–32, Dominic Jackson looks at what "unwholesome talk" actually costs: the person speaking, the person being spoken to, and God himself.

How do you confront someone you love without losing them? In this message, Pastor Dominic works through Galatians 6:1–2 and Matthew 18:15–20 to build a practical, honest guide to spiritual restoration—one that takes both courage and humility. Before you send that text or schedule that coffee, there are questions worth asking yourself first. And when you do have that conversation, Jesus gives us a framework that's as relevant today as it was 2,000 years ago.

When researchers asked a thousand people to describe Christians in three words, the top answer wasn't loving or faithful. It was judgmental. Working through Matthew 7:1–6, Dominic Jackson takes one of Jesus' most familiar — and most misused — teachings and asks what he actually meant. Why are we unqualified to judge? What is the fundamental attribution error doing to the way we see other people? And what does it mean that the plank and the speck are made of the same wood? This sermon doesn't resolve the tension between judging and being judgmental — that's next week — but it does ask a harder question first: whose log is in whose eye?

On his last night of freedom, Jesus didn't perform a miracle. He did a chore — the lowest, most menial one imaginable. Working through John 13 and Galatians 5:13–14, Dominic Jackson takes the foot-washing story and looks at it from angles that are easy to miss after twenty readings: that Jesus washed Judas' feet too, that the Greek word translated "example" literally means tracer or template, and that the most significant acts of service usually don't make the news or the photo. The invitation isn't to do loving things. It's to become a loving person — one small act at a time.

The New Testament is full of instructions for how the church should treat itself — unity, love, humility. But in 1 Peter 4, written during one of the bloodiest periods in church history, Peter reaches for a word that isn't about the church at all. Not philadelphia — love of brothers and sisters — but philoxenos: love of the stranger. Working through 1 Peter 4:7–11, Dominic Jackson traces what hospitality actually means in its biblical sense, why Peter's call to extend it without grumbling puts our own excuses in sharp relief, and what it might look like for a church to function less like a members’ club and more like a hospital.

Worship doesn't just express what you love — it trains you to love it more. In part two of a two-week look at Romans 12, Matt Crummy picks up where last week left off and explores what worship actually does over time. Drawing on the Drake Relays, a failed high school track career, two British climbers who may or may not have reached the summit of Everest, and Alexander Schmemann's image of a stereoscope, he builds a case for why transformation is slow, embodied, communal, and worth it. Counter-formation isn't about being different for its own sake. It's about being slowly reoriented — body, habit, and desire — toward the kingdom of God, until you can see reality in a new dimension.

What if worship is less about thinking correctly about God and more about being formed by him — body, habit, and desire? Romans 12 opens with a "therefore" that hinges on everything Paul has just argued about the mercy of God, and Matt Crummy uses that hinge to explore what worship actually is. Drawing on James K.A. Smith, Augustine, and Eugene Peterson, he traces the idea that we are fundamentally creatures of desire, shaped by the liturgies we practice — whether we name them that or not. The stadium concert, the shopping trip, the weekly rhythm — all of it is forming us toward some picture of the good life. The question is which one.

What does Jesus actually mean when he says to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow him? Working through Matthew 16:24–26, Dominic Jackson takes three instructions that are easy to flatten into one vague call to try harder — and pulls them apart. Denying yourself isn't self-loathing. Taking up your cross was the most scandalous image imaginable to its original audience. And following Jesus means letting go of the version of Jesus you've been trying to control. The invitation at the end of it all isn't about doing more. It's about learning, as Eugene Peterson puts it, how to die — and discovering that what looks like burial is actually being planted.

The same empty tomb. Two groups of people running in opposite directions with completely different stories to tell. Working through Matthew 28, Dominic Jackson opens with a simple observation — that how we look at something often matters more than what we're actually looking at — and carries it all the way to the resurrection. Are we living in the best moment in human history or the worst? Is Easter the greatest hoax ever told or the beginning of everything? The answer, he argues, depends entirely on where you're standing. For skeptics and longtime believers alike, the invitation is the same one the angel gave the women at the tomb: come and see.