Dominic Jackson explores Jesus’ command to “be perfect” and confronts the quiet pressure many feel to measure their spiritual lives through performance, comparison, and self-evaluation. Drawing from the Sermon on the Mount and the story of the rich young ruler, he reframes perfection not as flawlessness, but as wholeness—a life fully oriented toward God. Rather than calling us to achieve moral perfection, Jesus invites us into a deeper trust that reshapes how we understand sin, growth, and identity.

At the heart of the message is a challenge to release the need for control and to surrender whatever we rely on for security, meaning, or worth. Spiritual formation, Dominic suggests, is not about striving harder or managing behavior, but about learning to live from a place of being already known and loved by God. As we let go of what we cling to and trust God more fully, we begin to experience the kind of completeness Jesus describes—one rooted not in our efforts, but in his presence.

As the Movement series continues, Dominic Jackson turns to the theme of formation—the lifelong process of becoming like Jesus. Rooted in Matthew 28, this sermon looks at the Great Commission as an ongoing invitation to apprenticeship. To follow Jesus is to be continually shaped: receiving and responding to God’s love, embracing his teachings, embodying his rhythms, and walking in community with others.

Dominic challenges a shallow view of faith that stops at a moment and invites us into something deeper and slower. Formation is not about perfection or information—it’s about transformation over time. Like clay in the hands of a potter, or even something as ordinary as a bar of soap carved into something beautiful, our lives are being shaped every day. The question is not if we are being formed—but by what—and whether we are becoming more like Jesus.

In a moment marked by anger, division, and confusion, Dominic Jackson turns to the words of Jesus in Matthew 5 and asks a deeper question: what if the problem isn’t just what’s happening around us—but something beneath it? Through a striking contrast between the “way of the kingdom” and the “way of the empire,” this sermon invites us to reconsider how we respond to injustice, conflict, and cultural tension. Are we being formed more by power, outrage, and control—or by the upside-down vision of Jesus in the Beatitudes?

Dominic explains how the kingdom of God doesn’t advance through force, domination, or even winning—it moves through humility, mercy, peacemaking, and self-giving love. In a world that often looks like empire, this is an invitation to become people who embody a radically different way.

Continuing the Movement series, Dominic Jackson explores what it means to be a people of presence—with God, with one another, and in our own lives. Anchored in Matthew 28, he reframes the Great Commission not just as a call to go, but as a call to be with: a God who draws near to us, a community that shows up shoulder to shoulder, and a life that resists distraction in order to be fully attentive. From mountaintop encounters in Scripture to the quiet reality of our daily habits, Dominic asks a simple but searching question: not is God present?—but are we?

In a distracted and disconnected age, this sermon offers both challenge and invitation. We are given the gift of our time—1,440 minutes each day—and the opportunity to share it with others and with God. True presence isn’t accidental; it requires intentionality, attention, and pursuit. Whether in prayer, community, or ordinary moments, this message calls us to be fully where we are—present to the God who is already present with us.

In this opening sermon of the Movement series, Matt Crummy explores a word that many of us instinctively distrust: authority. Drawing from Matthew 28 and the famous image of The Treachery of Images, he invites us to consider how easily we confuse distorted images of authority—coercion, control, manipulation—with the real thing. In contrast, the risen Jesus meets a group of hesitant, doubting disciples not with force or pressure, but with nearness, presence, and a steady kind of authority that heals and invites.

Rather than demanding certainty or performance, Jesus shares his authority and sends his followers into the world with a simple, lived rhythm: show up, draw near, listen, and go. This sermon reframes the Great Commission not as pressure to achieve, but as participation in the life of Jesus—an authority grounded in love, legitimacy, and relationship. For anyone carrying wounds or skepticism around authority, this is an invitation to rediscover it as something that frees rather than constrains.

As Gateway steps into a new year, Dominic Jackson invites the church to reflect on a simple but searching question: what kind of community are we becoming? Through two contrasting stories—one of radical welcome and one of painful rejection—he explores how the church can either embody the heart of Jesus or distort it. Drawing from Hebrews 13, Dominic reframes hospitality not as entertaining or hosting, but as something far deeper: loving the stranger as family, not just making space for them, but making them feel like they already belong.

In a culture marked by loneliness, fear, and disconnection, this vision of hospitality is both urgent and costly. Dominic challenges us to move beyond surface-level friendliness into real, shared life—where invitations are accepted, relationships are pursued, and community is formed across differences. Whether you tend to hold others at a distance or struggle to let others in, this sermon is an invitation to become the kind of church where people don’t just visit—they find a home.

Matt Crummy reflects on joy through the story of the Magi in Matthew 2:1-12. Beginning with Edward Hopper’s painting Nighthawks and the idea of liminal, in-between spaces, he explores how Advent situates us between Christ’s first coming and his promised return. The Magi become a picture of people who reorient their lives around what they love most, traveling far to seek the long-promised King. Drawing on Daniel’s role as chief of the wise men, Thomas Aquinas’s definition of joy as “caused by love,” and Augustine’s line that “our hearts are restless until they rest in you,” Matt invites us to pursue our highest loves, encourage these loves to bloom into joy, and let joy move us into worship and a renewed imagination for who Jesus really is.

Dominic Jackson reflects on what it means to let “the peace of Christ rule in your hearts” (Colossians 3:15) in a world that feels anything but peaceful. He begins by examining anxiety and invites us to see that peace is not simply calmness or the absence of conflict, but shalom—wholeness, restoration, and reconciliation in the midst of the mess. Christ’s peace comes as a gift we receive rather than an achievement we earn. We are invited to look forward to the healing of all things, look back to Christ’s first coming, look around at our present worries with honest prayer, and then pass peace on as peacemakers in our homes, workplaces, and world.

Dominic Jackson explores Advent as a season of hope in the waiting—rooted in God’s promises, centered on the coming King, and forming us into a redeemed people. He reflects on the tension we all feel between fear and expectation and invites us to distinguish between hope and optimism: hope is not dictated by circumstances but sustained by God’s faithfulness. With Jeremiah 33 as a guiding text, this message draws on the experience of waiting for life-changing news and the Bible’s language of expectant, stretched waiting, calling us to look back on God’s past faithfulness so we can live forward in trust as we await Christ’s promised arrival—past, present, and future.

Dominic Jackson wraps up our series on beauty by inviting us to rediscover mystery as a way God draws us into wonder, trust, and a deeper relationship. Through Elijah’s encounter with God in 1 Kings 19—where God is not in the wind, earthquake, or fire, but in a gentle whisper—we learn that God often meets us in ways we wouldn’t expect, yet exactly as we need. The New Testament deepens this invitation by naming Christ himself as the mystery of God (Colossians 4:3; 1 Timothy 3:16; Colossians 2:1–3), calling us to seek not just answers about God, but to truly know him.