What does it mean to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit? 

On this Pentecost Sunday, Pastor Chad explores the chaos and wonder of Acts 2 - wind, fire, a hundred and twenty voices, and a crowd of strangers hearing God's love called out in their own language. The Spirit's first act wasn't to create uniformity. It was to create comprehension.

Drawing on the image of a truly great gift-giver, this sermon invites us to consider where we are being called to translate — to do the slow, costly, unglamorous work of moving toward people we don't yet understand. Because the same Spirit who met each of us in our own tongue, in our own particularity, is the Spirit who sends us out toward the crowd - toward confusion, difference, and the neighbor we haven't bothered to know yet.

The Church was born in the chaos of comprehension. We’re still being born that way today.

What does it mean to trust that God's ways really our higher than our ways? 

This week, Pastor Rick McIntee invites us to acknowledge that there are many different ways to be smart, and many different things we can believe. But knowledge doesn't become trust until we put it to work in the world. 

Inspired by Christ's prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, let's remember that even when things look like they're at their worst, we serve a God who refuses to give up on us, and who can turn our worst days into our most beautiful.

What happens when the gospel walks into a room full of people who already have their own answers?

In this Mother’s Day sermon from Acts 17, we explore Paul’s famous speech on Mars Hill — not primarily as a model for debate or apologetics, but as a masterclass in listening. Before Paul ever said a word to Athens, he wandered its streets, read its altars, and sat with its poets long enough to find the place where their longing and his gospel were reaching toward each other.

Along the way, we meet the ancient Epicureans and Stoics — and discover that their questions feel surprisingly modern. We’re also invited to ask ourselves: when is the last time we read someone else’s poets? Not to dismantle what they believe, but to understand what longing it was trying to answer?

In a divided, chronically-online world, Paul’s curious, generous engagement with Athens offers us more than a communication strategy — it offers us something closer to love.

You wake up on an unfamiliar vessel. The floor is cold. Nothing looks familiar. And eventually, someone around the table asks the question out loud: What are we doing here? In this 5th Sunday of Eastertide sermon from 1 Peter 2:1-10, Pastor Chad traces the apostle’s surprising move — reaching deep into the Hebrew Bible to help a scattered, disoriented church remember who they are. Living stones. A royal priesthood. A tree growing so tall that every kind of bird can find a branch. This one’s for anyone who’s ever felt adrift, and needed to be reminded that being claimed by God was never meant to be kept to yourself.

Taking us from Tilda Swinton to toddler naps, Rev. Rachel Penmore leads us in a beautiful practice of Sabbath this week. Reflecting on the Sabbath commandments in both Exodus and Deuteronomy, we remember together that rest is not something we earn. It is fundamental to what it means to live as God’s beloved children. Let us remember and give thanks for the wisdom of rest.

"My Lord and My God" — The Real Thomas | John 20:19-29

He's been called "doubting Thomas" for two thousand years. But what if we've had him wrong?

In this sermon from the second Sunday of Easter, we'll take a fresh look at one of the most misunderstood figures in the New Testament — and discover that Thomas wasn't a cautionary tale. He was a witness. A follower willing to walk toward death when everyone else backed away. A man who sat with honest, unresolved faith for a full week and kept showing up anyway. And the one who, in the end, delivers the most theologically complete statement in all of John's Gospel.

If your faith has felt more like a long Friday than a bright Sunday morning lately — if you've been sitting with questions you can't resolve, waiting on something you haven't seen yet — this one's for you.

God can handle your questions. God is not threatened by your doubt. And the story isn't over yet.

The women ran from the empty tomb “with fear and great joy.” Matthew doesn’t resolve that tension — and neither does this Easter sermon.

In the conclusion of our Lenten series “Tell Me Something Good”, we arrive at the moment the whole season has been building toward: an earthquake at dawn, an empty tomb, and a commission to go before the fear subsides. 

Drawing on Matthew 28:1-10, this message asks what it really means to live as resurrection people — not by waiting until the trembling stops, but by running anyway, carrying grief and hope in the same two hands.

Because the risen Jesus doesn’t say wait here. He says I’m already ahead of you. Meet me in Galilee.
Thanks be to God.

On the first Palm Sunday, there were actually two processions entering Jerusalem — and only one of them was a celebration. While Pontius Pilate rode in from the west with armor gleaming and swords drawn, Jesus slipped in from the other side of town on a borrowed, skittish donkey that had never been ridden. 

In this sermon, we ask the uncomfortable question the crowd never thought to ask: What kind of Lord needs a borrowed donkey? And more urgently — when we shout "Hosanna, save us," what kind of salvation are we actually asking for? If we're honest, we want a messiah who wins the way empires win. Jesus refuses. This Holy Week, he invites us to put down our branches, stop casting him in our own image, and follow him somewhere much harder — and much more alive — than victory.

In this Lenten reflection, we step into John 8 — the story we've long called "the woman caught in adultery" — and discover it's actually a story about a woman saved from stoning. There's a difference, and it matters.

Drawing on the work of theologian Sarah Bessey and writer Richard Rohr, this sermon explores two traps laid that morning in the temple courts, the radical calm of a man writing in the dirt, and the moment a crowd dissolved into individuals — one by one, beginning with the oldest.

At the center of it all: a woman, alone, and a God who doesn't participate in honor-and-shame systems. This is a word about mercy, dignity, and what it looks like to be loved — not shamed — into becoming who we truly are.

In this week's teaching, we reflect on two brief but powerful texts from Book of Deuteronomy and the Gospel of Matthew that center God’s care for the most vulnerable among us.

When the disciples try to manage the crowd by turning children away, Jesus responds with a surprising command: “Let the little children come to me.” What might children reveal about the Kingdom of God? And what might we need to unlearn—about status, scarcity, and importance—to receive the kingdom as Jesus describes it?

Drawing on the witness of Fred Rogers and the prophetic insight of James Baldwin, this sermon explores how Jesus reorients our moral center away from power and toward vulnerability. In the Kingdom of God, the measure of a community is not how it serves the powerful—but how faithfully it cares for those most at risk.

As we gather at the Communion table, we are reminded that the logic of scarcity does not define God’s kingdom. At Christ’s table there is enough grace, enough mercy, and enough room for all.