The TREASURY

Everyone has one thing. The question is whether you'll let go of it.

In this message from Mark 10:21, Pastor Mike shows that the rich young ruler didn't come to Jesus casually. He ran. A man of significant social standing, in an honour-shame culture, publicly humiliated himself — fell to his knees in the street like a beggar — because something inside him knew he was lacking and he had no answer for it. He'd kept every commandment since boyhood. He'd done everything right. And it still wasn't enough. That's not arrogance — that's an existential crisis.

Jesus looked at him and loved him. Then said one thing you lack. Not ten things. Not a complete overhaul. One thing — the willingness to let go of what he was gripping so tightly it was the only thing standing between him and everything his soul was crying out for. 

Pastor Mike shows the invitation is open. Same exchange, different moment. 

Because Jesus conversations are more than an exchange of words — they're where people are found. And all it costs is the one thing you're holding.

We'd love to hear how the messages are transforming your view of God and your life.

Everyone keeps going back to the same well. The question is whether it's actually giving them anything.

In this message from John 4:10, Pastor Mike shows that Jesus didn't take the Samaria route because it was convenient — most Jews took the longer road specifically to avoid it. He went because He was sent. Not for a place, but for a person. A woman who'd had five husbands and was now with a sixth. Not presented with judgement but with a question — if you knew who was asking, you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.

Pastor Mike shows the difference between wells — a dug well with a fixed, limited reserve you draw from yourself, and a living, self-replenishing spring. Everything you draw yourself has limits. It runs out. So you thirst again. And this woman, like most of us, kept going back to the same phrear — relationships, belonging, worship she couldn't connect to — and kept coming up dry. A wadi. A riverbed that promises water and delivers dust.

Jesus met her there anyway. That's where His rescue shop opens — not where people have it together, but where the jar keeps coming up empty. She never even answered His request for water. But she left her jar at the well and ran to tell the whole town. That's how you know she drank.

Because Jesus conversations are more than an exchange of words — they're where people are found, and where they're found can become the place where the thirst finally stops.

We'd love to hear how the messages are transforming your view of God and your life.

Everyone is a yard from hell. The question is which direction they're walking.

In this message from John 3:7, Pastor Mike opens the Jesus Conversations series at the most important conversation ever recorded — Jesus telling a morally impeccable, theologically trained, nationally respected rabbi that none of it is enough. You must be born again. Not improved. Not religious. Not curious. Born again. And if Jesus says that to Nicodemus, Pastor Mike asks plainly — where does that leave the rest of us?

The answer isn't discouraging — it's liberating. Because the problem has never been human effort falling slightly short. It's that sin relocated humanity. Genesis 3 didn't just introduce bad behaviour — it changed address. And you cannot self-improve your way back into a Kingdom you've been banished from. What's needed is Someone with authority over the darkness that holds the deed to where you're living — Someone who can close the longest yard in human history.

That's what the cross did. God became personal — took on personal sin, closed a personal gap — so that the Kingdom of God could be accessible within a yard of hell. 

Because Jesus conversations are more than an exchange of words — they're where people are found. Who are you finding?

We'd love to hear how the messages are transforming your view of God and your life.

Most fathers want to be the hero. The good news is God specialises in making them one.

In this message from 1 Chronicles 25:5, Pastor Mike introduces Heman — not the cartoon, the real one. A prophet, a musician, a worshipper, a man who wrestled hard enough with God to author Psalm 88 — and somehow raised fourteen sons and three daughters who all served God alongside him. No rebellion recorded. No prodigals. In a bloodline that included Samuel's sons taking bribes and perverting justice, Heman broke the pattern. Pastor Mike asks what he knew that we've lost.

The answer isn't a parenting strategy. It's a posture. Twice a day, every day, Heman was at that altar. He didn't manufacture spiritual authority for his children — he stayed close enough to God that when his children walked in behind him, they walked straight into the presence he'd already cultivated.

Because you can't give what you don't have. But you can stay close enough to Someone who has it all — and let your children walk into what you've already walked into.

We'd love to hear how the messages are transforming your view of God and your life.

The greatest experiences ever created weren't built on talent — they were built on love.

In this message from John 13:34–35, Pastor Mike closes the Unreasonable Hospitality series at the Last Supper — the worst possible setting for a celebration, with betrayal at the table, denial hours away, and the cross around the corner. And yet Jesus gets up, wraps a towel around Himself, and washes every foot in the room. Including Judas. Including Peter. Knowing exactly what both of them were about to do. That's not a lesson in hygiene. That's the standard He's setting for love.

Pastor Mike shows that everything this series has built — the hospitality, the service, the discipleship, the generosity — collapses without this. A church in Corinth had every spiritual gift imaginable and Paul said without love it was just noise. Jarring, hollow noise in a room full of people with needs to be met. The detail that destroys the experience is always the same — a loveless culture hiding behind gifting, divided by competition, cold in a city that's already cold enough.

But Jesus didn't just command the love — He demonstrated it to its uttermost. He loved them to the télos — to the limit, to the full extent, to the end. And then He said now you do it. Not because it's easy. Because the world is watching, and "by this everyone will know."

Because Hackney is cold and transactional and people are still looking for somewhere that feels like theirs. What if they walked in here and found it?

We'd love to hear how the messages are transforming your view of God and your life.

Going the extra mile on the experience always requires going the extra mile on generosity.

In this message from 1 Chronicles 29:3–5, Pastor Mike shows that David didn't just want to build a Temple — he wanted to build the best one. Not for his own legacy, but because the One taking up residence in it was worth nothing less. So he gave from his personal treasury, over and above everything already contributed, and then turned to the congregation and asked who would do the same. The word he used was milevad — over and above. Not the language of the minimum. 

God set a floor in Leviticus. Ten percent. He called it holy — His. And in Malachi He names not meeting it for what it is — robbery. Not negligence. Not oversight. Robbery. The tithe is where obedience starts. The milevad is where devotion begins. Mary understood this when she poured a year's wages over Jesus' feet. Judas called it waste. Jesus called it worship — and said she didn't even realise her generosity was financing something eternal.

That's the pattern from Genesis to Chronicles to the cross. Unreasonable generosity has always been how God finances environments where everything else falls away. He gave first — and gave what no amount of gold could ever match.

Because where your treasure is, your heart will be also. The extra mile not only finances the best experience for others — it finances something for you too.

We'd love to hear how the messages are transforming your view of God and your life.

You don't accidentally become someone who makes everything else fall away — someone has to make you.

In this message from Luke 6:40, Pastor Mike opens with Will Guidara elbow-deep in shrimp prep, three hours into a job that wasn't his, being formed by a chef who didn't ask anything of his team he wasn't already doing himself. That's the school his destiny emerged from. And Jesus built His entire ministry around the same principle.

Pastor Mike shows the brutal honesty that reason people can't see the need around them isn't always indifference — sometimes it's what they've been taught. The shift from consumers to coworkers doesn't happen by accident. It happens through discipleship — through being so formed by a teacher so that their posture becomes yours. 

Jesus didn't just teach the extra mile — He walked further than anyone. Elbow-deep in human suffering, human sin, putting a servant's cloth around Himself to wash dirt from feet. That's not a metaphor for ministry. That's the standard. That's the curriculum. And the teacher becomes what the student is measured against.

The extra mile is where discipleship starts. Whose disciple are you?

We'd love to hear how the messages are transforming your view of God and your life.

The deepest human need has never been another event — it's care. And you are how God delivers it.

In this message from 1 Kings 8:3–5, Pastor Mike shows that the Temple wasn't built by Solomon alone — it was carried by a congregation. Every Levite, every priest, every member of the assembly had a role in creating the conditions for the presence to dwell. When the service stops, people lose access to what it provides — the reframing of hard experiences, the assurance of a hopeful future, the ability to breathe. 

Pastor Mike shows that this was always God's operating model — meeting human need through people. Abraham stood attending his guests while God visited. Jesus told His disciples the crowds don't need to go away — you give them something to eat. Twelve people, five loaves, two fish, five thousand fed with leftovers. The disciples' service facilitated something only God could do. That's still how it works. Your service creates an environment. God fills it.

And when He does — when everything is done right, and the word is in its place — time stops. The world outside ceases to exist. 

Because perhaps what God has for you sits beyond the first mile — somewhere where the extra mile begins. And that extra mile starts the moment you serve someone else.

We'd love to hear how the messages are transforming your view of God and your life.

The world has never stopped asking the question the High Priest asked in that courtroom — who is He, really?

In this message from Matthew 26:63–65, Pastor Mike shows that the confusion about Jesus didn't start with the trial — it was already everywhere. False witnesses couldn't agree. Judas became unsettled in what he believed and left a door open that Luke 22 says Satan walked straight through. The image the church has presented to the world today still doesn't always resemble Christ — a Jesus that accepts sin without change, a Jesus without exclusivity, a genderless God. False witness isn't new. It was a sign of His first coming and Jesus said it would mark His second.

But in a room full of noise, lies and contradictions, Jesus speaks. Not to defend Himself — to declare Himself. "I am." The same words Yahweh used to Moses in the burning bush. A corrupt High Priest with no legitimate right to his office interrogating the only true High Priest. The illegitimate condemning the only legitimate one. And the thief on the cross — no theology, no church background, no credentials — just proximity to a dying man who was clearly more than a man. One encounter. Eternal destination changed.

That's what a witness does. Not argue a case — verify an experience. And Jesus said before He ascended, you will be my witnesses. The Person of the Holy Spirit dwelling in every believer is Christ Himself testifying through your testimony.

Because the court has heard the evidence. The only question left is the verdict you render — and what you do with it after.

We'd love to hear how the messages are transforming your view of God and your life.

What does it feel like to walk into a room that was genuinely made for you?

In this message from Genesis 18:1–8, Pastor Mike opens the Unreasonable Hospitality series with Abraham in the heat of the day — old, tired, sitting in a dry waiting period with a promise that still hasn't come — and shows that none of that stopped him. When three unexpected visitors appear, he doesn't shuffle reluctantly to the door. He runs. Everything he offers is disproportionate to what the moment required of him. And it turns out the blessing he'd been waiting decades for was sitting on the other side of going the extra mile when nobody was asking him to.

That's the confronting question this message puts to every one of us — can you give your best when your week, your month, your year has lacked recognisable glory? Because people walk through that door carrying more than you know. You don't know how many miles someone has walked in their own shoes before they arrived. And one experience — one moment where everything else falls away — can transform everything for them.

Pastor Mike shows this is what church is supposed to be. Not a performance. An environment. And we don't create it to earn something — we create it because Someone already went unreasonably far for us. Jesus didn't just provide the meal. He got on His knees and washed the feet.

Because the promise you've been waiting for might be closer than you think — sitting just beyond the first mile, somewhere where the extra mile begins. Come in. This room was made for you.

We'd love to hear how the messages are transforming your view of God and your life.