Zionsville United Methodist Church

Listen to the November 1, 2026 Sunday worship service from Zionsville United Methodist Church in Zionsville, IN.

Moses and Elijah lived 500 years apart. They stood in the same cave on the same mountain. They both came off the greatest victories of their lives feeling utterly spent. And they both encountered God in ways they didn’t expect — not in the dramatic signs they’d come to rely on, but in something quieter and more intimate. This All Saints Day message from the Thresholds series takes a close look at two of the Bible’s most extraordinary God-encounters and asks what they have to say to anyone who has hit the limit of their patience, their faith, or their capacity to keep going. The Hebrew phrase qol d’mama dakka — often translated “still, small voice” — turns out to be something richer than that: the sound of stillness after a great storm, when the world tentatively comes out of hiding and God’s presence fills the quiet. On a day when the church remembers those who have crossed the final threshold, this message holds out two gifts God offered both Moses and Elijah — and still offers us: the promise of presence, and someone to walk alongside us into what comes next.

Listen to the October 25, 2026 Sunday worship service from Zionsville United Methodist Church in Zionsville, IN.

Two weeks. That’s how long it should have taken the Israelites to walk from Egypt to the Promised Land. It took 40 years. Not because God wasn’t leading them, but because the people weren’t ready — and because the wilderness, uncomfortable as it was, was doing something in them that couldn’t happen any other way. This message picks up the Thresholds series with an honest look at what happens when the crossing takes longer than we expected. Drawing from three different authors — a leadership consultant, a pastor, and a youth development researcher — Pastor Dave maps out what life in the “neutral zone” actually feels like, why going back is never really an option, and how to tell the difference between the kind of complaint that poisons faith and the kind of lament that keeps it alive. It ends with a simple challenge: throw your life jacket off the cliff before you jump. Sometimes the smallest act of commitment is what gets you off the ledge.

https://www.zumc.org/sermons

Listen to the October 18, 2026 Sunday worship service from Zionsville United Methodist Church in Zionsville, IN.

There’s a reason we carry a bride across the threshold. It’s not just a doorway — it’s a marker. A before and after. A declaration that life on this side will never be quite the same as life on the other side. Pastor Dave uses that ancient tradition to open a new series on the thresholds of life — the crossings we plan for and the ones that surprise us, the ones we enter with joy and the ones that scare us half to death. It begins with Abraham, who at 75 years old was well-settled, comfortable, and prosperous — and then heard God say one word: go. No map. No details. No promise of an easy road. Just the assurance that God would show him the way if he was willing to start walking. Drawing from his own story of crossings — from a small Indiana town to Haiti to St. Luke’s to Zionsville — Pastor Dave makes an honest and personal case that the God who calls is also the God who provides. Every single time.

https://www.zumc.org/sermons

Listen to the October 11, 2026 Sunday worship service from Zionsville United Methodist Church in Zionsville, IN.

He was the runt of the family. His own father didn’t even call him by name when the prophet showed up to anoint the next king of Israel. And yet David went on to be mentioned more than 600 times in Scripture, author half the Psalms, and preside over what history remembers as Israel’s golden age. More importantly, he’s the only person in the Bible described as “a man after God’s own heart.” This message takes a close look at the most famous battle in history — not to retell a familiar Sunday school story, but to pull out five specific, transferable lessons for anyone facing something overwhelming right now. A giant isn’t always nine feet tall and wearing bronze armor. Sometimes it’s a diagnosis, a habit, a fear, a financial hole, or a voice in your head that keeps telling you you’ll never get past this. The five smooth stones David carried into that valley are available to anyone willing to pick them up.

https://www.zumc.org/sermons

Listen to the October 4, 2026 Sunday worship service from Zionsville United Methodist Church in Zionsville, IN.

She's been called a prostitute, a secret lover, a reformed adulteress. None of it holds up to careful reading. Mary Magdalene was something far more interesting than any of those labels — she was the first person to see the risen Christ, precisely because she refused to leave. When the disciples went home, she stayed. When the tomb was empty and her grief was overwhelming, she kept asking her question: where have they taken him? And when Jesus finally spoke her name, her eyes were opened to see what she had been searching for. This message — preached on Worship in Pink Sunday, as the congregation honored those who have faced cancer, and at the beginning of Mental Health Awareness Week — uses the parallel between Mary's story and the Song of Songs to explore what resilience actually looks like. Not strength without pain. Not faith without tears. But the stubborn, persistent, searching love that stays in the waiting until it hears its name called.

https://www.zumc.org/sermons

Listen to the September 27, 2026 Sunday worship service from Zionsville United Methodist Church in Zionsville, IN.

AJ Jacobs spent three years tracing his family tree and ended up with 190 million relatives. His conclusion: if you go back far enough, pretty much anyone could be family. Matthew's Gospel makes a similar argument in its opening chapter — except the family tree belongs to Jesus, and the people Matthew deliberately inserts into it are two women nobody would have expected to see there. Rahab was a Canaanite sex worker from Jericho who hid Israelite spies and risked everything for a people not her own. Ruth was a Moabite widow who refused to abandon her mother-in-law and walked into a foreign land with nothing. Both were outsiders. Both were included. And the argument this message makes is that their inclusion wasn't accidental — it shaped the very character of the men who came after them, all the way to the greatest king in Israel's history and ultimately to Jesus himself. This is a message about what inclusion actually costs, what it actually opens up, and why it has always been at the heart of God's story.

https://www.zumc.org/sermons

Listen to the September 20, 2026 Sunday worship service from Zionsville United Methodist Church in Zionsville, IN.

It's one of the most familiar stories in the Old Testament — a young boy named Samuel hearing his name called in the night, shuffling down the hall to his mentor Eli, saying "here I am." It sounds like a gentle story about faith passing from one generation to the next. But read a few more verses and the picture gets complicated fast. God wasn't calling Samuel to comfort him. He was calling Samuel to deliver devastating news about the family that had raised him. This message takes an honest look at the full story — the moral collapse of Eli's household, the corruption of his sons, and the judgment God was about to bring — and finds inside it a pattern that runs all the way through Scripture: when God brings something to an end, he has already quietly started growing what comes next. Three responses emerge for anyone in a season of transition: look for what God is growing, listen for what he's calling you to, and let it be — releasing your grip on what's ending and trusting that God's eyes are on what's ahead.

https://www.zumc.org/sermons

Listen to the September 13, 2026 Sunday worship service from Zionsville United Methodist Church in Zionsville, IN.

When Moses told the Israelites to pack up and leave Egypt in the middle of the night, they had hours to grab everything they'd need for an uncertain journey into the desert with an army at their heels. Food. Water. Clothing. Shelter. And somewhere in that chaotic packing, Miriam grabbed a tambourine. So did a lot of other women. They hadn't crossed the Red Sea yet. They hadn't seen Pharaoh's army drown. They just believed that God was going to give them something worth celebrating — and they packed accordingly. This message from Pastor Dave uses that small, easy-to-miss detail from Exodus 15 to make a case for anticipatory praise — the kind that doesn't wait for the problem to be solved before it starts worshipping. Drawing from two years living in Haiti, a week on the Camino, and the wisdom of worship leader Matt Redman, this is an honest and hopeful look at what praise actually does for the human soul — and why it matters most when life is hardest.

https://www.zumc.org/sermons

Listen to the September 6, 2026 Sunday worship service from Zionsville United Methodist Church in Zionsville, IN.

There are nearly a hundred portraits hanging in the lobby of Zionsville UMC right now — faces of church members, collected over the summer, each one representing a story God is telling. This message launches a sermon series built around that idea, anchored in a scene from Luke 2 that most people associate only with Christmas: the moment Mary and Joseph brought the infant Jesus to the temple and encountered two elderly strangers named Simeon and Anna. What happened in that moment was an exchange — two people near the end of their lives and two young parents just beginning theirs, each offering the other something the other desperately needed. Hope. Assurance. The reminder that they were part of something bigger than their own story. Pastor Dave weaves that ancient scene together with a visit to a church member named Donna, who spent her summers as a docent at Yosemite and who told him, quietly and with complete conviction, that God is just so good — and that the older she gets, the more clearly she sees it. A legacy, it turns out, isn't something you leave. It's something you grow.

https://www.zumc.org/sermons

Listen to the August 30, 2026 Sunday worship service from Zionsville United Methodist Church in Zionsville, IN.

What does it mean to have faith when we cannot yet see how the story will turn out?

Hebrews 11 gives us a "Hall of Faith," a long list of people whose lives were shaped by trust in God. Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Rahab, and many others accomplished remarkable things, but the author of Hebrews keeps pointing back to the same thing: they lived "by faith." Their faith did not mean life was easy. Some experienced great victories, while others endured suffering, uncertainty, persecution, and loss. Many died without seeing the fulfillment of the promises they had trusted.

Yet they understood that their lives were part of a much bigger story. They trusted God's faithfulness, even when they could only see the promise from a distance. And Hebrews reminds us that we are not running our race alone. We are surrounded by a "great cloud of witnesses," those who have gone before us and whose faith still encourages us today.

What would it look like to live faithfully when the outcome is still unseen? Who are the people whose faith has shaped your own? And what kind of legacy of faith will you leave for those who come after you?

Keep your eyes on Jesus, throw off what weighs you down, and run the race with perseverance. There is a great cloud of witnesses cheering you on.

https://www.zumc.org/sermons