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.

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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

Listen to the August 23, 2026 Sunday worship service from Zionsville United Methodist Church in Zionsville, IN.

Cam Newton had a brand. Bill Belichick had a brand. Peyton Manning definitely had a brand. And whether you've thought about it or not, so do you — and so does your church. But this isn't really a message about logos and slogans. It's a message about what it means for a brand to be real — to match the life behind it — and about the gap between how the church sees itself and how the world outside actually experiences it. It closes with a reminder that goes deeper than any rebrand: the earliest Christians didn't flourish because of a marketing campaign. They flourished because they were an uncommon community of unconditional love. And Jesus has already given us a brand. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples — if you love one another.

https://www.zumc.org/sermons

Listen to the August 16, 2026 Sunday worship service from Zionsville United Methodist Church in Zionsville, IN.

When we talk about the Great Commission, we usually mean Matthew 28 — go, make disciples, baptize, teach. But Dr. Jack Levison, New Testament professor and seminary mentor to Pastor Dave, points out that there are actually three Great Commissions in the New Testament, and they couldn't be more different from each other. Luke's says wait — stay put, don't go anywhere, power is coming and you're not ready yet. Matthew's says go — but not with bells and whistles or spellbinding sermons; just learn everything Jesus commanded and teach it to others. And John's — the one translators have been too timid to render accurately — says something that stops you in your tracks. When the risen Jesus breathed on his disciples in that locked upper room, the Greek word used is the same one used when God breathed life into Adam, when Elijah lay on a widow's dead son, when the breath of God animated Ezekiel's valley of dry bones. It wasn't a polite gesture. It was life itself, passed from one person to another. Which of these three is God's invitation to you right now — wait, teach, or be kissed back to life?

https://www.zumc.org/sermons

Listen to the August 9, 2026 Sunday worship service from Zionsville United Methodist Church in Zionsville, IN.

The average visitor to the Grand Canyon spends twenty minutes there. There's nothing wrong with that — but it's a tourist's way of moving through the world, not a pilgrim's. A tourist consumes, goes faster, expects ease, and feels entitled when things don't deliver. A pilgrim slows down, embraces adversity as the thing that actually changes you, travels lightly, and meets the journey with gratitude instead of expectation. Drawing from the Camino, the Grand Canyon, the redwoods, and a summer of reading and reflection, this is a message about what it means to be, in the ancient Greek sense of the word, a parepidemos — one who is present with the world around them, not just passing through it.

https://www.zumc.org/sermons

Listen to the August 2, 2026 Sunday worship service from Zionsville United Methodist Church in Zionsville, IN.

Matthew says Jesus fed 5,000 people — then adds "not counting women and children." One New Testament scholar noticed that phrase and couldn't let it go. This message asks who gets counted, who gets noticed, and what it looks like when a church takes seriously the gifts that children bring rather than just the gifts adults bring to children.

https://www.zumc.org/sermons

Listen to the July 26, 2026 Sunday worship service from Zionsville United Methodist Church in Zionsville, IN.

You can read about a solar eclipse. You can study it, look at pictures, watch videos. But you can't actually experience one unless you get yourself on the path. Rev. Doug Anderson — retired elder, pastor, and mentor to Pastor Dave — used that image from his own 2017 eclipse trip to Nashville to make a case about grace: the amazing, unending, unearned love of God that surrounds us before we even know we need it. Drawing from John Wesley's theology of grace, this message traces three movements — prevenient grace that woos us before we know God exists, saving grace that meets us when we finally say yes, and sanctifying grace that keeps shaping us toward love for the rest of our lives. Then it gets practical: seven means of grace that keep you on the path. And it closes, unexpectedly and memorably, with Walk the Moon's "Shut Up and Dance" — and why that song is actually a pretty good description of what it feels like to follow Jesus.

https://www.zumc.org/sermons

Listen to the July 19, 2026 Sunday worship service from Zionsville United Methodist Church in Zionsville, IN.

IListen to the July 19, 2026 Sunday worship service from Zionsville United Methodist Church in Zionsville, IN.

When the eleven disciples made their way back to Galilee to meet the risen Jesus, they weren't a room full of people who had it all figured out. Some worshipped. Some doubted. Both responses came from the same group, standing in the presence of the same risen Savior. And then Jesus commissioned all of them — doubters included — to go and make disciples of all nations. This message walks through the Great Commission through three lenses: welcome, worship, and wonder. It asks what baptism actually means and whose idea it was in the first place. It sits honestly with the tension between doubt and devotion that shows up in every church, every Sunday. And it lands on a question worth carrying into the week: where is your mission field? Because discipleship isn't the reward for certainty. It's the place where faith grows.

https://www.zumc.org/sermons

Listen to the July 12, 2026 Sunday worship service from Zionsville United Methodist Church in Zionsville, IN.

Imagine showing up to a dinner party where the parking spots closest to the door are all taken by the hosts, nobody greets you at the entrance, the best seats are already claimed, and when the food comes out nobody explains what anything is. You'd feel invisible. You'd slip out the moment dinner ended and nobody would notice you were gone. This message from Yvonne Gentile — Director of Guest Experiences at Church of the Resurrection, the largest United Methodist church in the country — makes the case that this exact scenario plays out in churches every single Sunday. Not because anyone means harm, but because friendly and radically hospitable are not the same thing. Drawing from Scripture and hard-won experience, this is a warm but honest conversation about the difference between inwardly focused and outwardly focused churches, what it actually feels like to walk through a church door for the first time, and the simple, concrete things any congregation can do differently starting next Sunday.

https://www.zumc.org/sermons