Sermons

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Advent Week Three: The Gift That Changed Everything

Pastor Chris Seay invites us to consider once again the tenets which guide us into living a different kind of Christmas. As we seek to worship fully, spend less, give more, and love all, we anticipate the ways that God will continue to change us, and the whole world, through this sacred season. Join us in this ongoing Advent Conspiracy. To find out more, and to take part as we gather our best gifts to Jesus as a family to provide clean water around the world, click here.

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A Thrill of Hope: Flesh and Bone

You've heard it so many times you've probably forgotten, but Jesus arrives in the strangest package, flesh and bone, skin and blood. But what on earth does that mean? Why does it matter that Jesus is human? And don't we need God to be more than that?

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Advent Week Two: The Baby and The Dragon

Pastor Sean Palmer invites us to remember what the apocalyptic vision of Revelation tells us about the world into which Jesus is born. When we neglect to see Christmas as the hopeful scene of a cosmic battle, it becomes easy to instead focus upon the sanitized and distorted version offered by a culture of accumulation and consumption.

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A Thrill of Hope: A Weary Mom Rejoices

Welcome back to “A Thrill of Hope,” a podcast and simultaneously an invitation — an invitation to slow down, remembering all that is true of Christ: who He was and is, His coming, His kingdom, and His love.

In this second installment, Julie Ramos confronts the sense of weariness she and many others have felt this year, as she reminds us of the promises of God fulfilled in Jesus’ coming and in our daily lives. She invites us to move, and to recognize the movement of God in our midst that restores our hope and leads us to rejoice.

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Advent Week One: The Common Cup

Pastor Chris Seay invites us into the season of Advent, in which we remember and await Jesus’ coming. As part of a global family of faith, we believe that we are called especially in this season to share joyfully from our abundance, and we will continue doing so as a church family this year by partnering with efforts to bring clean water to places in desperate need. Chris enters the scriptures to remind us that generosity springs from a grateful heart, and suggests practices to grow us in gratitude.

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A Thrill of Hope: Advent Disrupted

Welcome to “A Thrill of Hope,” a podcast and simultaneously an invitation — an invitation to slow down, remembering all that is true of Christ: who He was and is, His coming, His kingdom, and His love.

In this inaugural installment, Pastor Sean highlights our seemingly innate desire for tradition, especially during this time of year. He asks what we are to do when our situation mandates that those traditions change or even cease. But is Advent the tradition, or is it possibly meant to be a disruption to the mundane?

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You Say You Want A Revolution?

Pastor Sean Palmer teaches from Matthew 16; inviting us to consider the ways that the religious and cultural expectations of the anticipated Messiah in Jesus’ day mirror our own gravitation to the conqueror rather than the suffering servant. The path Jesus has given us is not one of power and coercion, but instead the faithful obedience to take up our cross and follow him.

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Undistracted Time

Ericka Graham invites us to look again to the story of Moses and the burning bush, offering the important reminder that practices which grow our mindfulness and attention are only a first step. It is when looking up in wonder and awe becomes a habitual discipline that we might hear God’s voice calling to us more clearly.

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Kingdom Citizens

Pastor Chris Seay reminds us, navigating a climate of such division, that our true citizenship is not a question of nation or party-platform, but the belonging in which we all share as members of God’s kingdom. Teaching from the Sermon on the Mount, Chris invites us to recenter our hearts and lives as we seek to walk the narrow path of Jesus’ expansive love.

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Today

Pastor Sean Palmer guides us to consider the difference between hope and optimism. God offers us an assured hope which dispels worry about tomorrow, and instead empowers us to live today as though heaven has already come. What are you waiting for?

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Relationship, Not Rules

Pastor Chris Seay, with a special appearance from our brother Marcelo Robles, reminds us that the heart of Christianity is not a checklist of regulations, but an invitation into relationship with God. He urges us to consider how we might renew a sense of friendship with our creator, through intentional time, nurture, and care.

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Stay Woke

Pastor Sean Palmer invites us into three parables that Jesus chooses to tell together, and the common theme that binds them; the mistakes made when we forget to live and prioritize our lives in a way that remembers that the Master is coming back! Meeting others with kindness and attentiveness, and seeking always to use our gifts to bless and serve, we live expectant that we will encounter the Divine.

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Not Alone

Pastor Chris Seay shares some of the lessons he has learned from the life and teaching of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who spoke pointedly to the Church in a time of great crisis. We ask God to guide us as we seek a balance between growth through solitude and the vital gift of community, as we learn to love one another well in all our imperfections, and as we abide in hope to be a faithful church in this ever-changing world.

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The Good Life

Pastor Sean Palmer looks to Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, inviting us to consider the ways that our culturally distorted idea of “the good life” has resulted in anxiety and worry. God knows, sees, and cares about the many concerns we have in this life, and calls us to seek first the Kingdom, to relinquish our false sense of control, and to trust that God will provide for our true needs.

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The Big-C Church

Pastor Chris Seay offers us a vital reminder of the great diversity exemplified by the early church. Especially during this cultural moment of such toxic division, followers of Jesus are to live into a different narrative, shaped by curiosity and open-mindedness, loving grace for those with whom we disagree, and the elusive hope of unity.

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A Cup Filled, A Cup Poured

Pastor Chris Seay invites us to consider how we are called to live into the rhythms of Jesus in both giving and receiving care. Especially at a time in which the needs of our neighbors are so vast and so many, we ask God to meet and guide us in our particular places of heartbreak. May God help us to be vessels of grace, filled to then be shared in loving care of others.

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The One Who Is With

Pastor Sean Palmer asks us to consider the call of the Great Commission at the end of the Gospel of Matthew in light of the peculiar limitations of this season. Wherever we are sent or called to dwell, the gift Jesus gives and invites us to embody is presence.

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Empathy Responds

Pastor Chris Seay teaches once again from the church-site of our friends in Lake Charles, Louisiana as we continue to respond in care for our neighbors in the aftermath of Hurricane Laura. As we are reminded in the story of Nehemiah, empathy calls us not to draw back while others are suffering, but to take action while leaning into relationship.

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More Than We Can Handle

Pastor Chris Seay teaches from Louisiana as we seek to respond in care for our neighbors in the aftermath of Hurricane Laura. God never promised that we wouldn’t be given more than we can handle. Instead we are called from temptation and idolatry to rely ever more on God, and on one another, in all that overwhelms us.

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What Do You Want?

Pastor Sean Palmer teaches from the story of healing at the Pool of Bethesda in John 5. Our desires are not inconsequential or insignificant to God, but it is when we ask and allow God to transform our wrong desires that we discover the right ones, that those desires would result in choices aligned with God’s will.

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