Recent Messages

Joseph’s story illustrates the power of grace to transform suffering into blessing. Descending into slavery and rising to leadership, Joseph uses his position to bring healing and renewal to his family and the wider world. Like Joseph, we are called to use our gifts and power for regenerative purposes, fostering community and care for creation. Reimagining church means recognizing our potential to create ripples of change through radical hospitality, belonging, and partnership. In Christ, we find the courage to forgive, to rebuild, and to embody God’s justice.

Jeremiah contrasts the barren shrub and the flourishing tree, offering a vision of faith deeply rooted in God’s wisdom. Psalm 1 echoes this imagery, celebrating those who delight in God’s law, while Jesus’s Beatitudes challenge us to discern where true blessing lies. As a church rooted in God’s love and justice, we are called to discipline and discernment, cultivating lives that nourish others and steward God’s creation. Together, we practice faithful stewardship and purposeful partnership, growing in grace and extending our roots into God’s sustaining love.

When Jesus calls the disciples to cast their nets, he invites them into a new way of being—a life of faith marked by creativity, courage, and community. As Christ leads them to a miraculous catch, he shows that he is the source of vibrant life and the center of possibility. In reimagining church, we embrace this creative praxis: teaching and doing, reflecting and embodying Christ’s love. Together, we become a community of radical hospitality and belonging, a net wide enough to hold all who seek renewal and purpose.

Paul’s hymn to love is not just poetic; it is the guiding vision of what it means to be alive as Christ’s body. Love is not abstract but embodied—seen in action, decision, and community. As a church reimagining itself as a hub for spiritual growth and care for creation, we are called to anchor everything we do in love. This love celebrates diversity, fosters belonging, and reflects Christ’s call to oneness. We are reminded that faith, hope, and love abide—but the greatest of these is love.

What does it mean to reimagine the church in today’s world? Paul’s theology of the body challenges us to embrace the richness of diversity within Christ’s mystical body, recognizing that every member has a unique and indispensable role. Far from being a hierarchical organization, the church is a living organism where even the "weaker" members are given special honor by God. This vision invites us to move beyond division and judgment, rooting ourselves in the embodied love of Christ. In this, love is not an abstract ideal—it is an active, relational, and embodied reality.

Last Sunday we talked about reimagining a church rooted in God’s love for the neighborhood. This week we explore reimagining church as a vibrant hub for spiritual growth in the community. Isaiah introduces us to a God who is creator of heaven and earth and is redeeming and forming a unique people for Godself. Our text represents a kind of initiatory passage into a new kind of community—a community created through divine invitation where all people are valued and honored. The believers in Acts embodied this new people who are called, formed, redeemed and honored by the Spirit of Christ, vibrant hubs of grace empowered for the work of redemption in the city.

The season of epiphany is a celebration of Christ’s appearance in the world as a fulfillment of God’s promises. John says, “we have seen his glory…the only Son, himself God, who is pressed close to the Father’s heart, he has made him known.” The epiphany of God in Christ is a profound truth central to our faith. Through the fullness of grace we have received, we are rooted irrevocably in God’s love. As we reimagine church in our neighborhood, everything we believe and do must be rooted first and foremost in God’s love.

We tell this story every year. We tell this story because it illustrates so clearly God’s desire to be in relationship with us. We tell this story because we, too, are invited to come to the manger and witness the miracle of birth. We tell this story because it brings us hope and good news—hope especially for those deemed powerless, unworthy, or unwelcome. We tell this story because it is a story we need to hear again and again; if we didn’t tell it, what would become of our faith? And so, on this night, we tell this story to pass along this good news and to continue to thread the generations together with hope.