Have you ever considered the “product” of our church? If I were to ask, “What does the church produce?” many people say, “the church exists to produce disciples for Jesus,” or some form of that statement. It makes sense, after all, since Jesus says to his disciples, “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). Case closed?

I don’t think so. Here are some things to consider. Let’s say that I invite someone to faith in Jesus. Who does the heavy lifting in that moment? The Holy Spirit. Let’s say that they come to faith! Now, I engage them to be trained. Our church uses the Journey group materials. Who does the heavy lifting in renewing their minds and conforming them to the image of Christ? Again, the Holy Spirit. When do they become a fully formed follower of Jesus? When they enter glory! That’s right. All of us are still in the disciple-making process until we enter the presence of Christ through death or His second coming.

Where does the church fit in? The church creates and maintains the disciple-making process within gospel community. So, what is our product? I would argue that we produce a disciple-making environment! Join us Sunday as we consider Romans 12:2 and worship our Lord!

The Apostle Paul exposes faulty thinking in the Corinthian church, 1 Corinthians 5 and 6. In their thinking, since the body is evil and base, what I do with my body doesn’t matter. The result was that believers engaged in immoral behavior, attempting to circumvent God’s call to a holy morality. The loophole they created followed this logic: the body and the soul are separate entities with little relation to each other, therefore, what I do with my body doesn’t matter so long as my heart is pure. We hear similarities today with the trans-movement, which argues that biological gender and psychological gender can be different. This assumes that the body and soul function separately and can be mismatched.

In our text, the Apostle could say, “present your whole person to God,” but he doesn’t. Instead, he says, “present your bodies.” Join us Sunday as we explore the meaning of this important statement and worship the risen embodied Christ.

Paul says the sacrifice God desires is a genuine commitment of self to divine service. He asks us to live our daily lives for Him and not ourselves. Whether in our marriages and families, our careers or citizenry, God wants disciples who present themselves in service to Him. We labor in our jobs primarily in worship and service to God, not our bosses; we submit and engage our civic responsibilities for the Lord; we train our children, so that they will serve God. Success is defined by God’s pleasure, not our performance.

The Jewish believers were committed to sacrifices but not of themselves. They operated out of fear leading to performance. Their service was not born out of genuine worship but an act of pay to play, Quid pro quo. As they pressured the Gentile believers to conform, they created fear and expectations of performance. With that pressure to perform came pressure to be holy and acceptable to God. After all, sacrifices are required to meet certain standards, to be without blemish. Instead of serving out of affection and freedom, fear and performance formed the impetus.

Paul presents a new paradigm of grace. Join us Sunday as we consider this paradigm.

The passage in Romans 12:1-3 calls us to live in light of the great truths of the Gospel. Paul, having spent eleven chapters expounding the mercies of God in the salvation of sinners and the doctrine of grace, now shifts to exhort us in how we should respond. For those justified by faith, sanctification is not optional but a necessary fruit of our union with Christ.

A politician must run to get elected. Elections cost money, lots of money. The politician solicits donations from donors. Large donors give for a benefit to their enterprise if the politician is elected. Once elected the politician must act for the benefit of their donors or lose future donations and future elections. It’s a simple pay-to-play scheme. It’s performance for benefit. But do we take that model into our relationship with God? Can we manipulate and control God? Is God beholden to us? Does the gospel address this?

The Apostle Paul describes the great sin of humanity in Romans chapter one saying, “because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen” (Romans 1:25). This pattern goes all the way back to the garden of Eden and continues today. We know this, but maybe we haven’t considered that Christians can continue this pattern, bringing a paradigm of self-worship into their faith. We believe that we are serving God, but in fact we’re worshipping ourselves in a twisted pay-to-play scheme. We believe that if we obey God, He will praise and bless us. Instead of living in the received righteousness of grace, we seek to establish our own righteousness. This is functional paganism and high-handed idolatry. The paradigm of the created order which the gospel restores is the creation subject to and in service of the Creator, who alone is worthy.  Join us Sunday as we consider the paradigm of grace!

If you haven’t read Simon Sinek’s book, Start with Why, you need to! The heart of the book is the importance of the root motivations for life, the why to any action. It’s the heart of the book of Romans: why do we obey God? More specifically, if there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ, and Christ is the end of the law to all who believe, then what should motivate my obedience?

The Jewish believers in the church answered the question, saying, “we obey because that’s how we have standing with God and avoid His judgment.” They pressured the Gentile believers to adopt their pious practices, saying, “you can’t be right with God unless you convert to Judaism and all its patterns.” Paul routs this paradigm and condemns it.

But he doesn’t leave us there, holding the ruins of our paradigm. He gives us a new model for life as believers. Join us Sunday as we begin examining this pattern in Romans 12:1,2. Let’s pray that our hearts will be freed to love and live for God.

On October 25, 1964 an NFL Vikings defensive end recovered a fumble and scored a touchdown for his team. The only problem was it was at the opposing team’s end zone! He got a pat on the head from his teammates with sarcastic encouragement and humor.  Although the Vikings team would end up winning the game, the touchdown run to the opposing team signals a sad reality in our cultural moment today. 

Sociologists and pastors across the country are saying this about our current cultural moment: we are in the fastest religious shift in US history, but going the opposite way! More people are exiting church buildings more than they were entering them during the Great Awakenings just a century prior. Pastors around us teach with deconstructed faiths, church hurt is rampant, and ministries are closing their doors. This is the reality we’re facing as God’s people in a broken world. 

This Christmas season we’re reminded that in the face of great opposition, Christ has come to bring peace to the world through His kingdom reign. He will bring peace to the world, and will use people from an unlikely place to do so. Little did the Jews in Jesus’ time know that those outside of Israel would be among the first to herald this great news! Join us this Sunday as we peer into the story of the Magi and learn from their faithful response to the birth of Jesus Christ.

When I was a child, a long time ago, my family would gather to watch Little House on the Prairie. This TV show aired from 1974 until 1983. I can’t imagine Hollywood creating something like that today, nor do I think that our culture would value it. This series was based on a series of children’s books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. She wrote the series from her childhood experience living in Pepin, Wisconsin and several family transitions to Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota. Did you know that she published her series when she was sixty-five years old?

I’ll admit, at fifty-three, her age doesn’t seem that far off. Some reading this might think that sixty-five is young. Our passage this week lists two people, Simeon and Anna, who were in their later years. Both were devout people who communed deeply with the Lord. Both had experienced a lot of life and were blessed to see God’s Christ. Join us as we consider the first Christmas of these wise, faithful people.

Have you ever heard of Thomas Obadiah Chisholm? Probably not. He was born in 1866 in a log cabin near Franklin, Kentucky and grew up on his family’s farm. At sixteen he began teaching in the one room schoolhouse. He came to faith at twenty-six and worked for a religious newspaper in Louisville, KY. At thirty-six he entered the ministry, pastoring a small church in Scottsville, KY for just a year. He resigned due to failing health, moving back to the family farm.  He spent the rest of his life as an insurance agent living in New Jersey. You might not know his story, but you know his work because he wrote Great is Thy Faithfulness.

In explaining the song, he writes, “My income has not been large at any time due to impaired health. But I must not fail to record here the unfailing faithfulness of a covenant-keeping God, and that He has given me many wonderful displays of his providing care, for which I am filled with astonishing gratefulness.”

It’s stories like Chisholm’s and our text this Sunday that demonstrate God’s delight in using humble, unknown people to do his work. Join us as we consider Joseph and Mary’s first Christmas.

C.S. Lewis was asked for his response to the creation of the Atomic Bomb. Fear had gripped the world at this invention. Here is an excerpt from his response:

If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb, when it comes, find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies, but they need not dominate our minds…Let the bomb find you doing well.

This reminds me of Psalm 11:3,4: “if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord’s throne is in heaven.”

For the faithful believers, people like Zechariah and Elizabeth, experiencing their first Christmas, God’s sovereignty guided their response to perilous times. Luke opens with an ominous line, “In the days of Herod, king of Judea.” That sets the context for the narrative. What do we learn? The angel of God comes and says, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and bring you this good news” (Luke 1:19). Gabriel finds God’s people faithfully serving and worshipping Him. But more than that, it tells us that God is sovereign over His creation, leading us through perilous times. Join us Sunday as we consider the experience of the first Christmas and worship our Sovereign Lord.