“Anxiety/ Why do you always get the best of me/ I’m up here living in a fantasy/ I can’t enjoy a thing” - Jason Isbell.
What hope does Jesus have for an anxious world? Check out our new sermon below!
What To Do When Being Kicked In The Head
“When I was nine, some kid beat me up for amusement, and when I came home crying to my father, his answer- Fight that boy or fight me- was godless, because it told me that there was no justice in the world, save the justice we dish out with our own hands. When I was twelve, six boys jumped off the number 28 bus headed to Mondawin Mall, threw me to the ground, and stomped on my head. But what struck me most that afternoon was not those boys but the godless, heathen adults walking by. Down there on the ground, my head literally being kicked in, I understood: no one, not my father, not the cops, and certainly not anyone’s God, was coming to save me.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy.
James KA Smith calls this “a respectable atheism.” There is no pretense of cool detachment or objectivity; only the visceral emotional objection to an unjust world. What does Jesus say to people getting kicked in the head? Or better, what does he do when he is getting kicked in the head? Check out our sermon on revenge and love below!
Lust and the Transcendent
Sex sells, because sex is about power. You can understand the mistake. After all, sex is close to the core of our identity; its “the closest a finite creature can come to the infinite.” Or is it? Check out our sermon on lust and the transcendent below.
“Thank you Lord for her beauty. Thank you that it is not mine.”
The Dying Church
“I ain’t afraid to die anymore. I done it already.” - Hugh Glass, The Revenant
What kind of church is ready to plant a church? What kind of people are ready to be a part of a church plant? Its simple: the kind that are ready to die. Because death in Christ is life forever.
Our pastor had the opportunity to speak on this topic this past Sunday to our brothers and sisters at Reformation Presbyterian Church in Hendersonville, NC. Listen here!
Ordinary Light
We live in a world where BIG matters- big money, big business, big followers, big. In a world that privileges economies of scale, it can be tough to feel like an ordinary life matters.
Jesus disagrees.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus takes a bunch of ordinary people and tells them that they can be the light of the world. The question is, How?
New Sermon Below!
Wild Advent Faith
Christmas, like faith, is thoroughly domesticated. But Christmas, like faith, is really something that comes like John the Baptist, or a Christmas tree- howling from the wilderness, stuffed into a home. New sermon on Matthew 3 below!
Advent Preparation: Waiting
Waiting. Its not a passive doing nothing. In our modern world, it takes all of our energy to resist the urge do take matters (relational, vocational, spiritual) into our own hands. The advent season trains us to do just that: to wait on the presence of God.
Celebratory Suffering
Jesus promises that persecution is inevitable. It’s a mark of the Christian life. He calls us to rejoice in it. So why are we always whining? And how can we become celebratory sufferers? New sermon on “Blessed are those who are persecuted” below!
Waiting
God promises blessing and renewal. So where is all that? How do we live in the tension between the promise and the reality? New Sermon on Psalm 130 below!
An Ordinary God in the Squares of Savannah
When we come into God’s presence, we expect something huge. Spectacular. Extraordinary. But what if this expectation says more about us than it does about God? What if God is primarily concerned with our ordinary lives?
People come from all over the world to visit Savannah. But they don’t come for the spectacular- the Civic Center, the hotels, or anything else. No, they come to see the squares- rows of “tithing blocks” full of houses, and “trust blocks,” full of churches, businesses, and public meeting places where people have lived out ordinary lives for centuries now. This is why the squares of Savannah and the cross of Christ are linked together in the logo of Christ the King… because its God working in ordinary places that is extraordinary. Sermon below!