Give what you have, not what you don’t. It sounds obvious, but its actually hard. Nobody gives what they have; thats why they have it! And yet, giving what we have is a practice by which we grow in our faith and knowledge of God. Listen to our sermon on Matthew 6:1-4 at the link below.
Anxiety
“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.”
Renewal in a World of Rage
Anger can be the explosion that provokes positive change. It can also be a slow-burning fire that consumes others. Or ourselves. How do we tell the difference? Jesus teaches us about anger in the service of renewal.
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!
Putting the "Local" in Local Church
“Rather than calling us to transcendence, God forms us and guides us through place.”
- Hannah Anderson
What if part of our problem as Christians in the West is that we have swallowed the lie of “liquid modernity”: That the place where you are at present is secondary to where you are going, and what you might become? Read this excellent article on the importance of place in the Christian tradition.
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!
Christianity in a Secular World
I don’t know anything about France, but this article seems like it accurately describes our cultural moment:
”In Café Flores where Sartre and Camus discussed the absurdity of life, people scan their phones safely cocooned from such disturbing ideas. Trains, lifts, even waiting at traffic lights are all opportunities to rehearse our secular liturgy: look down, pull out, flip open, here and now, here and now.”
And what we at CTK hope to be:
"Christians carrying within them the reign of heaven will need to let their weirdness shine; their time-consuming religious habits, their inconvenient commitment and love of others, their solidly unspectacular contentedness, and their embrace of weakness that allows the power and grace of their servant Lord to glow. The front line of secularism is here, but the resistance has begun."