Christ City Church Memphis

How do you determine right from wrong? Sometimes the line between the two gets blurry. Enter human ethics. Some of the most foundational ethics for our country come from the Ten Commandments (our scripture for this sermon) and the rest of Christian scripture. How can this spiritual tradition of striving for moral clarity help us sort through right and wrong in a world of deep fakes, AI hallucinati...

Has anyone told you they understand something you are sharing before you’ve given them enough information? What about comparing your experience to one of theirs that seems unrelated? To have information is not the same thing as understanding. In Matthew 21, Jesus connects true understanding with embodied action. As we begin our new sermon series, we will explore how AI “knows” many things but cann...

Happy Birthday, Christ City! Celebrating birthdays is so fun because everyone has one, so everyone gets celebrated. It’s kind of like grace. Grace is available to everyone, so we all get to celebrate it. Still, sometimes we think we are more deserving of grace than others. Isn’t that ironic? Let’s celebrate together that grace, just like a birthday, is for everyone as we enter our 16th year as a c...

How often do you think about the patterns and paths of your life that are shaping you? Many factors shape us that we don’t choose—the family we were born into, the time period we live in, and the influences of our community and culture. Yet, there are many things we participate in that are either forming us into people of spiritual abundance or spiritual bankruptcy. Join us as we reflect on the ch...

Many people have plans and purposes for our lives. They want us to fit into the cogs of their machines of productivity and profit in the name of progress and efficiency. Yet we are all responsible for the lives we are creating through the choices we make every day. Within a supportive community, we can begin to discover that we too have ideas, intentions, and purposes for our lives—and that learni...

Sometimes we need a reminder of why life is worth living; why we get up in the morning, why we raise our kids and do our work, why the fight for mercy and justice is worth it. Could it be because this world is full of wonder, and the God who created it wants us to experience it? The way of Jesus can be a path to wonder. Let's travel it together. This is the fifth sermon in the series, The High...

Do you serve others? If so, what sustains you? When we serve from only a sense of duty and obligation, we will not find the joy, sustenance, and nurturing we were created to experience. Jesus offers us a clue to another way in the “greatest commandment” (he can’t help but share two): Love God with  all of yourself  and love your neighbor  as yourself.  What if our service is meant to be sustained...

Is sacrifice an important part of your life? When Jesus describes what it means to follow him in Matthew 16, he speaks plainly about the necessity of sacrifice: giving up something you would like to keep in order to gain something greater. He says we can gain the whole world and still lose our soul if we are unwilling to deny ourselves. For some of us, these words carry painful baggage. We have ex...

How do we come to know an infinite God? Are facts and ideas enough to satisfy our souls, or is knowing God more like knowing a friend? John's Gospel tells us the divine became flesh in Jesus. Maybe God is still revealed in tangible ways today through Scripture, around a table of fellowship, in ordinary moments, and even in times of great difficulty. Join us for Part Two of  The High Ground  se...

In the fast-moving unpredictability of the world, how do you make room to dream? To plan? To create goals for the future? It starts with finding higher ground. When everything feels uncertain, finding higher ground isn't about escaping the world. It's about gaining perspective so we can see clearly enough to know where to go next.

We look around us today and see a world that is in pain. What is God’s response to this pain, and more important, what is God’s plan? When we’re uncertain of these answers it’s easy to want to give up. This Sunday morning we will spend some time in the eighth chapter of Romans, and we will seek to find some encouragement to have hope and to press on in the work that God has called us to.

It can be tempting to leave, move, or abruptly change direction when we find ourselves sharing a community, city, workplace or family with people who don't behave the way we think they should. After all, they are "toxic" right? Jesus tells a parable that challenges this way of thinking and implies that, like the wheat in the story, putting down roots and growing amid adversity is oft...

Have your ever felt like you missed your one opportunity to live an abundant life? Jesus once told a story about a farmer scattering seed to reveal God's generous way of working in the world. The seeds fell on every kind of ground, in every kind of place. Maybe God is still scattering the seeds of abundance on the ground right in front of us.

Join us for a special Sunday with Rev. Ayanna Watkins as she shares a word from Esther. Rev Ayanna is a longtime friend of Christ City. She is a skilled and kind preacher who knows CCC well. She has preached for us a couple of times a year for the last several years. You don’t want to miss it!

Do you trust yourself? Should you? At some point, most of us have trusted an authority that has let us down or caused us harm. Sometimes we were fooled, tricked, or manipulated. Other times, people simply failed us. In light of those experiences, how do we develop an inner sense of discernment, of intuition, of authority? The ministry of Jesus has more to say about that than we might think. Join u...

Matthew 9:9 You probably aren’t much of a leader if people only follow you because they think they have to. What makes someone worth following? And how do we become the kind of people others can trust enough to follow? This message will guide us into ideas and practices to help us learn more about our own capacity to lead with authority and follow with discernment. Join us for the fifth sermon in...

Did you know Jesus had issues with authority? In fact, when he saw how harassed and helpless his people were, he chose to empower ordinary disciples to help, to heal and to liberate rather than rely on those with religious or political power. Sometimes, we might think it is a bonus to have a compassionate leader. According to Jesus, we may have set our sights too low. Join us as we take a look at...

We all know what authority gone wrong looks like. We see it in news feeds, workplaces, families, institutions, and even in the stories we tell through music, movies, and literature. But "authority issues" are not new. Jesus encountered them too. When we introduced our current sermon series, Jamin asked, "What does it mean to practice giving, receiving and wielding our own authority...

Who decides who belongs? Who gets forgiven? Who gets held accountable? Often, we hand those responsibilities to pastors, leaders, or institutions and then blame them alone when things go wrong. But Jesus gives the work of forgiveness, discernment, and responsibility to the whole community. In week two of Authority Issues, we explore the difficult and necessary tension between personal responsibili...

On Pentecost, the Spirit was given to all; ordinary people spoke with authority. The presence of God was no longer limited to prophets, priests, or kings. But when anyone can speak for God, who is actually in charge? And if we’re all listening to the same Spirit, why do we so often come to different conclusions? As we begin our new series,  Authority Issues: The Harm and Hope of Spiritual Authorit...

Join us this week for a special conversation between Communications Director, Jordan Arellano, and Dr. Chris Hanson. As an epilogue to the "Miracles Everywhere" series, they will be discussing the Miracle of Time. Time passes whether we make use of it or not. How do we grow and form spiritually as time passes?

Each of us is much more than what someone has defined us as, and so is Memphis. Perspectives that reduce us to rich and poor, black and white, immigrant and native, safe and dangerous, gay or straight, flatten 3-dimensional lives, but like individuals, Memphis rejects oversimplified definitions. When a person can spend time looking and listening for more, a gradient and abundant picture of Memphis...

'Haunted house,' 'holy ground,' 'in love'–the places around us and inside of us can transform in awful and miraculous ways depending on what happens in them and what we believe about them. What does it mean for us to learn to experience miracles in the worlds we inhabit? Join us as we learn more about it in the fifth week of the sermon series, 'Miracles Everywhere.'

When we believe we don’t have enough, we are always right. When we believe we live in a world of abundance, miracles can happen. How do we live with generosity in a world that cries scarcity? Join us in exploring the power of generosity in the series 'Miracles Everywhere.'

When we learn to show up and listen with care and compassion, something begins to shift. In fact, hidden in mundane conversations could be the chance for something miraculous.  This week in  Miracles Everywhere , we’ll explore how conversation can become a place of transformation—in our bodies, our minds, and our hearts.