99 CHURCH

Many of us in the Western world have an adverse reaction to the word authority. And it's easy to see why. Time and time again, we've seen the abuse of power in our world. But how does our relationship with authority world affect our relationship with the authority of God? And the authority of the Bible? This week, we explore authority through a different lens, one that invites us into the beautifu...

What does it mean for Scripture to have authority – and what if that authority looked more like a doctor than a dictator? So many of us carry broken pictures of authority from bosses, parents, or religious leaders who wielded it imperfectly, and we bring that baggage to the Bible. This week, we name the unhelpful ways our culture frames authority and discover an altogether better path: holding the...

What is the Bible? This week, we tackle this simple question that has life-changing implications. Together, we explore Scripture as a library of writings—both divine and human—that tell one unified story leading us to Jesus. Along the way, we consider how understanding genre, context, and authorship can transform the way we read the Bible, moving us beyond information and into formation.

The Bible is one of the most influential books in human history, yet many of us find it confusing, frustrating, or difficult to understand. This week, guest speaker Jess Gracewski explores a simple but transformative idea: Scripture was written for us, but it was not written to us. As we learn to read the Bible with humility, context, and curiosity, we discover a God who invites us to draw near, w...

Most followers of Jesus would agree, at least in theory, that Scripture is an essential part of our faith. And yet, so many people struggle with the Bible. We begin a new collection of teachings exploring the beauty and the mystery of Scripture. This week, we talk about what posture we should approach the Bible with.

Most of us want to be loved, but few of us want to risk being fully known. So we put on masks, even at church. In this sermon, Yesuto closes our True and False Self series by inviting us to take the courageous step of honest community. We explore why we need each other, how to share our struggles wisely, and how the church can become a place where vulnerable stories are safely held.

The Biblical concept of love is always active. God calls us to a life of compassion, a love that moves outward in action. But we live in a culture that's replaced compassion with sentiment, a love that's never acted upon. How do we move beyond sentiment into compassionate love? This week, we see how embodying compassion is the best way to break out of the false self and enter into the true self.

What parts of your life are motivated by fear, rather than love? The false self is the identity we all carry that's born out of fear. But how do we return to our true identity, given by God in love? This week, we go back to the beginning in the Garden of Eden to discover God's divine plan for setting us free from the false self.

Who we believe God to be has a profound impact on our lives. Many of us go through life thinking we're worshipping the true God, when in reality, we're actually worshipping a false version of him. The false self is rooted in a distorted view of God. This week, we expose some of these false versions of God that we carry, and reveal who God truly is.

We know we want to live from our true selves – but what's really driving the false self underneath it all? This week, we dig into the deep-seated beliefs that fuel our need to perform, control, and self-protect. Through a powerful framework of God's greatness and goodness, a personal story of anxiety, and the raw honesty of a father's cry in Mark 9 – "I believe; help my unbelief" – we discover tha...

We continue our teaching from last week, as we explore the life of Peter through the framework of the six Stages of Faith. What we find is a fascinating case study of the journey of shedding the false self and uncovering the true self.

Within each of us, is what the ancients throughout history called the false self. It's the self rooted in who we think we should be, rather than who we actually are. The journey of faith calls us to shed off the false self and embrace the true self, the fullness of who God created each of us to be. But how do we get there? What does this look like? This week, we explore a helpful framework called...

One of the hardest things to do as a storyteller is to tell a story when everyone already knows the ending. Who cares about a story we already know the ending to? But there are those rare exceptions, when the ending is so good, that it actually enhances and redefines the rest of the story. Today, we explore the ending of the Easter story that has the power to shape each and every one of our storie...

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Jesus calls us to be peacemakers, an invitation that is both attractive and troubling. How can human beings be peacemakers when our long history of violence, systemic injustice, institutional failure, and moral cowardice testify to our continued inability to guarantee anything but destruction? Looking at Palm Sunday, we will see...

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. There is a lot to grieve in our world today. But we are notoriously bad at mourning. We are a society addicted to comfort and repelled by grief. But all throughout Scripture, we see a God who isn't afraid of our sadness, who isn't overwhelmed by our pain. This week, we explore what it means to be those who are comforted in our mourning.

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. As people part of modern day western civilization, this might the hardest beatitude for us to understand. What could we possibly know about persecution? Yet we find that this blessing isn’t just for those who are literally following Jesus at the cost of their lives. This blessing applies to the rest...

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Most of us assume righteousness means being a good person and following the rules. But that definition often leaves us feeling exhausted, guilty, or empty. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus offers a radically different vision. This week, we explore what righteousness actually looks like in the kingdom of God—and ho...

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. The beauty of this Beatitude is that the blessing is not in receiving this kind of mercy, but in giving it away. There's a kind of blessing reserved only for those who have learned the divine art of giving others mercy. This week, we explore the symptoms of an unforgiving heart and how mercy shows us a better way.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Out of all the Beatitudes, this might be the hardest for us to grasp. Is there any other verse in the Bible that goes against the ethos of our age more than this one? Our world just doesn't work this way. But Jesus invites us into something more. This week, we talk about meekness and how our world desperately needs followers of Jesus who belie...

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Many of us have mistaken pure in heart to mean perfection, or sinlessness. But to be pure in heart means something quite different. How do we see God? This week, we continue our study of the Beatitudes as we learn about what it means to be pure in heart.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Jesus opens the Sermon on the Mount with a startling claim: the good life belongs to the poor in spirit – the powerless. Far from glorifying misery or offering a future consolation prize, Jesus is naming a present reality – one that dismantles our illusions of control and redefines where true peace, freedom, and flourishing are f...

We live in a time where people within the church have vastly different ideas about what it means to be a Christian. How do we know we are faithfully following Jesus in our context and in our time? We find the answer to that very question in one of the greatest sermons Jesus ever preaching: the Sermon on the Mount. This week, we begin a new collection of teachings centered on the upside down nature...

Spiritual formation doesn't happen by accident. We are shaped by what we intentionally do, again and again over time. This week, we explore how we are formed through the stories we believe, the habits we live into, and the relationships we surround ourselves with.

What does it look like to embody love? Many of us want to love our neighbors… but we’re busy, overwhelmed, or unsure if our effort even matters. This week, Yesuto wrestles with those obstacles and reminds us that faith without action is dead. Following Jesus means centering the vulnerable, choosing humility, and stepping into real service.

What if the disconnect many of us feel in our faith isn’t from a lack of belief—but from a lack of embodiment? We find throughout Scripture that faith was never meant to be lived only in your head. It was meant to be lived in your body. This week, we establish a theology of the body and how God calls us to lived embodied lives of faith.