Forest Hills Mennonite Church

God becomes incarnate in the midst of a world rife with all types of conflict, from interpersonal to religious to political. To follow Jesus means that we are invited to enter into conflicts the way that Jesus did. 

Near the end of his earthly ministry, Jesus calls his closest followers together to call them by a surprising title: friend. To follow Jesus, then, means to be a friend of Jesus—and to deepen our friendships with those around us. 

Who follows Jesus into the wilderness? As much as prioritize walking in Jesus' footsteps and following His example, the journey in the wilderness and the struggle before His execution remind us that Jesus accomplishes things on our behalf that we cannot accomplish for ourselves. 

If Jesus is who He claimed to be, how do we respond to Him? The invitation Jesus offers again and again is simple, yet profound: "Follow Me."

If the author of Ephesians is correct, and there is only one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one Body, then everyone who gives allegiance to Christ shares in a fundamental unity—one that disrupts every barrier we humans create.

If the church is a body, how is it responding to the environment we find ourselves in? If we're individually members of this one body, how do we structure our relationships together?

What if an awareness of God's goodness and God's presence could empower us to experience the world with curiosity—rather than anxiety? 

Can the hard sayings of Jesus help us respond to our present challenges with greater faithfulness? 

What do we do when we disagree with each other? Can we find some external authority to resolve our disagreements? As we conclude our exploration of the origins of the Anabaptist movement 500 years ago, Pastor Jon considers how the various Reformers interpreted Scripture—and the central role Jesus' teachings came to play within Anabaptism. 

After Christianity becomes not only legally acceptable but required within the Roman Empire, the Church and the State settle into an often uneasy coexistence. At the core of their relationship is the question of violence. Who gets to rightfully wield the sword? In the turbulence of the early 1500s, the Anabaptists propose a radical solution: no Christian should ever engage in violence. It's a shoc...

On January 21, 1525, a group of protestors baptized each other—the first known rebaptism to take place during the Protestant Reformation. Within two years, most of the participants would dead at the hands of the state. What was it about their obedience to Jesus' instructions about baptism that led to such violent reprisal?

On January 21, 1525, two people in Zürich baptized each other during a Bible study. This unexpected action catalyzed the Anabaptist (re-baptizing) movement within the Reformation. As we approach the 500th anniversary the start of a movement that reshaped the world, we're spending the month of January exploring how God was at work through the Radical Reformation, what it looks like to faithfully fo...

The birth of Christ is God's hope breaking into the world anew. As we reflect on this new and glorious morn, what's our expectation for the future? 

The Christian story complicates some understandings of hope, particularly when we think about human agency. Christmas is an opportunity to recognize that God's power—not just our own—is the focus of true hope. 

If hope is about a better future, then true hope begins with an honest acknowledgment of all that is wrong in the present.

What's your prediction for the future? It's a notoriously tricky business making predictions like that. But the story of Christ's arrival seems to radically reshape humanity's relationship with the future. Through Christ, God assures that the future can be better than present. In other words, Christ gives humanity hope. 

What do we do while we wait? The Apostle Paul describes Christians as people with a "citizenship in heaven" and a people who are eagerly waiting for a savior from there. What does faithful waiting look like? 

Paul's list of the fruit of the Spirit offers a beautiful, inspiring picture of flourishing Christian community, yet it ends on a sobering note: to fully experience love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and gentleness, each us needs to practice self-control. 

Gentleness (also translated as "meekness") is sometimes misunderstood as weakness. Christian preachers often go to great pains to remind people that meekness isn't weakness. While that may be true, it's also beside the point: gentleness, as a fruit of the Spirit, is about demonstrating softness, tenderness, care, and compassion in all our interactions with others. 

How do followers of Jesus respond when we feel our most important values are under attack? And what does the fruit of the Spirit have to do with it?

What if some of the goodness we lack exists in those with whom we have the deepest disagreements? 

Is kindness a form of weakness, the last refuge of people who can't get what they want any other way? Or does kindness contain a surprising and subversive power, a fortitude that allows us to move toward each other even in the most impossible of situations? 

Is patience a harmful response to injustice?

One way to think about peace is that it's the experience of nothing being missing and nothing being broken. When relationships seem deeply broken, how might God move us toward peace? Is it possible to escape seemingly endless cycles of retribution, revenge, and violence? 

Christians know an awful lot about what joy is not—how it's not the same as happiness or it's not circumstantial or it can't be temporary—but what can we say joy actually is? Drawing on emerging insights from neurobiology, perhaps we can say that joy is a communal experience, something that emerges when we're glad to be together. If that's true, then the fact that God is always near to us and alwa...