McGregor Podcast

Habits of Grace: Looking Biblically at the Spiritual Disciplines "Enjoying the Privilege of Prayer" Most believers agree prayer matters, so why is consistent prayer so hard? Pastor Peter Finch suggests the deeper problem is that we treat prayer as a duty rather than a privilege. Starting from Hebrews 4:16, he shows that prayer is relational and transformational, a response to the conversation God...

Can someone receive Jesus as Savior without following Him as Lord? Picking up a thread from Sunday's sermon, Pastor Russell Howard walks through the Lordship salvation controversy, from Lewis Sperry Chafer's Systematic Theology in 1948 to the books by John MacArthur, Zane Hodges, and Charles Ryrie that defined the debate in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He then works through five questions at it...

Matthew - The King has Come "How A Very Good Man Stayed Lost" (Matthew 19:16-22) In Matthew 19:16-22, a young man comes to Jesus asking what good deed he must do to have eternal life. He is wealthy, moral, and eager, and he walks away sorrowful. Pastor Russell Howard walks through the encounter in three movements: his approach, which was better than many; his attitude, proud of a record that could...

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Habits of Grace: Looking Biblically at the Spiritual Disciplines "Bringing The Word Into The Heart" (Joshua 1:8; Psalm 1:2-3; Psalm 119:11) It is possible to understand a passage accurately, close your Bible, and move on without its truth ever taking root. In this Journey Together teaching, Pastor Russell Howard picks up from last week's call to careful Bible study and shows how three habits carry...

What do you do with the guilt of raising a child who does not follow Jesus? Pastor Russell Howard goes beyond his notes from Sunday's message on bringing our children to Jesus, turning to Ezekiel 18. He walks through the chapter's three generations, a righteous father, a violent son, and a grandson who turns back to God, to show that every soul belongs to the Lord and each person stands accountabl...

Matthew - The King has Come "Let The Little Children Come" (Matthew 19:13-15) In Matthew 19:13-15, parents bring their little children to Jesus so He might lay His hands on them and pray, and the disciples rebuke them for it. Pastor Russell Howard walks through the scene in three movements: the parents, whose most important work is bringing their children to Jesus through what they normalize, prio...

What happens when a church family gives, serves, and gets ready for change all in the same season? Pastor Mark Bricker, Tamar, and Christian look back on the Change the World offering and the Ministry Fair, then share a Renew Phase 2 update. They explain the move to two Sunday services once we return to the Worship Center and how Life Groups are being balanced between them. They also cover the new...

What did Jesus mean when he said some choose to stay single for the sake of the kingdom of heaven? On this episode of Beyond the Notes, Elder Omar Edwards goes back to the last three verses of Matthew 19, the passage he taught from on Sunday. He explains the three kinds of eunuchs Jesus names, and what each one tells us about marriage, singleness, and the freedom God gives to serve him in either o...

Matthew - The King has Come "What God Has Joined Together" (Matthew 19:1-12) What is marriage, really? In this message from Matthew 19, Elder Omar Edwards shows that marriage was never a human invention or a contract built for personal convenience. From the beginning, God designed marriage as a binding, lifelong covenant between a man and a woman, one He joins together and calls us not to separate...

What does it look like when a church family gives, serves, prays, and sends on the same Sunday? Pastor Mark Bricker, Tamar, and Christian walk through Sunday, October 4, at McGregor: the Ministry Fair along Main Street, the Change the World offering, and the close of Elevate Weekend for students. They share where to drop off Fall Festival candy, how to sign up for the Prospective Member Class on O...

Does God still heal? And if he does, why doesn't he always heal when we ask? On this episode of Beyond the Notes, Pastor Ryan Flint goes back through Psalm 103 and the promise that God "heals all your diseases." He explains the ordinary and extraordinary ways God heals, what James 5:14 means for a sick believer asking for prayer, and why faithful Christians still get sick, suffer chronic pain, and...

Psalms - Songs of the King "Read It. Write It. Worship." (Psalm 103) David comes to Psalm 103 near the end of a life spent walking with the Lord. Instead of describing what he believes about God, he preaches it to his own soul. He names five specific ways God has already been good to him: forgiveness, healing, redemption, love, and satisfaction. Then he remembers who God is: merciful, gracious, sl...

What does a church family look like when it gives, serves, and prays in the same two weeks? Pastor Mark Bricker, Tamar, and Christian walk through a full fall calendar at McGregor: a Night of Prayer and Praise on Wednesday, September 30, with original songs from the worship team; the Ministry Fair and the 10th annual Change the World offering on Sunday, October 4; Elevate Weekend for students; the...

I AM Seven Signs of the Savior "I Am The True Vine" (John 15:1-8) The night before the cross, Jesus told His disciples something they needed to hear, and something we need to hear again ourselves: "I am the true vine." Mike Hess walks through what it means to abide in Christ, to stay so connected to Him that His life, not our own effort, produces fruit that lasts. If your walk with the Lord feels...

Why are so many young Christians drawn to socialism, and does the Bible actually support it? In this Beyond the Notes, Pastor Russell Howard responds to research showing that a growing share of young evangelicals believe Scripture aligns with socialism. He offers a plain working definition, then walks through five truths: that capitalism creates wealth rather than merely dividing it, that the Bibl...

Psalms - Songs of the King "I Have Made The Lord My Refuge" (Psalm 73) Psalm 73 begins with a confession most of us feel but rarely say out loud: it is easy to look at people who want nothing to do with God and envy how well their lives seem to go. The psalmist almost stumbles over it, until he comes into the presence of God and sees where that road finally ends. From there everything shifts. He t...

How do you lead a church family through change without losing what holds it together? This week on Around McGregor, Mark, Tamar, and Christian recap a full Sunday of baptisms across all three services, parent-child dedications, and a member meeting where a new two-service Sunday schedule was introduced for the move back into the renovated Worship Center. They talk through why the change was carefu...

"I Am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life" (John 14:6) On the night before the cross, in the upper room, Jesus sat with disciples who were troubled, afraid, and struggling to accept that he was about to leave them. His answer was not to explain everything, but to point them to himself: "Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me." Teaching from John 14, Omar Edwards shows...

What happens when a godly man or woman sins in a devastating way? That is the honest question at the heart of Psalm 51, David's prayer of confession after the prophet Nathan exposed his sin with Bathsheba and the cover-up that followed. In this episode of Beyond the Notes, Pastor David Miller digs into the first two verses, where David makes three specific appeals to God, blot out my transgression...

Psalms - Songs of the King "In The Wake Of Sin" (Psalm 51) 2 Samuel 11 and 12 record King David's epic failure: lust, coveting, adultery, premeditated murder, and a deceptive cover-up. It wasn't until the prophet Nathan confronted him that conviction and repentance came. Out of that wreckage David wrote Psalm 51, a song for Israel's hymnbook about the mercy of God. In this message, Pastor David Mi...

How much of what God is doing in your church family do you actually catch on a given Sunday? On this week's Around McGregor, hosts Pastor Mark Bricker, Tamar, and Christian Miller walk through a full week at the church: baptisms in all three services, parent-child dedication, the newcomer coffee out on Main Street, and the next member meeting after the last service. They also look ahead to the pra...

I AM Seven Signs of the Savior "I Am the Resurrection and the Life" (John 11:1-44) In the last of the seven signs John records before the cross, Jesus arrives four days too late. Lazarus is dead, his sisters are grieving, and everyone is certain the window for help has closed. Standing at the grave, Jesus makes a claim that reaches far past this one funeral: "I am the resurrection and the life. Wh...

How can we be content when we feel like we do not have what we need? In this Beyond the Notes teaching, Pastor Peter Finch picks up where Sunday's study of Psalm 23 left off and turns to Paul's words in Philippians 4. He walks through three things contentment actually is: something we learn rather than achieve, something that does not erase the pain of hard seasons, and something that grows from t...

Psalms - Songs of the King "The God Who Shepherds" (Psalm 23) Almost everyone knows Psalm 23, but knowing the words is not the same as knowing what they mean. In this interlude in the Psalms, Pastor Peter Finch walks through the God who shepherds His people in three ways: as our Pastor who leads and feeds us, as our Protector who walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death, and as our...