The Grove Church

Israel had just watched God thunder against the Philistines and rescue them without a single soldier lifting a sword. And then, a few years later, they came to Samuel with a request: give us a king. Like the other nations have. The thing they were asking for — someone to represent them, fight for them, go before them — was exactly what they already had. They just couldn’t see it. In week four of t...

Last week covered the church’s first 500 years. This week, Charlie and Abigail finish the map. They trace the story from the book of Acts through Constantine and the medieval church, the split between East and West in 1054, the corruption that sparked calls for reform, and the printing press that put the Bible in ordinary people’s hands. From there they move to the Reformation, the Great Awakening...

Most of us assume that if God has called us to something, the path will be clear. The doors will open. Things will fall into place. And when they don’t — when the waiting stretches into years, when obstacles pile up, when the trial hits right when things were finally starting to move — we wonder if we heard wrong. Samuel waited 20 years. Twenty years between the audible voice of God calling him as...

After two weeks on why church history matters, Charlie and Abigail start laying out the map. This week they cover the first three of eight eras they’ll walk through in the series: the church of the apostles, the early church under persecution, and the moment Christianity went from illegal to mainstream under Constantine. Along the way they talk about what “the church” actually means, why one verse...

It’s easy to look at the way things are and assume that’s the way they’ll stay. The powerful stay powerful. The ones who’ve been knocked down stay down. The situation that looks impossible probably is. Hannah didn’t believe that. And in week two of the Samuel series, Mark walks through her prayer in 1 Samuel 2 — one of the most overlooked passages in the Old Testament — and unpacks what it actuall...

Most of what we believe about God didn't start with us. We inherited it from centuries of Christians who studied, debated, and prayed their way through the hardest questions of the faith. This week, Charlie and Abigail finish making the case for church history by talking about humility and how Christian doctrine developed over time. They get into why the Trinity is harder to arrive at on your own...

This week in our Samuel series, we discussed how God’s purposes often begin long before we understand them, using the opening chapters of 1 Samuel as our guide. Charlie shared his own journey of feeling called to ministry and related it to Samuel’s “origin story”—a calling that took shape even before Samuel was born, woven through his mother Hannah’s years of persistent prayer. We unpacked what it...

This week on Cultivate, Charlie and Abigail begin a new series on church history. Before getting into the people and events, they start with a simpler question: why should a Bible-centered church spend months studying what happened after the Bible was written? Abigail explains that every era's view of God is shaped by its circumstances, including war, money, and who held power. She draws on her hi...

You can sit in a room full of people and still feel completely alone. You can come to church every week, check the box, and never actually let anyone in. And if you're honest, part of you prefers it that way — because community is hard, people are weird, and you've probably been burned before. In the final week of Walking the Ancient Paths, Charlie looks at the very first thing the early church di...

This week on Cultivate, Charlie and Abigail close out the parables series the way it deserves — with a Q&A episode where Abigail asks the big picture questions she's been sitting with across ten months of episodes. They cover how Jesus's original audience heard "the kingdom of God" (hint: they were expecting military victory and Roman blood), why Jesus taught in parables instead of just saying...

Most of us have been taught to treat serving people and telling people about Jesus as two separate things — maybe even competing ones. Do you help someone in need, or do you share the gospel with them? Charlie's answer: yes. In week five of Walking the Ancient Paths, Charlie walks through Matthew 5:14-16 and makes the case that being the light of the world isn't something you work up to. It's who...

This week on Cultivate, Charlie and Abigail work through the final parable of the series — the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25. It's the last judgment. The Son of Man sits on his throne. Everyone is gathered. Sheep on the right, goats on the left. The sheep get in because they fed Jesus when he was hungry, gave him water when he was thirsty, clothed him, visited him in prison. The...

The culture around us is lying. It's telling us that more is always better — more stuff, more success, more achievement — and that life is found somewhere on the other side of having enough. Most of us know it's a lie. We're buying it anyway. In week four of Walking the Ancient Paths, Mark takes on two of the most countercultural practices in the ancient Christian tradition: simplicity and fasting...

This week on Cultivate, Charlie and Abigail work through the Parable of the Wedding Banquet in Matthew 22. A king throws a wedding banquet for his son. The invited guests don't come. He sends more servants — some are ignored, some are killed. The king destroys the city. He opens the invitation to literally anyone off the street, good and bad. The hall fills up. Then he spots one man without weddin...

Christians have been doing these two things since the very beginning. They've started wars, split denominations, and derailed would-be alliances between reformers who agreed on everything else. And at The Grove, if we're honest, we've probably undersold them in an attempt to stay out of the controversy. In week three of Walking the Ancient Paths, Charlie takes an honest look at baptism and communi...

Most of us have a complicated relationship with both of these. Celebration can slide into pride — quietly convincing yourself that maybe you earned some of what God gave you. And confession can collapse into shame — that inner voice that doesn't just say you did something wrong, but that you are something wrong. Neither of those is what God is after. In week two of Walking the Ancient Paths, Charl...

This week on Cultivate, Charlie and Abigail work through the Parable of the Ten Virgins in Matthew 25 — and Abigail's initial read of the story was completely wrong in the most entertaining way possible. Ten bridesmaids are waiting for the bridegroom to arrive so the wedding party can begin. Five bring extra oil for their lamps. Five don't. The bridegroom is delayed — they all fall asleep waiting....

There are paths that have always led to life. Tried, proven, ancient paths — the kind that don't go out of style any more than a well-made shoe does. We know they're there. We just don't walk them. In the first week of Walking the Ancient Paths, Mark opens in Jeremiah 6:16 and lands on one of the most underused spiritual practices in the modern church: Scripture memory and meditation. Not just rea...

This week on Cultivate, Charlie and Abigail work through the Parable of the Tenants in Matthew 21 — and Jesus is not being subtle anymore. Coming right off the Parable of the Two Sons, Jesus is still in the temple courts, still talking to the chief priests, and he's about to unload. A landowner builds a vineyard, sets it up completely, rents it to tenants, and leaves. When harvest time comes and h...

Most of us feel like we need to have all the answers before we can tell anyone about Jesus. The right words, the right theology, the right moment. So we wait — and the invitation never comes. In the final week of The Grove's mission series, Charlie walks through a small but significant story in John 1 — Philip, Nathanael, and a two-word response that's still the best evangelism strategy around: co...

This week on Cultivate, Charlie and Abigail work through one of the shortest and sharpest parables Jesus ever told — the Parable of the Two Sons in Matthew 21. It's four verses. Jesus gets an immediate explanation in. And it lands like a slap. A father asks two sons to go work in the vineyard. The first says no — and then goes anyway. The second says yes — and never shows up. Jesus asks the chief...

Most of us have friends. Acquaintances. People we like. But there's a different category — the kind of people who show up when everything falls apart, who know you well enough to know what you actually need, and who will tell you hard things because they care too much not to. Do you have those people? In week two of The Grove's mission series, Charlie walks through three stories about a man named...

This week on Cultivate, Charlie and Abigail work through one of the shortest and strangest parables Jesus ever told — the Parable of the Fig Tree in Luke 13. It's only four verses. It doesn't resolve. And Jesus drops it almost as an aside, mid-crowd, without anyone asking for it. A vineyard owner has a fig tree that hasn't produced fruit in three years. He tells the gardener to cut it down — it's...

Life doesn't come at you in one big wave. It comes in a relentless series of them — and if you don't have something solid underneath you, you end up somewhere you never meant to be. In this week's sermon, Charlie kicks off a new three-week series on The Grove's mission statement and lands on one specific, practical challenge: what does it actually look like to know Jesus — not just know about him,...

This week on Cultivate, Charlie and Abigail dig into one of the most well-known parables Jesus ever told — and one of the most misunderstood. The Parable of the Talents (or Bags of Gold, depending on your translation) is sitting at the tail end of their parables series, and Charlie says it's easily top three, maybe number one. A wealthy man goes on a journey and leaves enormous sums of money — one...