Sermons from Southpoint Church

Our summer offering at Southpoint is a response of compassion to what we've been through. Instead of focusing on something you  should  do, our summer series reminds you that you are worthy of care, and that God has woven into everything an abundance which can resource us when we are depleted. Anne speaks of children as the pied pipers who can lead us back to this abundance, if we are willing...

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” — Matthew 11: 28-30  Jesus reveals for us more clearly than anyone or anything else who God is. “ Come to me. I will give you rest. ” Rest is a gift of God, an exp...

To launch our summer series, "Refresh", Brent Unrau delves into the gift of becoming like child. Starting with Mark 10:13-16, Brent weaves in reflections from being a grandparent and draws upon The Hummingbird, a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye and an excerpt from Erling Kagge's Walking. One Step at a Time. And, in case you miss it, he also manages an allusion to running shoes, from Ray Bra...

Humans tend to cling to their customs — their ways of being and believing and thinking. When we come up against “difference” — people or ideas offering a fresh voice, or a fresh take on things — how do we handle our encounter with that which risks influencing our beliefs and behaviour? Guest speaker Pastor Lee Kosa of Sanctuary Church (Delta, BC) examines belief, belonging and mutual transformatio...

Join us today as Rev David Morrison continues our Easter Season theme "Fresh". (The sound quality is at times a little muddy, so you may like to increase the volume. Apologies!)

Love won’t stay hidden in abstraction. One way or another, love will show up in the particularities of time, space, words, and deeds.  In Jesus, love showed up so concretely and with such great specificity, that it seems to be his form of art. When love showed up in Jesus, something broke open, something fresh emerged. That breaking open and fresh emergence through the power of love  was  the comi...

These weeks after Easter, as we head to Pentecost, Pastor Anne invites you to make room for a rewilding of your faith. To allow space for the possibility that the movement of God is beyond your imagination. To allow room for a fresh hope in the endless creative possibility of God who is perpetually birthing new life.  We are made. We are loved. We are kept.  While Peter’s initial hope for the Mess...

We think being a Christian is about belief, but really, it’s about desire.

This week we watch Jesus, very intentionally, very knowingly, walk right into a confrontation with the power structures that seek to destroy him. He enters into this confrontation without any kind of defence—no armour, no strategy, no argument; just his presence. His presence is Divine Resistance to these massive strongholds. He arrives at the city gates and crosses into the ancient city, which is...

Sometimes life feels like the branches of a tree in winter: barren, empty, cold, hopeless. It can feel like things will be that way, forever. But trees teach us to wait a little longer, to watch and see what unexpected things will happen next. Trees are wise teachers. They remind us that new life appears in seemingly barren places. When viewed from the perspective of a tree, hope is the most sensi...

Today's story, on the surface, is about a blind man healed by Jesus with a bit of mud and spit. But the passage is long, and peppered with questions. It seems as though the questions themselves, as well as theological assumptions and certitudes, blind people to the beauty of the healing. Here we find a second story of blindness within the story of blindness. The transforming question within th...

Starting with the woman at the well encountering Jesus (John 4:5-42), we move into a conversation with Scott Chapman, representing Lifewater Canada, and discussing how Southpoint will partner with them to support Stada Kenya. Led by Kenyan women, Stada (Stawisha Dada) recognizes that access to clean water is a women's rights issue.

What are the thresholds of your life?  What must you do to keep yourself safe? Pastor Anne explores that longing for a new way to be human. Abraham, Nicodemus, Jesus… you.

Lent: Living the Questions (1) What Voices Am I Listening To? — Rev Anne Baxter Smith    One of the rhythms of the Church at Southpoint is to have an All Out service every few months. We meet somewhere away from the church building and encounter our surroundings in a different way (being helping hands, picnicking at the park... ) This episode is planned to accompany you as you exper...

Some Southpointers share how their Vision of God has expanded through lived experience, particularly in times of disillusionment and personal challenge.

Guest speaker Angela Henzes asks us: Can you identify with longing to feel safe? With wanting to be seen, known, and loved with perfect love? With longing to be cared for in the exact ways that you need? In this meditation, she suggests that visualizing and experiencing God as Mother may invite you to tender places inside of yourself that need healing. It can expand, ever wider, your view of God,...

We’re still widening our vision of who God is. Parts 3 & 4 took place in experience-based intergenerational community times. You can read the blog posts on our website to catch up. Back with a meditation this week, Pastor Anne examines how God shows up for those who are oppressed, cast out, hungry, thirsty, poor, on the margins … over and over again. Why? What does that mean to you?

Where are the places  in which you've had that hint of something beyond yourself—places that made you wake up and whisper, “Maybe God really is here, and I just didn’t know it?” Makom  in Hebrew = place = God as Makom =  God in a particular place, and also: God  homing and holding all places so that everywhere we are, we are within God. In our moments of greatest moral failure,...

This season, from Epiphany all the way until Lent, our theme is "Under the Sweet Stars, Expanding our Vision of God".  And that expansion begins with longing—that same longing that compelled the magi to set out under the stars and set out into the desert...   NB: "Under the sweet stars" is from Thomas Merton's work Hagia Sophia published in Emblems of a Season of Fury  (1963).

New Year's day, 2023. Join us as Pastor Anne unpacks Psalm 34, with special emphasis on verse 8.

It’s right there, in the very beginning of the gospel: Kinship. The kingdom is kinship...

Perhaps we can subtitle this one Joseph's "Yes".   "The offering of your life is a beautiful gift to your family tree. You are enough. "I celebrate the ways you that choose to show up with resolve, with courage, compassion, with love and kindness in the midst of circumstances that are not maybe what you had chosen. I celebrate the way provide refuge. In these moments in your life the holy is...

We have a high and holy invitation to make safe spaces where people can know God's radical, unconditional love. That can become incarnate in our midst and we can be that safe space for each other. We have that same calling to be safe space for our youth, this next generation who are going to be carrying a really heavy load as they inherit a world that has a lot of challenges...  We could thin...

Once a month we have an intergenerational worship service in which all the folk at Southpoint stay together for the meditation and activities. We call it being "All In" together. The meditation is often shorter, and is crafted so younger ears understand the context of the talk. This week Advent 2022 begins and Pastor Anne introduces the theme of Advent's four Sundays this year: From Generation to...

What if we held up mirrors of mercy and not of judgement for each other?