Elevation Waterloo Sermons

This Sunday, we invite you to join us as we begin this season of Lent together as a community. As we consider the path that Jesus walked on earth - showing us the way of love, justice and peace - we are invited to examine the ways that our faith, worldview and understanding of Jesus have been shaped and corrupted by colonization and empire. We’ll be spending some time reflecting on how centering t...

Despite 100 other names or titles for God, the writers of the New Testament want us to hear that God is safe and God is good and God is right here, right now — and that makes all the difference.

We’ve always been told that Abraham’s silent obedience on the mountain was the ultimate act of faith. But what if his silence was actually the problem? This Sunday, we’re digging into one of the Bible’s most disturbing stories to ask: Does God want our blind submission, or does God want our holy protest? Join us as we consider the name Jehovah Jireh, not just as the God who provides a sacrifice, b...

This Sunday we continue in our “Names of God” sermon series by looking at a name that Jesus gives to the Holy Spirit: The Advocate. We will look at how Jesus describes the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the lives of those who follow him. We will also look at the role of the Holy Spirit in the ministry of Jesus and the early church. As we look into the scriptures we can find encouragement in knowin...

The story of Hagar is filled is a difficult read, filled with dark undertones of slavery, misuse, oppression and desperation. This Sunday we continue our series on the names of God, by looking at this story of Hagar, as she becomes the only person in the Old Testament to assign a name to God, El Roi, “The God who sees me.” Together we will explore the rich meaning of this naming in the context of...

Join us for our Service and Learning Recap and Reflection gathering. Rather than dividing up around the region like we normally do on Service and Learning weekends, we gathered in the Sanctuary for some singing together, updates from the Peace in Action Team, and some videos that both look back at our serving and learning together in 2025, and to look forward to this coming year!

Join us for our Service and Learning Recap and Reflection gathering. Rather than dividing up around the region like we normally do on Service and Learning weekends, we gathered in the Sanctuary for some singing together, updates from the Peace in Action Team, and some videos that both look back at our serving and learning together in 2025, and to look forward to this coming year!

Does God have a name? Sometimes it is translated in English as Yahweh, sometimes as Jehovah but most translations of the Bible instead render it LORD. Why is this so confusing and what can we learn about God from this name recorded in the story of Exodus.

Advent, Week 4: Joy – Resilient Joy: The Lord is Near. As we are nearing the end of Advent, we look forward to the “good news of great joy for all people” that the angels proclaimed in Luke 2. But joy is sometimes elusive, and it can ebb and flow with the ups and downs of life. This week we will look at Phillipians 4 and at Paul’s instruction to believers to “rejoice in the Lord always”. Is that e...

This week we continue the Advent season by lighting the candle of Peace. In this act we recognize our longing for peace to come fully to this world, often gripped in the horrors of violence and hatred. We will be exploring the calling to peacemaking in Jesus teachings, and how scripture guides us towards peace as an outward expression of the peace in our own hearts. We will ask questions like; how...

As we enter into the season of Advent we light the candle of Hope. What does hope look like in a world that seems to be unravelling around us? Is it just a feeling or is there something more practical to it? Join us as we examine how to have defiant hope in a chaotic world.

This Sunday we are excited to have Heather Morgan join our gathering to teach on the theme of Disability Justice and the Church, and invite us into a conversation to grow in our understanding and practices as a community. Heather shares her time between co-pastoring at Vox Community Church in Barrie and working on her PhD at Emmanuel College at the University of Toronto, where she draws from her l...

We’re coming to the end of our journey through Romans, and we’re not offering easy answers or skipping ahead to a happy ending. In a world of political polarization, climate anxiety, and systemic injustice, we often feel a sigh too deep for words—a feeling the first followers of Jesus in the Roman Empire knew all too well. This week, we courageously sit in the sacred space of Lament. We’ll discove...

The book of Romans is a letter given to a community searching for peace in the midst of a world caught in the grip of violence, hatred and division. This week we will be asking questions about how this first century church in Rome wrestled with their identity in their social and political environment , perhaps in similar ways that we do today. Together we can will explore how Romans emphasizes the...

What if the point isn’t to endure pain, but to dismantle the things that cause it? This week, we’re revisiting Romans 5-8 through the lens of Subversive Love. This is an invitation to resist the world’s broken logic by embracing the counter-cultural way of Christ that leads to mutual liberation and collective care. Discover a hope and purpose beyond the empire’s grip, in the now and not yet kin-do...

This week we continue our exploration through the book of Romans. Continuing out of order, we will explore the first two chapters of Romans. We will ask how the ideas we have talked about so far in this series can inform these earlier chapters. We hope to look at this passage with compassion towards those it has been used to harm over the years, as we search for the message given to this small com...

The reason Romans was written was to address the conflict within the church of two factions, both of whom had complicated relationships with the Roman Empire. Join us this week as we gain a deeper understanding of this conflict and ponder how we handle church conflict and our relationship to power today.

In our introduction to Romans on September 7th, we saw that this letter was delivered in person through Phoebe to a multi- ethnic group of believers that included Jews and Gentiles, women and men, slaves and free. This week we will study Romans 12 and see that this eclectic group of individuals are called to be transformed into a unified yet diverse body that fully reflects the character of Jesus...

The book of Romans has had an incredible impact on the history and theology of the church over the centuries. This week we will begin our series on the book of Romans by looking to the end of the letter. Here we find one of the longest lists of names in the New Testament. What can be learned from this seemingly innocuous list of people whose experiences have been mostly lost to history? How does t...

This week we conclude our series  Parables: Then and Now  with Jesus' stories about two people who go all-in on discovered treasure. We'll explore our objections to such foolhardy behaviour and invite Jesus to guide us toward unrestrained love.

This week we continue our series Parables: Then and Now with a look at the parables of watching and waiting. What does it mean to watch and wait for Jesus? What questions sparked these parables? Together we will delve into how Jesus runs against the grain of the very question he’s asked, redirecting us towards something new.

We are in the third week of our summer series on Parables, and this week we will spend some time with a familiar parable found in Luke 15 describing a lost sheep and a shepherd who notices, cares and takes action for the sake of the sheep. As we consider the values that Jesus is inviting us to ponder within this story, in what ways might this communal listening and conversation inspire us towards...

Drawing from Indigenous teachings, and Jesus’ words in this parable and Matthew 17:20, we’ll explore how the tiny mustard seed mirrors the sacred interdependence of the Three Sisters (corn, beans, and squash) — plants that thrive only when woven together in reciprocity. Just as they depend on one another for strength, nourishment, and growth, so too are we invited to root our faith in shared flour...

Does Jesus endorse Workplace Embezzlement? A quick read of The Parable of the Dishonest Manager sure makes it seem like it does! Join us as we kick off this summer series Parables: Then and Now as we sit with one of the most challenging parables and discuss how we read difficult passages of scripture as a community and what this passage might have to teach us today. Discussion Questions What parts...

For our teaching time this week, we will be studying a part of  Paul's letter to the Colossians. Interestingly, Paul wrote this letter to a group of people he had never met, but he invited them to embrace their identity and live fully as dearly loved followers of Jesus.  We are hoping that this week's teaching time will be a time of encouragement for everyone.