Grace in Community

Text: Matthew 3:13-17 Series: Open Our Eyes This week we start a new theme for "Epiphanytide" (the season after the day of Epiphany). We are asking God to "open our eyes" - to see the heart of God, to see the kingdom, to see God's wisdom, God's righteousness, and ultimately, God's glory. Here on Baptism of Our Lord Sunday, join us in asking him to reveal himself to us in new ways. The answer you h...

Text: John 1:1-18 Series: Love Has Come The first sermon of 2026! In which Pastor Matt reveals the meaning of life. :)

Text: Matthew 2:13-23 Series: Love Has Come What a rude interruption to our celebration of Christmas! Today’s gospel tells the horrific story of the death of innocent children at the hands of Herod. This reminds us of a truth about Jesus’ birth: it does not remove power of evil from our world. But its light does give us hope as we walk with all the “holy innocents” of both past generations and tod...

Text: Luke 2:1-20 Series: Are You Ready? In this Christmas Eve sermon, Pastor Matt concludes our Advent theme by asking, "Does anything we do ever really make us ready to receive Jesus?" Jesus doesn't demand we have everything figured out first; instead, He invades our present reality with grace, meeting us exactly where we are. The message culminates in an immersive reading of the Christmas story...

Text: Matthew 1:18-25 Series: Are You Ready? What if one moment could change everything? The moment Mary said yes to bearing the Son of God. The moment Joseph obeyed God and took Mary as his wife instead of divorcing her quietly. The moments - many moments - that Jesus chose God's will and continued on the path of suffering to bear the sin of the world. In this episode we reflect on the moments in...

Texts: Matthew 11:2-11, Isaiah 35:1-10, Luke 1:46b-55 Series: Are You Ready? What happens when we set aside our fear and suspicion of those who are different or think differently than us? We become ready to receive Jesus' presence anew. In this sermon Pastor Matt introduces the third theme of Advent that makes us ready to receive him as king: 1) being people of peace 2) humility 3) showing mercy. 

Texts: Isaiah 11:1-10, Matthew 3:1-12 Series: Are You Ready? Sometimes there are circumstances in our lives that feel like a stump - where new growth feels impossible, where our future feels like it has been chopped off. It is here that God speaks a new word: growth is possible. New life is possible. In fact, it's happening even before we can see it. It won't simply be a recovery of what has gone...

Text: Luke 2:1-20 Series: Advent Conversations In this first-of-its-kind episode, Pastor Matt is joined by Tinh Brodhagen and Becky Anderson for a conversation about what it means to truly be "ready" for Christmas. Through their personal stories and fresh insights on the Christmas story, you're guaranteed to get a new perspective as you prepare your heart to receive Christ anew.

Texts: Matthew 24:36-44, Romans 13:11-14, Isaiah 2:1-5 Series: Are You Ready? What time is it? This powerful question echoes through Pastor Matt's sermon as he weaves together memories of his adolescent basketball career with the urgent message of Advent readiness. Drawing from Matthew's Gospel and Paul's letter to the Romans, Pastor Matt reframes the traditional "end times" narrative into a compe...

Text: Luke 23:33-43 Series: Where Your Heart Is For the past two weeks we’ve focused on “where the heart is.” We know where Jesus’ heart is – he has given it to us fully, in his death for us on the cross. Today on the final Sunday of the church year we celebrate that the one who reigns over us does so with unflinchingly self-giving love.   

Text: Luke 20:45-21:4 Series: Where Your Heart Is With so many priorities in our lives, our loyalties often feel divided. Jesus points to a poor widow as a clear example of someone whose heart is in the right place. Like her, we are imperfect "clay jars," but we carry within us the transformative treasure of the Gospel. 

Text: Luke 20:20-26 Series: Where Your Heart Is We all have a variety of roles and responsibilities in our lives, and sometimes they can get overwhelming. But where is your heart? This week we begin a three-part series around that question. What you put your heart into will give shape to everything else. Join us for the rest of this month and accept Jesus' invitation to find peace and rest for you...

Text: Luke 19:1-10 All Saints Sunday This week's message continues the theme of God's unrelenting grace from last week's Reformation Sunday. "The Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost," Jesus tells the crowd after the rich man Zacchaeus' conversion. He pursues us. The question we might ask is, does this pursuit ever stop? Perhaps not even death itself stands in the way. 

Texts: Luke 18:9-14, Romans 3:19-28 Series: Re-Forming This Sunday we come to the culmination of our Fall Re-forming theme. God is always making us new, through the word and through the newcomers we welcome in our midst! This Reformation heritage began with Martin Luther's engagement with scripture - specifically the book of Romans. There he learned that the "righteousness of God" - rather than be...

Texts: Luke 18:1-8, Genesis 32:22-31 Series: Re-forming The last thing God wants us is a passive faith. Or perhaps we should ask, is passive faith really faith at all? Today's texts make clear: God seeks people who will wrestle, prod, plead, and demand their way into fullness of life. No matter where you are on the journey of faith, don't let go until you receive the blessing.

Texts: Luke 17:11-19, 2 Kings 5:1-15 Series: Re-forming The story of Jesus healing ten men with a skin disease can feel like a classic morality tale: "Don't forget to say thank you!" But as is always the case with the gospels, there's more going on here. Listen to hear how this story, echoing the healing of Naaman in 2 Kings, shows how God meets us in the borderlands with the healing waters of bap...

Texts: Luke 17:5-6, Job 38-39 Series: Re-forming A little bit goes a long way in God’s Kingdom. A mustard seed’s-worth of faith has miraculous potential. A small act of love toward any of God’s creatures can have an exponential effect. A splash of water, a bit of bread and wine – in God’s economy, each of these has the power of the change the world, because any change in the world begins with the...

Text: Luke 16:19-31 Series: Re-Forming Jesus' parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus is a blistering critique of the ultra-wealthy that seems designed to place us between the extremes of the two main characters. Here in the middle we do receive a great challenge - but it's one that goes beyond guilt or mere charity. 

Text: Luke 16:1-13 Series: Re-Forming Guest preacher Pastor Brad Stienstra takes one of Jesus' most challenging parables and skillfully weaves a message of God's surprising grace. This one is well worth a close listen. 

Text: Luke 15:1-10 Series: Re-forming Last Sunday Pastor Matt introduced our Fall theme of "Re-Forming." This Sunday we get to hear two members, Bill Brummel and Tinh Brodhagen, share how they have known God's re-forming and renewing work in their lives! Jesus says there is joy in heaven over one sinner who repents. So too there is joy in heaven with each small step of growth, each movement toward...

Texts: Jeremiah 18:1-11, Luke 14:25-33 Series: Re-Forming When it comes to following Jesus, it all starts with…dying? Yes. This is why Jesus urges his hearers to “count the cost.” God is always seeking to reform us, to bring us toward fullness of life. To do that, there are ways in which our old selves – old patterns of thinking, old habits – must be put to death. Over the next couple months we’ll...

Texts: Hebrews 11, Luke 14:1-14 Series: Messy Spirituality In this final sermon of our summer series, Pastor Matt preaches a powerful and vulnerable message about what God has been showing him about the meaning of faith. Faith is not when you see a vision and trust that God will bring you there. Faith is when you don’t see where the road leads, and you go anyway, because you trust that the one sen...

Text: Luke 13:10-17 Series: Messy Spirituality We don’t know why physical healing comes in some circumstances and not in others. We certainly know that we are not the ones in control of it. In today's healing story a woman experiences a kind of healing from Jesus even before he cures her of her physical ailment. And this is most often the kind of healing we can give one another. 

Texts: Luke 12:49-56, Jeremiah 23:23-29, Psalm 82 Series: Messy Spirituality In today’s gospel reading, Jesus says he has come to bring disruption and division! We have been talking all summer about how this world is a mess, and how humans have made it that way. But sometimes God brings the mess, because we in our death-dealing ways need to be disrupted. Where do we need to be disrupted today?

Text: Luke 12:22-35 Series: Messy Spirituality Last week we learned from Ecclesiastes how "everything under the sun" is hevel - mist, vapor. Here one moment and gone the next. This week we learn another Hebrew word - hesed - that reveals the character of God as the one thing that is dependable, guaranteed, unchanging. Hear God's word today and move from hevel to hesed: from being lost in the mist...