TPCFM

This week, the fruit of kindness is ripening in our fruit of the Spirit series. We will read the story of King David and Mephibosheth (can you imagine the trouble he had in grade school putting his name on papers?) and consider how kindness is not just a character trait that we are training for, but something that comes out of us as we reflect the presence of God into the world. We will also be ce...

The fruit of the Spirit continues to bloom at Trinity and this week, it is the fruit of peace. The song The Kingdom of Jesus by The Porter’s Gate asks the question, “To what shall we compare the spirit of this age, if not a sword?” We live in such a violent and fearful time. The temptation in every age is to protect ourselves from violence with violence or to anticipate violence with violence. Thi...

This week in worship, we carry on our post-Pentecost series “Seeing the Spirit,” picking up with the second fruit of the Spirit: joy. Joy, like love before it, is more than a feeling. As we will see in Nehemiah and the words of Jesus, joy is a gift that comes from walking in the faithfulness of Jesus. Joy is durable. Even in the face of so much hardship in the world, joy remains. So join us this S...

On the day of Pentecost, God gave the gift of the Holy Spirit to the church. The disciples lived in the power of God’s Spirit by healing and preaching and bringing the good news of gospel to all they encountered. Today, we are also gifted the grace of God’s Spirit and can walk in all of God’s gifts mentioned in Galatians 5. These “fruits” are how we See the Spirit in our midst. Over the course of...

If you’ve ever experienced something that you just couldn’t quite find the right words to express, you already know everything you need to know about Pentecost. How do you put into language the experience of feeling inspired, or being pushed into some new thing by a force beyond yourself, or the spark of a new idea or an "AH HA!" moment? Maybe we call it a fresh breeze or a burning inside of us? W...

In 1965, John Coltrane handed eleven musicians some basic material, walked into the studio, and let them play. The result was chaos and brilliance. The album was called “Ascension.” The disciples at Jesus’ Ascension knew something of that feeling - Jesus had given them everything they needed, then disappeared into a cloud. They stood there staring, catching flies in mouths agape. We know the feeli...

What does the resurrection of Jesus matter? That’s the question we’ve been asking over the weeks since Easter morning. We’ve seen how what we learn from the Lord Jesus in his resurrection changes how we approach relationships and reconciliation, how we expand the table to invite all people in, how our sufferings are transformed, and last week, Pastor Kim invited us to consider how the resurrection...

This week, we will be “touching resurrection” by exploring how we make our faith public. How is our faith in the resurrected Christ seen in our everyday lives? It is through the hope we have and our openness to be transformed in our living out of this faith. Our faith is not something we just experience emotionally between us and God, but our faith is something we must proclaim.

Easter celebrates that while Christ suffered for what was good, refusing to return evil for evil, he was raised and vindicated by God. We, too, suffer in this life. If we are honest, we sometimes suffer for doing what is right and at other times we suffer because we have neglected to do what is right! In this season after Easter, we trust that we can know the power of Christ’s resurrection even in...

There's a moment in one of the resurrection stories where two of Jesus' followers spend an entire day talking with a stranger on the road — processing, arguing, trying to make sense of everything. Hours of conversation. And they still don't see what's right in front of them until they sit down and break bread together. Something about that rings true. The people we debate, scroll past, or keep at...

Christ is Alive! As we begin a new sermon series exploring the resurrection, this Sunday we will think about resurrection in our own relationships. In our readings from the Gospel of John, we are reminded that Jesus came to save our relationship with God, not to condemn us from it. What does it look like for us to touch and hold the resurrection of Jesus, just as Thomas did, and live into forgiven...

Happy Easter! He is Risen! Join us on Easter morning as we consider how the resurrection of Jesus makes him Lord of all, but how that alone doesn’t transform a life. It’s friendship with God that makes all the difference. We will consider two experiences at the empty tomb, putting John and Peter side by side with Mary, and delight in the ways that Mary becomes not only the world’s first preacher o...

Picture this: it’s the week of Passover. The city of Jerusalem is packed with visitors, and two parades are happening at the same time. From the west, Pontius Pilate rides in on a warhorse — armor, banners, the full theater of the empire’s power. It’s meant to strike fear into anyone who might get too inspired by this story of liberation from Egypt and try to make a move on Rome. From the east, Je...

Friends, we are at the end of our neighboring series and will sum it up with a sermon called “The End of Neighboring,” which isn’t just about the end of the series, but the goal of this project. We’ve explored how central this work is to God’s heart and our mission as God’s people, the hurdles to doing it well or at all, our motives for doing this work, and now we will consider the good and holy g...

This week we trek onward to explore the motives for neighboring. As Presbyterians, evangelism might be a bit taboo for our tradition; however, what if we saw sharing the good news as just an outpouring of what God is already doing in our lives? Come on Sunday as we look at Luke 6:27-36 and Matthew 5:14-16 to hear about how the power of storytelling can build stronger bonds in the art of neighborin...

We are continuing our “Art of Neighboring” series this week through Lent. As with any art, this practice takes practice. That is, you don’t get to be the Michelangelo of neighboring without practicing your brushstrokes first. You probably won’t be the next Coco Gauff of neighboring without getting out there and working on that backhand. So, this week, we are going to talk about the discipline, the...

Last week, we began a Lenten series called “The Art of Neighboring.” We started by establishing that Jesus thinks that loving our neighbors is important, like really, really important. So important it takes precedent over all the other commandments and is on equal footing with loving God. Loving God and neighbor is how we experience life in its fullest form. If God did God’s job on Sunday, then yo...

This Lent, I wonder what you plan to give up as a way to discipline your soul. Maybe chocolate? Screentime? Social media? Booze!? Well, I’m going to suggest another route. Our Lenten practice this year will be “neighboring.” Six years ago we tried this project and then the world came to a screeching halt, and if it happens like that again, I promise never to talk to you about being a good neighbor...

This Youth Sunday, we will be talking about how God created us to travel in pairs. Throughout the Bible, we see God intentionally calling people to do his work with a partner by their side and we do not think that is a mistake! Come join us as we see the story of Noah and the story of Jesus calling his disciples interpreted through the eyes of our youth. Hear the word delivered by our seniors, Lil...

This Sunday, we are ending our sermon series, “Come and See.” We have prayed throughout the season after epiphany thinking through how God reveals himself to us, and now we wonder where exactly our words go. How are we to respond? We will look to the prophet Isaiah and the Gospel of John and think about how we can cultivate spaces of meeting God in community where our words become flesh. Come join...

As we continue our series on prayer this Epiphany, one of the ah ha’s we are invited to have by the Lord is that prayer isn’t just about us. A life with God is very much about a life with others. This should come as no surprise to us, as Jesus once responded to a question about the greatest commandment with two: love God with all that is within you and love your neighbor as yourself. Our scripture...

This week, we will continue to lean into the season of Epiphany through prayer. Last week, Pastor Jake invited us to see prayer as a constant engagement with the Lord, which allows God to shape us day to day. This week in worship, we will tackle the question that always arises when we talk about prayer: what is it supposed to do? When we pray, are we hoping for a change in our circumstances or a c...

This Sunday, we enter into a season that the church has dubbed “Epiphany.” It’s a time of exploration of who God is and how God is as we see the un-seeable and know the unknowable in the person of Jesus Christ. As it is, knowledge about God cannot be divorced from knowing God. Jesus resists being studied as under a microscope as a specimen of spirituality, but is always available for a dinner invi...

This week, we celebrate Baptism of the Lord Sunday with a baptism of our own. As we prepare to baptize a child of the church, we will consider the grace that saturates this gift from God. It isn't only a symbol of sins being washed away, though it is that. It isn’t only a sign of the beginning of something new, though it certainly is that. It isn’t only the model of dying and being raised to new l...

This Sunday we end the Christmas season celebrating the epiphany, when God “shined on us” in the form of Jesus Christ himself. God is a god who wants relationship with us, so much so that God gave us signs and wonders to guide us back towards the Light. As we celebrate the new year, we will pick “Star words” as a way to guide us, just like the Wiseman followed the Star towards Jesus.