Fountain City KC

If you're honest with yourself, how often do you think about everything you see as being created by God?  That everything has its source – owes its existence – to God?  And, honestly, what difference does that make to your daily life?  The Christian faith is clear: the God of the Bible is the only and true Creator of the universe.  And knowing and acknowledging him as the Creator of this world and...

In His final parable, Jesus concludes his sermon with a now-famous illustration of two builders, one who built his house on bedrock while the other built his on sand. Both experienced the rain, floods, and winds, but it was their foundation that determined whether it was life or destruction. Jesus invites His hearers to respond in faith that is built upon Him, our rock of salvation. For it is only...

Each day is filled with choices, some big, some mundane and routine. But there are some days, some times in our lives, where the choices we face are different. They are substantial, consequential, filled with commitment, and bring change to our lives. And as much as we might want to ignore them or go around them, we can't. We have to choose. As we approach the end of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, Je...

Something we have in common as human beings is that we like to be right.  We like it so much we’ll even deny the truth to make it feel that way, even truth about ourselves.  Psychologists use a term to describe this tendency,  confimration bias .  Jesus uses another term:  judgmentalism .  This week's passage holds one of the most famous lines from the entire Bible,  "Do not judge, or you too...

One reason Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount is so powerful and poignant is that He speaks to issues central to our daily lives and experiences. In this passage, Jesus presses into an issue we all know: worry and anxiety. Why do you worry about your life? The power of anxiety stems from us living in the "what if’s" of life. And a reality of worry, of anxiety, is that we hate it!...

As we engage with Jesus' teaching, he so often takes what we would see as normal or obvious and turns it upside down. In this passage, Jesus does this by asking us: what are you banking your life on? And is it worth it? A core human need, common to everyone, is security and significance. Whether we realize it or not, whatever we're banking our life on is what we expect to make us secure and tell u...

Jesus' teaching often enters a time and place, enters our own heart, takes what we would see as normal or obvious and turns it upside down. In this passage, Jesus does this by asking us, who is the audience for whom you are living your life? As we live our lives, people see us. As we make choices, speak, act, there is often recognition for what do – someone observes and responds. The question Jesu...

It comes as no surprise to many of us that researchers say our culture is experiencing a leadership crisis. We are in the midst of a significant historical moment, and we all feel the need for what seems hardest to find: good, trustworthy leadership. Part of what makes this even more daunting and challenging is discerning how to define the kind of leaders we need. What makes a good leader? In any...

It's hard to read the Sermon on the Mount and not observe the counter-cultural force it contains. Jesus's teachings are, by anyone's standards, radical. They're not radical because they call for some wholesale life change in vocation or residence. They're radical because they call for wholesale change in the ordinariness of daily life. Jesus changes how we live. And he aims, he means to change how...

There are times when Jesus's teaching just seems like too much: too difficult, too far-reaching. This week, as we encounter one of Jesus' most well-known statements, we also encounter one of his hardest. Some have heard Jesus' talk about turning the other cheek and going the extra mile and thought, "I'm out." Why? Because Jesus calls for a kind of strength that our world doesn't really c...