Zootown Church

In the 4th installment of this vision series, we talk about the other purposes of our building project. Namely the community. We live in a post Christian America, so what do we do about it? Do we become judgmental, cynical, angry about it? Do we vote the right person in and get back to law and order? Or do we fulfill the call of being salt and light laid out by Christ? With all these churches clos...

As we continue our series on our fundraising campaign, we focused the first two weeks on vision. Who are we, what are we doing here, and where are we going. This third week is looking at the hard numbers for what this will cost and why it’s important to design this building the way we did. However, Pastor Scott gives a brief history of Churches being built throughout history and why they have been...

In week two, Pastor Scott touches on two of the things you’re never supposed to talk about: religion and politics. Our nation is divided and unfortunately that division has entered the Church and caused much harm. Yet we are called to be of the Kingdom, the New Jerusalem, which is a totally different way of looking at the World. We believe if you have to put a label such as Progressive or Conserva...

We kick off the new series “The Burbs” by talking about who we are as a Church. Right now, we are in the middle of a building expansion project but why are we doing it? We see the new building as a byproduct of the new reformation we are going through in the Church. However, every reformation has a little bit of old and a little bit of new. We can get this building done and still be the same, but...

Author Brian Zahnd gives a special sermon about his book "Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God"...a book that means a lot to Zootown Church. He proclaimed the extremely good news: God is like Jesus. God has always been like Jesus. There has never been a time when God wasn't like Jesus.

“Pastor Scott wraps up his series on the fire passages by bringing it all together in one place: Judgement. Nobody likes it, for sure not feeling it, even though we do like giving it out. Judgment is a scary word to most; it feels like you’re sitting in front of a judge to be condemned. One of the issues though is we take our human perspective of judgment and put that on God, but the Bible has a d...

This week we look at two terms that don’t normally go together but have the same spiritual connotations: salt and fire. The Gospel of Mark gives an encounter where Jesus is really serious, almost scary, but Jesus always has a purpose in mind. He says “Everyone will be salted with fire, but salt is good.” Salt has many helpful qualities, but one specific with fire in that it purifies things. But ho...

As we continue to look at the purpose of fire in the Scriptures this week, we piggyback off the previous week of "Purified". In order for something to be purified, it first has to be exposed for what it is. All of our lives have two different natures: a sin nature but also a love nature that is totally secure in God. The sin nature is exposed by the love of God, but for the true nature, the God na...

No matter what currencies are doing in the world, silver and gold have been the constants throughout time. Yet they both must be tested for their purity before they can be truly valued. In order to see the real from the fake, it is tested on a rock called the touchstone. This leaves a streak to compare it to the real gold. The gold and silver are also heated up in fire so that the dross can rise t...

We say we have 6 seasons in Montana: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Road Construction, and Fire Season. The smoke is no fun to deal with but it’s vital to the forest's growth. Fire touches everything it comes across, it changes everything it touches, and it consumes the dead but uses the good.

Pastor Scott wraps up the series with giving concrete ways for continued spiritual growth. Just like our muscles must be worked out, pushed, broken down, our spiritual muscles are the same. Just like physical workouts, there is a lot of advice on how to work out our spirits, however there are time-tested ways given to us by the ancient Christians that have proved fruitful for thousands of years.

Everyone falls, everyone stumbles, everyone gets into a pit. Sometimes it’s a pit others have dug, but often it’s a pit we have dug. Our choice is to stay in the pit and keep digging deeper, or turn and look to the Lord to pull us out.

There is a misconception in our culture that getting older automatically makes you wiser. Or, take that one step further, that age has to do with maturity. The New Testament talks a lot about becoming mature Christians but, unfortunately, we have made maturity simply morality. However, maturity is more of a spiritual place of being rather than what you do or don’t do. The main thing mature Christi...

There are many names for Jesus, and there are many different characteristics to Jesus, but there’s one that we don’t think about enough: Friend. Jesus told his disciples before he went to the cross, which was going to be one of the most traumatic experiences of their lives, that "I no longer call you slaves but friends." Oftentimes we think so much about Jesus’ Divinity, we forget about his humani...

Pastor Scott kicks off his summer series, "Tripping Up", with the most important question anyone can ask: "Who is saved?" It seems like a simple answer -- Jesus. But the interesting thing is, most dominations don't even agree on how or who is saved. Scott breaks this down to show the God of love and mercy saves all, but we work out our salvation after the cross.

Pastor Scott ends his "iTunes Jesus" series, for now, with a country legend -- Garth Brooks. Garth sang a song in the '90s, that touched peoples hearts on a deeper level because of the truth that he conveyed. When we look back at our life and we see the Master at work, our Father, we will see some of our greatest gifts came in the form of unanswered prayers.

This week we look at one of Pastor Scott’s favorite rock ‘n’ roll songs of all time, one with deep theological implications. “Dream On” by Aerosmith was one of their earlier songs, but one of their best. It’s a poem about losing to win, failing to succeed, and growing through suffering. Such is the human condition, and our choice is to either get bitter or get better.

This week we looked at the poet, not the just musician -- Bob Dylan. Dylan converted from Judaism to Christianity in the '70s and that didn’t go over well in the music industry, but it did give him some great insight into the spiritual world. His song “Gotta Serve Somebody” is simple, yet deep, as it cuts through the moral hierarchy of society. We all serve someone.

On Easter Sunday, or Paschal, which is the real name, we looked at a song by Bob Marley called "Redemption Song". The main theme of the Bible can be summed up in one word: redemption -- but not just redemption of our bodies and our spirits but also our minds. Marley saw his people living in slavery years after they no longer were in slavery, which shows often it is a mindset. Jesus died our death,...

Great and Holy Saturday Service

Good Friday Service

Palm Sunday is more than a one-time occurrence. It’s a model of who God is. Jesus didn’t pick a white horse, He picked a little colt. He didn’t pick a victory speech, He stayed silent. He didn’t bring the sword, He went to the cross. He truly is the Prince of Peace. He is our model for it.

We kick off "iTunes Jesus: B-Sides" with the quiet Beatle, the mystical Beatle -- George Harrison. Harrison was a seeker of God, and although he claimed Hinduism, he was very sympathetic to Christ, and you can hear his journey through his song "Hear Me Lord". If you read the Psalms, you will realize this song is a song written from himself to himself.

Pastor Scott wraps up the Reformation series with the most important part of our journeys in life: Honesty.

Jesus is the Physician. He healed the sick and all kinds of physical problems but his healing goes SO much deeper than that.