A Deeper Dive for Authentic, Hopeful, Worshipful Faith

Fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.” They are corrupt; there is no one who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven on humankind to see if there are any who are wise, who seek after God. Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call upon the Lord? O that deliverance for Israel would come from Zion! When the Lord restores the fortunes o...

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God,     did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing     by taking the very nature of a servant,     being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man,     he humbled himself     by becoming obedient to death—...

Throughout our worship series focused on a single psalm each week that becomes part of the New Testament playlist, our regular order of worship has been changed from a linear progression to a kaleidoscopic experience centering on the psalm. Key changes and new elements include: Embodiment:  the Psalm becomes a spoken Word through deeper congruence with the emotional self. Meditation:  a five-minut...

Throughout our worship series focused on a single psalm each week that becomes part of the New Testament playlist, our regular order of worship has been changed from a linear progression to a kaleidoscopic experience centering on the psalm. Key changes and new elements include: Embodiment: the Psalm becomes a spoken Word through deeper congruence with the emotional self. Meditation: a five-minute...

Throughout our worship series focused on a single psalm each week that becomes part of the New Testament playlist, our regular order of worship has been changed from a linear progression to a kaleidoscopic experience centering on the psalm. Key changes and new elements include: Embodiment: the Psalm becomes a spoken Word through deeper congruence with the emotional self. Meditation: a five-minute...

Throughout our worship series focused on a single psalm each week that becomes part of the New Testament playlist, our regular order of worship has been changed from a linear progression to a kaleidoscopic experience centering on the psalm. Key changes and new elements include: Embodiment: the Psalm becomes a spoken Word through deeper congruence with the emotional self. Meditation: a five-minute...

“The psalmist is brutally honest about the explosive joy that he’s feeling, and the deep sorrow, or confusion.” –Bono “The songs are not pretty. They’re not nice … but they’re honest. I think we’re trying for honesty, which is very, very hard in our culture.” – Eugene Peterson.

Throughout our worship series focused on a single psalm each week that becomes part of the New Testament playlist, our regular order of worship has been changed from a linear progression to a kaleidoscopic experience centering on the psalm. Key changes and new elements include: Embodiment: the Psalm becomes a spoken Word through deeper congruence with the emotional self. Meditation: a five-minute...

Throughout our worship series focused on a single psalm each week that becomes part of the New Testament playlist, our regular order of worship has been changed from a linear progression to a kaleidoscopic experience centering on the psalm. Key changes and new elements include: Embodiment: the Psalm becomes a spoken Word through deeper congruence with the emotional self. Meditation: a five-minute...

Throughout our worship series focused on a single psalm each week that becomes part of the New Testament playlist, our regular order of worship has been changed from a linear progression to a kaleidoscopic experience centering on the psalm. Key changes and new elements include: Embodiment: the Psalm becomes a spoken Word through deeper congruence with the emotional self. Meditation: a five-minute...

“The glory of God is a human being fully alive,” wrote Irenaeus of Lyons some two thousand years ago. One of the reasons I remain a Christian-in-progress is the peculiar Christian insistence that God is revealed in humankind—not just in human form but also in human being.”  ― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

The more specific we are, the more universal something can become. Life is in the details. If you generalize, it doesn't resonate. The specificity of it is what resonates.  –Jacqueline Woodson

John Owen - Can we ever really go back to ’the way things were,’ when God’s Spirit is always calling us forward into God’s Kingdom?

A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire. –Thomas Merton

If a person has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.  –Martin Luther King, Jr.

There is a divinity that shapes our ends-but we can help by listening for Its voice. —Kathleen Norris

Today we need an "Emmaus road" experience in reverse. The disciples knew Moses and the Prophets but could not conceive how they might relate to Jesus the Christ. The modern church knows Jesus the Christ, but it is fast losing any grasp of Moses and the Prophets. Without the foundation of the Old Testament, we are like the foolish man who built his house on the sand. The house fell with a...

“Jesus' willingness to accommodate Thomas' unbelief is a reminder that God can handle our doubt... and that the rationalist doesn't need to see, touch, or run a lab test in order to believe in the resurrected Christ… This is not a plea to accept what goes against reason, but it is an invitation to discover a faith that goes beyond it. The example of Thomas is for the stubborn skeptic i...

The resurrection does not solve our problems about dying and death. It is not the happy ending to our life’s struggle, nor is it the big surprise that God has kept in store for us. No, the resurrection is the expression of God’s faithfulness…. The resurrection is God’s way of revealing to us that nothing that belongs to God will ever go to waste. What belongs to God will never get lost. —Henri Nou...

In the presence of his integrity, our own pretense is exposed. In the presence of his constancy, our cowardice is brought to light. In the presence of his fierce love for God and for us, our own hardness of heart is revealed. —Barbara Brown Taylor

The great and merciful surprise is that we come to God, not by doing it right, but by doing it wrong. — Richard Rohr

Rev. Katie Stark, Missional Expeditor Focus:  God is at work in new and surprising ways that look different than the church most of us grew up with.

The Holy Spirit is inviting God’s people into a new imagination of mission and community by sending vulnerable into our midst.

What has happened to our ability to dwell in unknowing, to live inside a question and coexist with the tensions of uncertainty? Where is our willingness to incubate pain and let it birth something new? What has happened to patient unfolding, to endurance? These things are what form the ground of waiting. And if you look carefully, you’ll see that they’re also the seedbed of creativity and growth—w...

I guess God knew that dualistic thinking would be the direction religion would take. So the Bible says right at the beginning, “Don’t do it!” The word of God is trying to keep us from religion’s constant temptation and failure—a demand for certitude, an undue need for perfect explanation, resolution, and answers, which is, by the way, the exact opposite of faith. Such dualistic thinking (preferrin...