Awaken Community

Our second guest speaker is Joel Warne, a spiritual director and author. His letter to the church begins with John 16:33.

This week begins our new series of guest speakers called Dear Church, an extension of our last series The Power of a Letter. If you were to write a letter to the church, at large and within Awaken, what would you say? Our first guest is Rev. Kelly Chatman and his message today begins with "Don't get comfortable." So you know you're in for an inspiring word this morning.    

In typical Awaken style, Micah takes a different approach to the standard Easter teaching. In John 17, Jesus prays his longest recorded prayer as he's nearing the cross. What does this prayer show us is most important to Jesus? And how do we step into the invitation given?

There are things that may seem obvious but must be said out loud. Micah dives into the letters of Barth and Bonhoeffer and what they have to show us about our world today. As well as what our role should be as followers of Jesus. 

In Maya Angelou's book Letter to My Daughter, she points out that most adults simply grow old and don't grow up. Micah discusses what it looks like to grow up and mature in our spiritual lives.

This morning, Micah focuses on Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Written nearly 60 years ago, there are too many references that ring painfully true today. And some pretty heavy questions come after reading his letter: Has the Church forgotten who it is and where it came from? Is there a difference between what is sacred and what is secular?

Micah begins a new series about the power of a handwritten letter - an idea that's pretty foreign to most of us right now. We begin with Paul's letter to the church at Corinth which was a bit of a Vegas of Ancient Greece.

Dr. Christine Osgood, Associate Professor and Director of Wellbeing at Bethel University, joins us this week to talk about how we make God visible in the world; how we take our beliefs and values and put them into action.

This week's sermon is about a different type of meditation, the reflective, look back on your life kind of meditation. And Micah promises another sermon on meditation another time.

Join Melody in an embodiment practice to go along with this week's sermon.

For those that grew up in an Evangelical church, the word fasting can bring up a whole slew of reactions. This week, Micah does a bit of a reframe around fasting and also a challenge for the community coming into a new week.

This week, Micah introduces Creation as a spiritual pathway, sharing his own experiences and seeing it as a way to experience God in the same way as church on a Sunday morning.

For the next seven weeks, up until Lent, we are focusing on spiritual practices that we hope will help you get through this long winter. There's not a one-size-fits-all formula for the spiritual life, so we hope you find something among these practices that lands well for you. This week, we'll focus on The Examen, a practice that will hopefully help guide you through the transition from 2020-2021....

Guest teacher Earl Milton explores the angel's announcement in Luke 2.

For the third week of Advent, Micah looks at what God's response to the suffering of his people looks like and shows how it's another way that the Kingdom of God looks very different than what we might expect. 

Micah delves into Mary's Song, also called The Magnificat, and shares his reflections on seeing Mary as a prophet as well as a mother.

Micah kicks off Advent and a new series with John the Baptist. As God seems to do so often, he takes the oddball, the outcast, the one perceived to be on the outside to speak truth to those in power and bring a mirror to the faces of those who have lost their way in Christ. John the Baptist is the perfect example.

We are privileged to have Pastor Judy Howard Peterson speaking on Deborah this week. As always, Judy brings a new perspective and normalizing view of biblical characters.

Many have argued that the prophet's role is to be the conscience of the state. Micah shares some compelling through lines and comparisons of the prophecies of Nathan to the situation we find ourselves in today.

What would have to happen for God to say "I hate your gatherings!"? What could make God so angry? Rotten fruit. Micah asks some hard questions and sees what the prophet Amos has to say.

This week's teaching is a little bit less about what Jonah said and more about what he did (or didn't do) as a prophet of the Lord. What does the context of this book tell us? Does it matter if we read it literally or as a parable?

To start off our new series, Micah shares a few excerpts from the book of Jeremiah. As a prophet of the Lord, his messages are varied and many. He speaks challenges along with hope. Where can we fill the gap between what we say and what we do? And how can we count on hope, the hope that comes from God, in a time where it feels like there isn't any?

We begin a new series this week which will be an exploration of the prophets of the Bible. In a world filled with tumult, we hope to hear the voice of the Living God from the prophets of old and the prophets among us.