Azle Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

The Parable of the Prodigal Son is a well-worn story of return, of being found, of being loved. But what if this story is not finished speaking to us? As we peel back the layers of this parable, using other Bible stories to help us, we might see that what we knew about this story is all wrong. And this subversion of the story might be how find it anew. Our worship series for this fall is called Ho...

Jesus ends his sermon with calls for empathy, attention, and persistence. Many of the teachings in this section are familiar to those who don’t regularly attend church because of their absorption into mainstream culture. But this final bit of the sermon, about building our house on a rock, seems to call us to action after what we’ve heard. What will we do with the words of Jesus? This summer we’re...

While this text can feel very Mary Oliver-esque with its admonishment to consider the lilies, it’s hard to read Jesus telling us not to worry in a world that feels as though it’s on fire…in more ways than one. Like, read the room, Jesus! But maybe looking at the birds and the flowers is about more than getting our mind off things. Perhaps we might see a deeper truth of our place in God’s care. Thi...

In this text, Jesus us tells us not to store up treasures for ourself on earth because they don’t last forever. No offense to Jesus, but there’s no way he could have predicted something like plastic that will outlive us all. Sure, material goods don’t last forever, but these days, they do last a very long time. If something like plastic is representative of our modern world, what then does Jesus h...

The Lord’s Prayer is one of the most familiar pieces of scripture ever. But what does it mean to pray it together? Is it just a template for our own personal prayers? Is it a magic talisman that makes things go our way? Or is there something deeper going on when we say it together as a church each week? This summer we’re hunkering down in the most iconic sermon of all time: Jesus’ Sermon on the Mo...

In this section of the Sermon on the Mount, we explore the well-known metaphors of salt, light, and a city on a hill. These are lines the church knows well--in fact, these metaphors are better preached by the work of the church than any long diatribe someone can offer. And though it seems like everything has changed, and that indeed the only dependable reality is change, our call is the same: be s...

If it seems like Jesus is changing the rules of the game, maybe he is changing the game altogether. With great love for the Torah and an awareness of the tricky situation of being a Jewish person in Rome, Jesus considers what it means to follow God whole-heartedly. What if deviating from the script of empire and religion offers a new way of being? This summer we’re hunkering down in the most iconi...

Listen to Jenna Worrell Stewart, our guest preacher, discuss Matthew 5:17-32. Jenna has a deep passion for telling the stories of Jesus and walking alongside people as they walk with God. Recently she completed her Campus Ministry Apprenticeship at Arizona State University, and she is currently a student at the Renovare Institute for Christian Spiritual Formation. She lives in Austin with her husb...

We’ve heard this song before: blessed are the meek, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn. For they will gain an ethereal, intangible reward someday. Isn’t that how the song goes? Maybe we need to listen more closely and hear the promise of not a world coming one day, but of a world already here and happening now. Once we hear it, we might be compelled to sing the song, too....

We arrive at the final marker of our membership series: baptism. While there’s no baptism in the text we read, we believe that the Holy Spirit is given to us in baptism, and that we, like the church, is always being born anew. Baptism is a continuous rebirth—not as a fixed moment in time, but as a way of life, and Pentecost reminds us that new ways of living are always possible. During the Re: Mem...

The word “discipleship” conjures up visions of checklists and discipline. But while being a disciple is not easy, it a life that is rooted in the boundless love of Christ. In this sermon, we settle ourselves into a prayer of Jesus for his disciples, finding tenderness and grace as the source of our lives of discipleship. During the Re: Membering series, we're looking at the markers of membership--...

This week we’re talking about our church’s commitment to evangelism, but don’t worry! We’re not trying to convert anyone. Instead, we’re thinking about good news even means. What is “good” about it? And what do we mean by “news” anyway? Jesus continues his vine and branch metaphor, and offers us some very good news for the people of God. During the Re: Membering series, we're looking at the marker...

The thing about vines is that they’re all tangled up in one another, and yet the branches cannot bear fruit unless they stick close to the vine. Jesus offers this metaphor of himself and his disciples to show that our work of love is an outgrowth of God’s love, and that love is communal. As we explore the marker of outreach in our Re: Membering series, we consider how the vine informs the way we t...

Most of us have no real life interaction with sheep, yet we believe Jesus when he says he’s the Good Shepherd. But what does that mean exactly? Can we truly understand the fullness of what Jesus was saying when he said, “I am the good shepherd and I lay down my life” in our 21st century Western world? Probably not, but maybe we can roughly translate his meaning into a way of life in our highly spe...

Things don’t become real for the disciples until they see Jesus eating in Luke’s testimony of the resurrection. Today, we orient our worship around the table of Christ, eating bread and drinking wine as a proclamation of the Lord’s death and God’s great welcome to all, because there are things we can only know through embodied practices. As we gather around the table, we commit to keep coming arou...

"These things were written so that you may come to believe," the gospel writer tells us in John, and we're sure glad he wrote about Thomas. Thomas has some serious doubts about the story going around that Jesus is alive, and he's not ashamed to ask them. But the best part is that he can bring his questions and doubt to his faith community. When they gather together, Jesus shows up, ...

Azle Christian Church — a congregation of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) — is a church community in Azle, Texas. On this episode, our pastor — Rev. Ashley Dargai — introduces listeners to ACC.