City South Presbyterian

Matthew Ventura unpacks the Christmas carol O Come, O Come, Emmanuel and its connection to the story of the Bible; showing how Israel's story of exile and the coming of their Messiah, God with us, is good news for the world.

This week we're looking at how Peter writes to a community living simultaneously as exiles in their culture, and God's home in the world, instructing us to show hospitality to one another.

How do we bear one another's burdens while carrying our own load in a church community — especially when dealing with trauma and triggers and temptations.

Loving one another — and committing to unity in Christ — means not avoiding conflict, but treating conflict as a form of connection where we learn to bear with one another and to forgive one another, cultivating our 'new self' with the virtues of kindness, compassion, humility, gentleness and respect.

We consider what it looks like to spur one another on to love and good deeds as we continue meeting together, encouraging one another. 

We begin a new series on some of the "one another" verses in the New Testament with the one at the heart of them all; Jesus' command to love one another as he has loved us.

Lyle and Hazel served in remote indigenous communities in Queensland for 30 years. Here they share some stories about how they approached being a faithful presence in these communities. 

Robyn re-tells the story of Esther. Corinne reads Matthew 25:31-46. Nathan considers what it looks like for us to live in God's presence so that we can carry it with us into his world as his image bearing people.

Part 3 of a 3 part series in the book of Jude by Ryan Dehnert. 

Part 2 of a 3 week series on Jude from Ryan Dehnert. 

Part 1 of a three week series on Jude.

We had a little glitch that means the Bible readings (Romans 8:12-39, Revelation 22:12-17) were not included in this recording.

To be human is to be shaped by stories; those stories come from our human hearts, from the powers and principalities, and from God. There are many myths shaping our lives in the modern world, including the myth of redemptive violence. To be truly human is to find ourselves in God's story of redemptive grace.

Being truly human means living with integrity in a life built on truth, which requires life integrated with God, in a community who will pursue truth in love together. 

Spaces in the modern world are non-places of "scripted disorientation" designed to addict us towards extinction. Habitats shape our habits. As images of the place-making God we can make places of scriptured orientation. 

We are image bearers who make images and are remade by the images we give our eyes, hearts, and bodies to in worship.

Our desires and sensuality are good parts of our creatureliness that are created to be directed towards God.

Being human means being embodied in a dying body patiently hoping for the resurrection of our bodies in a new creation. There's a growing post-human or transhuman movement that sees our bodies as limited meat to be hacked, or overcome, even by uploading our consciousness to the cloud, and an older Christian heresy that our future is disembodied life in the cloudy heavens. These disembodied stories...

How do we live as makers of technology when our technology is tearing us apart?

You are not your own. The modern self has to be able to answer the question "who am I" while being pulled in all directions; the Bible invites us to be human by first asking the question "whose am I".

Knowing what it means to be human starts with knowing the triune God. The modern western world is breaking up with the God who is love, but we were made to find life in his love.

Matt Ventura unpacks how the Christian life is like playing bassoon in an orchestra (or what it looks like to live in harmony in the body of Christ, offering our bodies as a living sacrifice). 

Nathan Richardson unpacks what it means to live a new story as we offer our bodies as a single living sacrifice in view of God's mercy to us in Jesus. 

God calls Abram to come out of Babylon to become a nation who'll launch a new Eden project of blessing. His promises are fulfilled in Jesus who now calls us to come out of Babylon, because it's coming down to earth, and so's the new heavenly city. 

Nimrod and Nebuchadnezzar make names for themselves by building with baked bricks. Jesus invites us to become living stones built into a building that actually connects heaven and earth, and will last for eternity.