College Wesleyan Church Sermons

Steve DeNeff - Isaiah 32:1-8, 15-18; Luke 6:27-38. Citizenship involves an oath of allegiance to, not just the principles, but to the people.  How do citizens of the kingdom live with one another, especially with those that others can’t live with?  What “rules” guide our social behavior?  How are these different from what is commonly accepted today?

Steve DeNeff - Isaiah 35:3-10; Matthew 5:1-10. When hearing about the kingdom, we want to make it happen but first, we must enter it ourselves. We cannot bring it unless we’re in it, unless it’s in us. But how does one enter it? What does citizenship mean? What is assumed? What is expected? This message will remind us that “our citizenship is in heaven,” and call us to practice that allegiance her...

Steve DeNeff - Isaiah 9:2-7; Matthew 4:12 -14, 16-17. Two forces compete for the heart and mind of the public. Both have valid argument but neither has a vision for the whole. The Kingdom of God is that vision and so Jesus came preaching the kingdom of God. But what is it (and isn’t it)? How does it answer the deep and collective longing of society today? This message will introduce us to the main...

Vickie Conrad - Jeremiah 29:4-14. A new year is upon us! We’ve been waiting for 365 days for 2022. Already we are waiting on things like Apple iPhone 14, the Super Bowl, The Batman movie, days of the endemic, and so on. Our culture doesn’t train us to journey through an interim time very well. We are wired to expect instant gratification in daily lives. We can order just about anything and find it...

Eric Crisp - Matthew 2:1-12. That the “king of the Jews” would be worshiped first by Gentiles, adherents to a pagan religion. If salvation is of the Jews (see John 4:19 -22), why should the first to worship this salvation come from regions far outside of Israel, indeed outside Jesus’ own religious heritage? Wasn’t there anyone closer, maybe someone within Judaism to authenticate this moment? Or di...

Steve DeNeff - Luke 2:4-20. That the first witnesses would be shepherds whose testimony was inadmissible in court. Of all the people God could have told on the night of Jesus’ birth, he chose to tell shepherds first. They were the first to visit, the first to inform the Holy Family, the first to tell everyone what they’d seen and heard. But why? Wasn’t there anyone else awake? Couldn’t anyone more...

Ethan Linder - Isaiah 7:10-14, Matthew 1:18-25, John 1:46. That the “sign” for all of this would be so underwhelming. Of all the signs that God is present and active – a pillar and cloud, a shadow falling backward or a virgin giving birth – why is this one, at zero hour, so underwhelming? Wasn’t there a better way for God to make His point? Or did He have a better point to make?

Steve DeNeff - Hosea 11:1-4; Luke 2:1-7; Matthew 2:13 -15. That God would use people Israel hated to position Himself to save the world. According to St. Paul, Christmas came “in the fullness of time,” and according to the gospels, the most unlikely people paved the way: Caesar Augustus, Herod, and the Roman government. Why and how did God use the Romans to accomplish His plans for the world?

Aaron Perry - Luke 1:26-38. The “Holy One to be born” came from seemingly suspicious origins - Egypt, Nazareth, a suspect lineage, and an unmarried mother. Why would God choose such questionable origins to usher in one who would “save his people from their sins?” What is revealed about God’s character and how he interacts with humanity? Could it be that our expectations, just like Israel, have bee...

Steve DeNeff - Ezekiel 34:11 -16, 23-24; John 10:14 -16. The heart of any shepherd is to reconcile, to gather, to unite yet the culture seems scattered by controversial shepherds and angry sheep empowered by churches that divide and condemn. How do we shepherd in tense places and help to heal the world until there is “one flock and one shepherd?”

Steve DeNeff - Exodus 13:17-18, 20-22. Throughout the story of Exodus God is “with” his people in the form of a fire and a cloud. And as long as he is, Israel is safe. How does this inform the ministry of Presence for a shepherd? Why is the presence of some so powerful, and others … well, not? When is Presence most important? And how does one practice it with increasing skill?

Steve DeNeff - Deuteronomy 32:48-52; 34:1, 4-12. From the previous sermons on shepherding, one could almost forget that it’s sometimes hard and frustrating work. The challenges, the risks, the raw emotion that comes with caring for others can discourage us or tempt us to stay with only the most compliant.  From Moses life comes these lessons for navigating the challenges of this good, but sometime...

Ethan Linder - Deuteronomy 6:1-15, 20-25; Luke 12:27 -34. In Deuteronomy 6, Moses expresses hopes for a future he will not even see; a soon-coming-day in which others will partake in the dream Moses worked for. In that climate, Moses concerns himself less about threats from without, or even threats from beside. He warns about the enemy within. Along with Jesus in Luke 12, Moses is keenly aware tha...

Steve DeNeff - Exodus 33:1-3, 12-18. The study and pursuit of good leadership is big business today. Companies spend over $50 billion annually developing it. But leadership becomes something different when it’s done by a shepherd, and done in the context of the other three disciplines (know, feed and protect).

Steve DeNeff - Exodus 16:2-4, 13-18, 21; Mark 6:34 -44. Like Moses, we look at the people God has entrusted to us and are quickly overwhelmed by their needs. Then we hear God say, “Give them something to eat,” (Matt. 14:16 ), but we don’t know where to find it. In these parallel stories - the feeding of Israel in the wilderness (Ex. 16) and the feeding of the multitude in the desert (Matt. 14) - w...

Steve DeNeff - Exodus 19:1,3-6; Isaiah 40:9-11, 27-31. The first practice of a shepherd is to develop trust in the sheep. Empathy (or “knowing”) is the place where trust begins, yet empathy is hard to come by these days. How do we develop empathy when society is pulling us further apart?  Here are three routines we can build into our schedule, without doing anything more, that will increase our ca...

Steve DeNeff - Exodus 1:8-11a; 2:23-25; 3:15-17. Something happens when we notice we notice what’s happening. We see things (or people) that others don’t see. And we see them, not because we’re looking for them, but because we’re looking into them, where no one else is looking. Who are the people God wants us to notice? What are we looking for? And what does God want us to do with them? In this me...

Steve DeNeff - Exodus 3:1-14, Matthew 9:35-38. Even though the term is unpopular, people are still looking for a shepherd and that’s why they’re so critical of their leaders. When God raises up a shepherd, the people have a future with possibilities they didn’t have before. Maybe the work inside our jobs begins with shepherding.

Steve DeNeff - Isaiah 43:1, 16-21; Colossians 1:9-12. To Israel, the best indicator of what God would do in their future was to remember what He did in their past. They looked back (Is. 43:16 -17) to go forward (19-21). They backed forward. As we emerge from the past two decades, and especially the past two years, we go forward by looking back. What has God done in and through us together in the p...

Steve DeNeff - Exodus 5:1-9, 15-18; Matthew 11:25a, 28-30. The pandemic has exposed deep flaws in the purpose and value we give to our work. The way that we work isn’t working. Yet despite our trouble, the gospel includes a vision of worship in our work, a festival of sorts in the desert, and calls us to participate. How do we find the worship in our work? Where is the festival in the desert?

Amanda Drury - Ephesians 2:4-10. What does it mean for us, the people of God, to do "good deeds?” This morning, we’ll walk through the church's call to kindness and the joy that comes with love in action.

Steve DeNeff - Mark 8:11 -21. Three of the four gospels mention “the yeast of the Pharisees” and tell us to beware of it yet none tells us what, exactly, it is. But a closer look at the Pharisees and their interactions with Jesus will reveal a danger that is subtle, highly contagious and still prevalent among Christians today. Behind all of the rhetoric today is a hidden agenda and the perennial t...

Steve DeNeff - Romans 14:1, 5-8, 17-19; 15:1-2. Throughout the Bible we are called to live in unity but that’s been difficult in the past two years with so many controversial subjects. But if this has been harder, maybe it’s supposed to be. Maybe God is using these tensions to teach us how to live as part of His divine plan to unite all people in Christ. So how can we share a community identity wi...

Matthew 15:21-28. Jesus uses the faith of a marginalized woman to expose our pride and invites us to a better way.

Steve DeNeff - 1 Samuel 1:1-20. The story of Hannah is the story of a woman and a nation who is barren, “who cannot bring salvation, who cannot give birth to the people of the world,” (Is. 26:18). Still, year after year she worships in the sanctuary of barrenness and it’s here where Yahweh finds her. Then a sudden joyous turn.  Hannah unceremoniously conceives and what she brings forth is no ordin...