Damascus Road Community Church

When Jesus died on the Cross, He died to save us from something and equally to save us to/for something. The Cross provided not just one, but both of God’s greatest gifts: salvation from death’s grip and the new birth of life in the Spirit: “For God has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the Kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we [now] have our redemption—the forgiveness...

The message of Christ, to first-century listeners, was a stunner. To the Jews, anyone executed on a Cross was accursed of God, cut off from all covenant blessings—humiliated and rejected. To the Roman Gentile world, a man on a Cross was no longer even a man, but a sub-human beast, a vile criminal subjected to the most brutal and degrading death anyone had ever devised—humiliated and rejected. Why...

The Bible tells us that we have been made a new creation by “God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18). What is this ministry of reconciliation? How are we to interpret its meaning and application in our lives today? Join us this MLK Weekend as we reflect on how God has committed to us the powerful and precious message of reco...

Jesus…yes. Almost everyone likes Jesus even if they don’t like the church. A majority of Americans claim to “believe in” or “follow” Jesus. But I have learned to ask in various ways: which Jesus? My Mormon or Jehovah’s Witness friends have a very different Jesus than I do. The t-shirts depicting the “NRA Jesus” holding assault rifles on each hip seems a far cry from the Jesus of Scripture. In defe...

Something very interesting happened in 2018. Founding or current executives from the big three: Facebook, Google and Apple all went public with concerns that excessive social media is impairing our desire and even our capacity for healthy human relationships. Nothing new—except now these warnings are coming from the people who created the technology—people with a lot to lose by speaking out. In th...

There was a time when people anticipated sitting down weekly for their favorite TV show. If they missed out, they had to wait again until next week. Through Netflix however, we can tune in anytime we want. What if the church functioned more like Netflix and less like old TV? Although, we can only tune into a service once a week, we are a body of people who have been given unrestricted access to Ch...

Our Advent theme is “Consider Christmas.” We considered what the Christmas story teaches about Jesus’ call, gift and love; and why they matter to us. For our final message we will consider Jesus’ impact on human history, on our lives—especially in one crucial area. Many greater thinkers (from Plato to Nietzsche to Martin Luther King Jr) have made the argument that our picture of God (or lack there...

The rich young ruler decided the cost was too high and decided today was not a good day to make such a costly decision. King Herod was curious but put off seeing Jesus until another day. The immediate always overwhelms the important doesn't it? Simon hoped that today might be the day that he would finally meet the consolation of Israel. Anna the prophetess was running out of days. And finally, in...

G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “It has never been quite enough to say that God is in his heaven and all is right with the world; since the rumor is that God has left his heavens to set it right.” So as we stand at the manger, we marvel at the miracle of who this Baby was and is and how His life profoundly changed our world. He grew up. He died on the cross. He was laid in the tomb. He rose from the d...

Every December I hear some version of this – what’s happening to Christmas? Why do I have more stress than peace? Why is my life filled with more worry than worship? Why is my heart more weary than joyful? We don’t need to discover something new about Christmas. We need to recover what’s already true about Christmas. Join us this weekend as we look at the Christmas story through the eyes of someon...

"O give thanks to the Lord, call on his name, make known his deeds among the peoples. Sing to him, sing praises to him; tell of all his wonderful works. Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice. Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually." Psalms 105:1-4 Join us this weekend as we celebrate and give thanks to God for his many blessings to us as a...

People love Proverbs 3:6-7: “Trust in the LORD with ALL your heart, lean not on your own understanding, but in ALL your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.” Rightly so. It is a great promise. But it hit me this week: the next thing God does is give us His practical illustration of one key way to trust like that, and it is very pertinent to this weekend: “Honor the LORD with your we...

As painful as some memories are—of things we have done or said which we wish we had not done or said—my guess is that those will not be our biggest regrets when we actually stand in the presence of Jesus, still bearing the scars of the Cross on His hands. Our greatest regrets will be realizing all the things we could have done and should have done for Him that we dodged or ignored due to selfishne...

Remember that you were slaves in the land of Egypt—and the LORD your God redeemed you. Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ…without hope and without God in the world. But now, in Christ Jesus, you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. Remember therefore what you have received and heard—and keep it! In the great story of human redemption, God make...

We live in a world where stuff is glorified. People spend their entire lives working harder and harder to accumulate it, children fight over it, siblings get torn apart because of it, and nations go to war over it. But the Bible paints a very different picture of stuff and what it means to honor God with our stuff. And when that happens, a new form of culture gets shaped and formed. Join us this w...

Would you take a moment and read Acts 2:42-47? These verses contain a remarkable set of words, and they have inspired millions of people over hundreds of years. The community Jesus started was so amazing, so transcendent, so remarkable, that these people were, the text tells us, champions of generosity. This explosion of generosity stunned the world and fueled the expansion of the Kingdom of God....

Here we go! We start our All In journey by looking at the heart. The Bible talks a lot about the heart – more than seven hundred times. The heart is such a precious thing – Scripture tells us to be careful what you give to it to. Your whole life could be shaped by what you give your heart to. And the way to be a fully devoted follower of Jesus – being all in – is to love God with all our heart. Jo...

Do you ever feel like the life you’re leading is not operating on all cylinders? That you were created for something “more”? This weekend, we’re going to explore ways to have a relationship with Jesus Christ that could be deep, intimate and personal. In Matthew 4, when Jesus called out to Peter and his brother, Andrew, while they were fishing, he said, “Come follow me”. At once, they left their ne...

This week’s message is really a dialogue—a time to talk together. So let’s talk! Taking the key perspective of the first three messages in our series: “How Big is your God,” we’ll apply them to who and where we are in our shared story as a community. We’ll talk about where we are going (our 2020 strategy)—and why. This message will set the stage (contextualize) for our seven week ALL IN journey. I...

Every September I do a couple of messages focused on vision-casting the direction we believe God is leading us for the next year. These are crucial, heart to heart weeks for our community. These next two weeks I will share those messages, as part of our “How Big is your God?” series. In week one of this series, we wrestled with the fact that God does His work through us, not apart from us: our tru...

The Bible tells us that Shammua, son of Zakkur, and Gadiel, son of Sodi were esteemed leaders in Israel. Ever heard of them? Nope…you haven’t. Guaranteed. There is a significant reason why their obscurity applies to us, which we will explore this weekend. The answer has everything to do with the perspective we carry into each day, both on our present circumstances and future challenges—and how muc...

Once we are clear that “there is a God—and it is not us”, then the great question of our lives kicks in. In every new challenge or crisis, each time to take our next step of obedience, we consciously or unconsciously ask the same question: “Can I trust God—can I really trust His will and way with this situation or area of my life?” (whatever it is). Someday we will realize the right question, the...

Jesus gave His disciples a powerful mandate in Matthew 28:19-20. His words to the disciples (and to us) are so expansive, so radical, so transcendent—so much bigger, and broader, and higher, and deeper that if you call Him Lord—you will start thinking in terms of not just your tribe, but every tribe. Not just your camp, but every camp. Not just your people, but every people. And what is inspiring...

This week is our opportunity to celebrate all that our children have been learning in our Children’s Ministry teaching this summer, on the theme of Jesus Rescues! We will dive into one of the stories our kids learned, the story of the Prodigal Son – a story about the intense drive for independent, indulgent living that we all have. But at some point, like the Prodigal Son, we all find out that we...