Damascus Road Community Church

What’s on your porch? Maybe there are flower pots, rocking chairs, and a welcome mat. Maybe there is an Amazon package or two. Or there could be a catchy “Welcome to my Porch” sign. Our porches are as different and unique as the people who occupy them. This week, as we continue our “Life on the Porch" series, we will be looking at how we each have unique and significant ways in which we can share...

Following our 1st Corinthians sermon series, Damascus Road is offering a late Spring class exploring key themes in 1st Corinthians. This class will be co-taught by DRCC’s retired Founding Pastor, Richard Fredericks, PhD, and Teaching Team Pastor, Michelle Rader, M.A. They will explore in greater depth some of the rich themes of 1st Corinthians, especially focusing on Paul’s narrative of how the “m...

Easter. True story... Jesus died for our sins one dark Friday, and they buried him. On Sunday, He was raised to life–resurrected from the dead! The grave cave was empty–and hundreds of people saw Jesus alive again! What’s more–He’s comin’ back for us–and we’ll live with Him forever! IF this is a fake story–a fabrication, a legend–then we live and we die. …But IF this is a True Story, then death is...

Can you believe that we are just a little over a week away from Easter! Palm Sunday marks the last week of Jesus’ ministry while on earth. It’s during this week we see more clearly than ever that Christian faith involves trusting that at the center of the universe is a Being whose heart beats with an infinite love for His world, for you and me.    The purpose of human existence is to receive this...

All You Need Is Love!   The Beatles might have taken a look at 1 Corinthians 13 before they wrote the famous song “All You Need is Love.” Unfortunately, many in Corinthian culture ascribed to the Tina Turner school of thought, “What’s Love Got To Do With It?”   Enough song references! 1 Corinthians 13 is known as the “Love Chapter” of the Bible, quoted most often at weddings. After addressing the...

Over the past few weeks we've heard a lot about what we do with our bodies - how what we do with our bodies impacts ourselves and others - for ill or for good.   This week we'll talk about a different kind of body - the Body of Christ - His church. But this will continue the logic of our previous talk about bodies: what we do with our individual bodies matters, because we are all part of Christ's...

FOOD FIGHT!!! I’ve never been in an actual food fight, but I loved watching them in movies when I was a kid. It’s a hilarious and ridiculous visual when you see a bunch of people throwing mashed potatoes and pies, squirting ketchup and mustard, and making a mess of each other with their dinners. This week we are going to focus in on 1 Corinthians 8-10, which could be described as Paul stepping in...

Are you single? Married? Divorced? Widowed? No matter how you answered that question, 1 Corinthians 7 has something to say about our relationships with others and our relationship with God. This is likely a passage you haven't heard in church before. Let's explore it together as we strive to be a community that’s Undivided, marked by cross-shaped love.

So 1st Corinthians can get... kind of... AWKWARD... Paul gives the Corinthians a "sex talk” in 1 Corinthians 6:9-20. Yup - Paul goes there - but he doesn't throw a list of rules at them. Rather Paul steps in to contrast the use and abuse of the world's way with the love and dignity of God's design. He is blunt and honest with the Corinthians, but always with the intent to point them to Christ - in...

Last week Michelle shared some really good advice with us that she gleaned from the apostle Paul’s introduction to the letter to the Corinthians; she said that if you have to deliver a hard word to someone it’s a really good idea to start with the positives before you get to the negatives. That’s a good word for all of us. But this week we will get to Paul’s hard word for the Corinthian church whi...

Division? Partisanship? Power struggles? Do these seem like new problems?   Well, they are not!   Living in community has always been a challenge from the very beginning (just read the family stories in Genesis!)   But when we are living in Christ Jesus - our whole attitude toward others should change. Yet this change doesn't come automatically, quickly, or easily to most of us.   Paul's letters t...

What if you could have all of your debt taken away—canceled? What if someone forgave all of the debt of every person in your family? What if this person dealt with all of the debt in our community? What if they could zero out the national debt? What if they could wipe out the debt of every person who ever walked the earth? How would we respond to that kind of gift? Jesus has forgiven every debt -...

There is a famous scene in the 1985 cult classic film Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, where Pee Wee is talking to a woman about her life’s dream of one day living in Paris. In the scene Simone hedges when Pee Wee encourages her to chase her dream, she responds with “I know you’re right, but…” Pee Wee pushes back with “But what?! Everyone I know always has a big but. Come on Simone, let’s talk about your...

Forgiveness...   You can’t buy it...   You can’t earn it...   Paradoxically, forgiveness is costly yet free.   So who pays?   Here’s the truth...   "In Him (Christ), we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us..." ~Ephesians 1:7-8   "In turn, you and I are to forgive others as we have been forgiven..." ~Matthew...

At some point in our lives, we all want forgiveness. At some point in our lives, we all find it hard to forgive. How did Jesus do it? How did He do justice to address the wrongs we do, yet simultaneously extend mercy to us? In this series, we’ll plumb the depths of Christ’s outpouring of love for us, with awe at how His sacrifice on the cross is central to what the Bible says about forgiveness and...

Join us as we wrap up 2023 and our 6-week series, “Interrupted: Joy Broke In!” During our time together, we will reflect on the significance and relevance of what happened to Simeon and Anna in Luke 2:21-40.  Their long-awaited encounter with Jesus in this passage has far greater implications for our lives today than we may realize. Let’s discern together what God may be trying to tell us as we he...

What a journey we have been on this Advent season as we’ve spent time together in our Christmas series: “Interrupted: Joy Broke In!” Each week has allowed us to experience the various characters of the Nativity story, God’s interruption in their lives, and their response to his revelation and invitation. We’ve walked with Mary and the Shepherds, the Magi and Joseph as they each journeyed toward th...

Joseph was a good man who was so excited to get married to the girl of his dreams. Then he got the news, the news that would be his worst nightmare—news that would be “Good News” to the whole world, but not for Joseph, or so he thought...   This news would change everything: his life, his reputation, the reputation of his wife, their marriage, his standing in the community, and his future.   How w...

We three kings of orient are… bearing gifts we traverse afar… I’ve sang the song… I’ve watched the movie…   From an early age I believed there were three kings who saw a star and somehow knew something significant had happened. They set out on a two-year journey to see for themselves. Over the last month or so almost everything I thought I knew about this story has been disrupted!   But it isn’t j...

As human beings it is very easy to fall into routines and habits that dictate the course of our days. We eat the same things for breakfast, drive to work by the same route, listen to the same radio station, check the same things on social media, work the same job, watch the same news, and follow the same nightly routine before bed. It works that way with our thought patterns too. Far more than we...

The day of a momentous historic event often begins like any other - the bright, sunny morning of September 11, 2001; the quiet, mostly clear skies over Pearl Harbor on Dec 7, 1941; an early morning sunrise in Israel on October 7.   Individuals woke up and went about their lives thinking it was a day like any other - until it wasn’t. Disruptive interruptions to our lives rarely announce themselves...

Did you know that gratitude expressed in community is a gateway to a life filled with joy and thanksgiving? This Sunday, we focus on Psalm 100, often titled A Psalm of Thanksgiving. This short Psalm of five verses is packed with practical ways for you and me to be filled with an attitude of gratitude. Come discover distinct declarations, directives, and two motivations which the writer of this Psa...

Come join us this Sunday as we explore the promise that Christ made to his disciples the very same night that he was betrayed and arrested. In John 14:18, Jesus comforts his disciples with these powerful words: “I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you.” Apart from Christ, we are spiritual orphans, but in Christ, we have been adopted into God’s family. Together, we will take a closer lo...

#Barriers. #Walls. #Hostility.    Our world is filled with barriers and “walls of hostility,” of all kinds. #Religious. #Racial. #Personal. #Physical…. Plenty of barriers to go around.    Recently, I was texting one of our senior leaders, and we both agreed that sometimes our barriers are sin and sometimes it’s us - feeling stuck in a wilderness of sorts – dysfunctional, emotional, spiritual, work...

This week we will look at (potentially) the most intimidating of the five core practices that should be a part of every growing Christian’s life: Sharing Jesus. I know that for myself, the thought of sharing Jesus in the cultural context of North America these days seems like a sketchy idea or a set up for definite rejection. We can often feel like our world today is suffering from opinion saturat...