Element Christian Church of Santa Maria

No matter what life circumstance you come from, being a parent should be first centered on Jesus before anything else. Our relationship with our children should flow out of our relationship with our God.

We finish Stephen’s story of his trial in front of the religious leaders this week by seeing the outcome of his confrontation: death. When Stephen defends his position to the Jewish Ruling Council he does it by retracing the Jewish heritage and history to the people who thought they knew it the best. Stephen tells their history in a way that would have been unfamiliar to those who thought they kne...

Welcome to week 19 of the book of Acts, we are just over halfway through with our series that is covering the first half of the book. We are looking at the early church in order to better identify how to serve and love Jesus as they did. It is important to remember that Acts is both prescriptive and descriptive, meaning some sections teach us what to do while other sections simply describe events...

We are in our series walking through the book of Acts; we have made it through 18 weeks (including this morning’s message). Element is walking through the book of Acts in an effort to look deeper into how the church started and what today’s church should be striving toward. Today, we get to look at a peace that speaks for us. In today’s text the opposition to the message of the Gospel is taken to...

We see in this passage from Acts a Pharisee named Gamaliel. Gamaliel was the grandson of one of the greatest Rabbi’s in Jewish culture; Hillel. He does not really know what to do with the Apostle’s message of preaching in Jesus’ name because he says “for if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail, if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them.” Gamaliel did not take a stand...

We see in this passage from Acts a Pharisee named Gamaliel. Gamaliel was the grandson of one of the greatest Rabbi’s in Jewish culture; Hillel. He does not really know what to do with the Apostle’s message of preaching in Jesus’ name because he says “for if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail, if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them.” Gamaliel did not take a stand...

While Mother’s Day should be a time of celebration and appreciation, it can remind others of hurt, frustration, and loss. Each of us faces hardship in certain areas and seasons of our lives, and it is important to know how to frame those experiences in light of the Gospel. Jesus knows us and truly empathizes with our suffering in a way no one else can. While He does not promise us an easy, comfort...

This is week 15 of our 37 week journey through the book of Acts. On the side of these notes you will see an overview of each of the weeks we have covered so far. Today will put much of Acts 5 together as we discuss a joy that comes from understanding our identity in Jesus. How would you describe Christianity? This week we look at having a joyful identify in Christ. In Acts 5 we see that people are...

Element is in our series that is going verse by verse through the first half of the book of Acts. Today is week 14 of our 37 week journey. This week we look at the encouragement and hope of Christ that leads to our healing in multiple ways. The book of Acts is about what God is doing in His church, when we understand what God not only has done but is doing, we are better able to understand His hop...

This is our 13th week going through the book of Acts. We are studying the book of Acts in an effort to better understand what Jesus calls the church to be and how He expects it to function. Most churches won’t do everything perfect, or even well, at times, but we can strive to be what Jesus has called us to be.? Today we are talking about the difficult subject of accountability and being exposed i...

This is Acts week 12 and we have been going through many paces of the early church in an effort to better focus ourselves on what the church should be today. There are identifiable markings of what the church should be that come out of the Bible, this week we will be talking about church membership. Membership of a club usually involves the question, “what do I get out of this?” We often find ours...

We are in our series on the book of Acts! This is week 11 and we are looking at the amazing nature of the community that Jesus calls us to be part of. Often times our personality does not arise in isolation, the majority of who we are happens because God uses people to form people. This idea in psychology is called “The Looking Glass Self,” the way other people view us and treat us is one of the l...

The word “soul” is something everyone recognizes, we may even have opinions about it, but don’t exactly know what to say. Almost all religious, philosophical, mythological, and even psychological traditions have a certain notion of the “soul” even if they wouldn’t use that exact word. The idea of a soul has confused the best minds for thousands of years. Thomas Aquinas, who is considered one of th...

Element is taking the better part of 2016 to walk through the first 12 chapters of the book of Acts in order to focus us on what Jesus calls the church to be like in the world. In Acts 3:11-26, the Apostle Peter preaches the second sermon recorded in the early church…and he speaks primarily about God’s revealed truth. Peter shows us two things about truth. 1) There is such a thing as final truth a...

Element is spending the next few months in the first half of the book of Acts in order to help grow us deeper into the type of church Jesus is calling us to be. Read Acts 3:1-10. How do you tend to view stories about healing? One of the things Peter does is look intently at the man who was crippled before healing him. In John 5 Jesus heals a man who didn’t really want to get better, the man used h...

Element is going through the first half of the book of Acts over the course of the first nine months of 2016. Part of the reason why we do this is we want to be a “better” church, a body of believers focused on Jesus and what He is doing in the world through us. Today, most people’s criteria for finding a church is, “I don’t want it to be boring,” but that is a horrible way to find a church. We wa...

Element is going through the first half of the book of Acts over the course of the first nine months of 2016. Part of the reason why we do this is that we want to be a “better” church, a body of believers focused on Jesus and what He is doing in the world through us. Today, most people’s criteria for finding a church is, “I don’t want it to be boring,” but that is a horrible way to find a church....

This is week 5 of our 37-week journey through the book of Acts. Acts will do three main things for us as a church body: 1. Enable us to see the beginnings of the church and Jesus’ call to mission. 2. Enable us to understand what to look for in a church body should we ever move out of the Santa Maria Valley. 3. Enable us to understand that when we live on mission with and for Jesus we won’t underst...

We are taking about two thirds of this year to cover the first half of the book of Acts. We are attempting to bring about a few things by covering this book in detail: 1. To see the beginnings of the church and Jesus’ call to mission. 2. To help you, because many of you are people in transition, we understand that many of you will not spend the rest of your life in Santa Maria so we want you to ha...

The book of Acts details the beginnings of the early church, their stumbles, their questions, but most importantly, the leading of Jesus by His Spirit which was sent to guide. That same Spirit is the one that leads and guides us as well. Right after Jesus’ ascension, He told his disciples to wait for the Holy Spirit. Waiting is never easy; when the disciples waited, they did something wonderful, t...

Welcome to week two of Acts. This series will take us through September as we learn about the founding of the early church and the original Apostles. The book of Acts is constantly re-centering us on Jesus as the focal point of all creation and our lives.

Welcome to a new year and Element’s new sermon series on Acts. This series will take us until the end of September, so strap yourselves in, get comfortable, we will be here for a while! Today we are not starting with Acts 1, we are reviewing the entire gospel of Luke to help us gain pertinent background information to start the series. Luke wrote a historical account of the life, death, and resurr...

Isaiah 25:6 On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.

Today we're going to look at the only biblical story of Jesus as a child. We know this story is true, because when Luke was writing his Gospels he relied heavily on eyewitness accounts (Luke 1:2). Luke would trace these stories, and people's accounts of Jesus very carefully and make sure that everything was backed up by multiple people who where there. So while I'm sure he had notes on a ton of st...

The 4th week of Advent typically centers on peace. Sunday morning we looked at the Magnificat, Mary’s response to hearing the Gospel, as well as other possible responses to the Gospel message (centrality, wonder, fear, and truth). It’s crazy to think that Mary was the first person to learn of God’s specific plan! This discussion is a great opportunity to refresh your GC on the meaning of the Gospe...