Forest Hills Mennonite Church

W. David O. Taylor says that Christian worship suffers from theologies that "prioritize the interior and invisible activities of the heart and mind, where the 'real' action of worship is believed to occur." Scripture, in contrast, presents a vision of worship overflowing with physicality, as God's people stand, bow, kneel, dance, clap, sing, shout, and raise their hands before their creator. 

The Psalms are an ancient songbook overflowing with expressions of praise to God. Within their rich diversity, what can we learn about our own practices of worship today? 

Why does God save us?

How does God save us? Drawing from Acts and Romans, Pastor Jon walks though the significance of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection for salvation.

What is the right verb tense for salvation? Do we speak of salvation in the past ("when were you saved?") or in the future, as something we have yet to experience? The Biblical story shows us how Jesus unfolds salvation both within time and across time.

Existence is a fundamentally relational phenomenon: everything that is exists in and through a complex web of relationships. Since God created a relational cosmos, then salvation must be relational, too.

Most people with even a passing awareness of Christianity know that it has something to do with "salvation": getting saved, being saved, accepting Jesus as savior. But do we have a shared sense of what we mean when we talk about salvation? This message launches us into a five week exploration of what salvation is and how we understand it.

So much of Jesus' teaching, particularly in the Gospel of Luke, focuses on finances and economics. Following Jesus has profound implications for how we make, spend, save, and share our money. Chad Martin, Executive Director of Chestnut Street Housing, invites us into Jesus' good news of a year of jubilee. 

If God truly raised Jesus from the dead, then we have the chance to rethink everything we've assumed to be true about the world. 

In Luke's Gospel, Jesus' disciples herald his arrival into Jerusalem by acclaiming him as "king." What does it mean to affirm that Jesus' life, teachings, death, burial, and resurrection all contribute to his enthronement as King?

Is "revolutionary" an appropriate category for understanding the life and actions of Jesus? While some modern scholars think so, the true revolution Jesus brought about wasn't with swords and spears but within hearts and minds. 

Hannah Arendt once claimed that, "The discoverer of the role of forgiveness in the realm of human affairs was Jesus of Nazareth." Learning to forgive like Jesus is a core part of Christian faith and practice. 

Jesus practices and models an extravagant generosity. How can we better pattern our lives after his? 

The incarnation means that Jesus steps into all of the messiness of human existence—including our politics. What can we learn from how navigates the political complexities of his day? 

Jesus spends his time proclaiming the Kingdom of God, doing good, and telling stories. How can we learning from Jesus, the great storyteller?

Given the painful and violent history between Christians and Jews, some people find it surprising to be reminded that Jesus was Jewish. What can we learn about faithful discipleship by recognizing Jesus' Jewishness? 

While it's difficult to understand in modernity, Jesus' mighty deeds (healings, exorcisms, surprising interactions with nature) are one of the least disputed facts about Jesus' life and ministry. How do we reenter his world separated by 2,000 years? 

At the beginning of Jesus ministry, no one would of recognized him as "God," and he didn't seem to have a clear claim to the title "Messiah." How would his contemporaries have made sense of him? Perhaps the way he seemed to understand himself: as a prophet. 

"'Among all God's actions," according to Isaac the Syrian, "there is none which is not entirely a matter of mercy, love, and compassion: this constitutes the beginning and the end of his dealings with us." Before Jesus has said or done anything, God declares Jesus to be beloved—and reveals the love he has for all creation. 

Luke, more than any other canonical Gospel author, gives us a glimpse into Jesus' childhood and adolescence. What we see there confounds our understanding of divinity and ordinary humanity alike. 

Most people have a general sense of why Jesus was born, and there lots of theories that describe the significance of Jesus' death and resurrection. But why did Jesus... live? In the Apostles' Creed, the entire span of Jesus' earthly life and ministry is compressed down to a single comma. What might we discover if we expanded that comma and took Jesus' life (not just his birth and death) serious? 

Is "uncertainty" the opposite of "faith"? If that's true, then Christianity is primarily about keeping doubt at bay. The New Testament, however, gives us a different picture of faith, one that inspires us to put our trust in Jesus. 

"Sometimes," Flannery O'Connor wrote, "it seems you have to suffer as much from the Church as for it." If that's true, it's an indictment of how far the Church has veered off course. Maybe we can find some wisdom by looking at the somewhat ambiguous figure of John the Baptist, and consider what it means to not take offense at Jesus. 

The prophet Isaiah declares, "Comfort, comfort my people," yet Rachel weeps in Ramah, refusing to be comforted. Where is God when people suffer? The stories of Christmas point in a surprising direction. 

Our society is experiencing the most widespread and rapid shift in religious affiliation since the Third Great Awakening following the Civil War. Some suggest that we would have to look back even further in history—all the way to the Reformation—to find some comparable to what we're living through today. How do we approach the celebration of the birth of Christ when it seems like almost everyone i...