Grassroots Church | Thunder Bay, Ontario

As we continue our series on Christian praying, we tap into one of the most powerful themes in the Psalms: being poor and need. Entering deeper into Psalm 23 and 24 we see how God will not allow us to approach him arrogantly. Pride shuts down the pathway to the heart of God. Exploring simple prayer, authentic prayer, and need prayer, we happily leave behind any forms of religious prayer based on a...

In our second-to-last sermon in this series on the voice of creation, we take a look at Jesus’s response to human pride and the anxious lifestyles borne of self-sufficiency. In his great teaching in Matthew 6, Jesus reminds us to open our eyes and ears to creation and remember from their testimony that we are dependent, needy, and provided for God. In this simple but challenging call to seek God’s...

As we continue our summer series on the voice of creation, we turn to Job’s encounter with the created world. In Chapters 38-42, we watch as Job is transformed by opening his eyes to the creatures as they really are, not as Job and his friends have imagined them. They have a dignity that is completely unrelated to their domination of animals. As Job opens his mind and heart to the world around him...

Carolyn Whatley shares this week's message continuing the series on hearing the Voice of Creation. Insights are shared from the perspective of seeing the creation stories of Genesis as a birth story from a loving Father.

This week, we continue to explore scripture’s view of nature.  Exploring Paul’s teaching in Romans 8, Pastor Keith continues to challenge us to wake up--and open up-- to the voice of creation.  When we do, we learn that the future hope of bodily resurrection for humanity is the future hope of all species. All species await freedom from death and decay. Non-human nature groans, eagerly awaiting new...

This week, Pastor Keith launches a series on scripture’s view of creation.  Opening up Psalm 19, we learn that there are two voices (Torah and creation) testifying to God’s character and drawing us into the wider community of worship. The sun, the Psalmist––and later Jesus––tells us teaches us that God is strong, he is wise, he is joyful, he is abundantly merciful, he loves his enemies and blesses...

In this final of four sermons on worship Pastor Jenn Swift speaks about the worshipping community. This is when worship moves completely out of I and into We. Like a massive rock concert, it doesn't matter whether I join in or not, but that doesn't make you insignificant. While God may bless us individually by being part of the body, corporate worship leads us to be forgetful of ourselves and remi...

In this third of four sermons on worship Pastor Jenn Swift encourages us to take our private worship of God public.   We turn our affections to God in as we share love; we turn our hearts to God despite disappointments. And we learn to focus on Him and not constantly demand that He focus on us. With a story about singing a creation hymn loudly at a tourist waterfall destination, Pastor Jenn sugges...

In this second of four sermons on worship, Pastor Jenn Swift discusses private worship and how a worshipping life without the private sphere is like only going on dates with God every once in a while; or worse, like showing up to the same party every week as God and that's it.  That's be a pretty shallow relationship.  Our common life in worship, on Sunday mornings for example, will be determined...

Pastor Jenn Swift introduces a four-part series on worship––private, public, and corporate. Jumping off with Isaiah 29:13 "These people honour me with their lips but their hearts are far from me", we explore how to turn our hearts and affections to God as relational beings, in all our dimensions. Worship starts with the Almighty, and not us, and this leads us to ask "how do You, God, want me to ho...

In this final conclusion to our year with Jesus, we take one more look at devotion to Jesus. His final living apostle, John, abandoned to exile, writes the book of Revelation based on a series of visions with his Lord.  Pastor Keith briefly shares the fate of each of the disciples, looking once more at Jesus’s call to self-sacrificial love.

The first of a two part series concluding our year with Jesus. We are left with one compelling invitation: devotion to Jesus. Paul becomes one of the first to realize just how deep the this goes. Starting with Jesus' own claim that he is the bridegroom, Pastor Keith provides three stories from church history of people who have embraced devotion to Jesus as a spiritual marriage.

When Jesus ascends into Heaven, his Spirit returns (disguised, unseen, powerful) and has been hard at work for more than 2,000 years ever since. As Jesus's promised eternal presence, the Holy Spirit comes in the form of a descending flame. And then all heaven breaks loose. Pastor Keith explores the connection between the Spirit and obedience.

Before he ascends to heaven, after spending time in Jerusalem with his disciples, Jesus takes one final journey to his home region of Galilee. In the context of Jesus' famous conversation with Peter in which he asks him to lead his sheep, Pastor Keith assesses what it looks like when church is seen as a product rather than a calling, begging the question each of us must answer: to what church are...

After he was raised from the dead, after the women encountered the angelic message, Jesus appeared first to the women, then to two disciples who were leaving town dejected, and then Peter. Then Jesus appeared to the rest of the 11 disciples and then to many more of his followers. This week, Pastor Keith focuses on his appearance to the 11 disciples together, behind closed doors.

It is Sunday. Two days after Jesus died. It’s early. The sun is coming up. The women, as they get to the empty tomb get the biggest shock of their life: an angel appears and gives them a mission. Then Jesus himself, resurrected appears to them.

Pastor Keith focuses on the women disciples visiting the empty tomb at sunrise on the day after the Sabbath. He considers how if God's mission is to undo death, the resurrection should shape our passion for this mission.

This week, on Palm Sunday, Pastor Keith remembers Jesus as King and follows him to the mount of selflessness. Bound by those he would have wanted to please and set free, he bears up under their mockery. Pitted against a killer, Jesus is condemned.  Unable to free ourselves for selfless living, we watch as Jesus dies for us. The question is: how do we handle that?

In Part Four of our series on Jesus’s teachings, Pastor Keith talks about the connections between cares, riches, and pleasures of life and unforgiveness. If life is a series of endless products, when our relationships fail us, we feel free to discard them as well. Exploring Jesus’s parable of the unmerciful servant, forgiveness, boundaries, and reconciliation in the Christian life are discussed.

In Part Three of our series on Jesus’s teachings, we will take some more time with Mark 10.32-45. Stressing Jesus’s call to his disciples to reflect his selfless love, we will explore how the cares, riches, and pleasures of life lead us to believe that life is about us getting served. Pastor Keith reads a few sayings from John of the Cross, a Christian master on selflessness and offers up some ide...

Are you stretched thin? Over-committed? Can’t really find time to be a disciple? In the second of five sermons on Jesus’s teachings, Pastor Keith continues on with the themes of devotion to God in an age choked by the cares, riches, and pleasures of life.  As we read about the time where Jesus’s disciples James and John, sons of Zebedee, were seeking to be the greatest and best, we consider our ow...

In this first message of the 5th part of the Following Jesus series, Pastor Keith looks at the Parable of the Sower. The idolatry, market, consumerism and self-help is collectively a $1 trillion industry trying to "choke" us. Keith looks at what it takes to be freed from these vices and to experience the deep, rich soil that produces growth and maturity.

As we enter 2018, our community is in need of hope - where better to turn than considering the restoration of all things, when everything that is out of sorts will be made right again. Steven looks at why the afterlife has traditionally not been a source of hope for many Christians and how the renewal of all things has the ability to transform our hope.

On our road to the manger in Bethlehem, we make one final stop, to listen to John the Baptist’s parents, Elizabeth and Zechariah, one final time. Pastor Keith looks at this story to see what we can learn about joy and worship as well as God's faithfulness.