Great Lakes Church

We all have drawers full of "life-changing" household products we saw on TikTok but have yet to see said promised change in life from them. The scrub brush didn't make your tub shine when it arrived, did it? The secret that isn't often mentioned is that you have to actually use the thing. That's the only way it works. You have to apply it to your bathroom. Jesus' ideas and principles are very much...

Most of us count down to the weekend with every day we get the kids ready for school, go to work and make the commute. We just want a break from the frantic pace. Starved to escape the busyness, we daydream about tropical vacations. But sometimes we walk away from those breaks unfulfilled; like something was missing. We’re not meant to go all day every day, but maybe we’re not meant to totally shu...

Do you remember the last time you lost your phone? Odds are you were in a hurry to get something done or be somewhere by a certain time, so your search was a rushed one. After looking the whole house over a dozen times, you finally ask someone to help you find it and when they do, you exclaim, “I looked there five times! How did I miss it?” That’s what hurry and haste does everywhere in our lives...

The design for our lives was never to rush through it. We push speed limits, we sprint through conversations, and we often miss the fullness of what God truly had in mind for us because we're not slowing down long enough to see it. Maybe there's something to be said for ruthlessly eliminating hurry from our lives.

Jesus doesn't give us a list of obligations. Instead, he invites us to participate in this grand adventure of becoming more like Him and showing His hope to the world, with the hope of making things a little lighter and a whole lot more freeing. Join us as we hear about the nature of the great adventure He'll take us on, shared by our Director of Student Ministry Development, Darryl Lawler.

Our world is more connected than ever. Cell phones & social media mean an endless wealth of people at our fingertips... but is this the way to true rest & growth? Together we explore the path to the TRUE connection we need, and we define what we can look for to ensure we're being fueled by the proper source.

Many of us come from broken homes. Sometimes that’s divorce, sometimes it’s worse but not as tangible. As a result, we sometimes feel like there’s a lid on our life because of our last name. Or maybe we feel like failures because our best efforts to do it differently have fallen short. We’re frustrated, embarrassed, nervous, stuck and exhausted. But we don’t need to keep striving; we’ve been given...

Most of our adolescence is spent racing to get older – and to some degree, getting away from Mom and Dad. Then as adults we will often continue the same pursuit. We want to become our own person and blaze our own trail in the world. Normal? Yes. Sometimes resulting in mistakes and regret because we ignored the past and failed to contextualize it today? Yes. So how do we do it differently? How do w...

Have you ever noticed that two people can go through the same experience and come out of it with different feelings about what happened? It happens all the time; including with family. Parents, siblings and even cousins can have almost opposite stories about the way things were growing up. The narrative is in the mind of the one telling the story. Who we come from is framed by who we are today.

A moment can change everything. One decision to be different, think different and move different can end a legacy or start a new one. That’s a good thing…sometimes a bad one. Either way, we have the ability to change the future and do it different.

Every so often we are asked why we don’t like a certain person, party or sports team. And often our answer is, “Because my dad doesn’t like them.” And he would likely say something along those lines for why he doesn’t like them. We’re spending parts of our lives angry aacznd bitter but don’t have to. If we choose to see others through a different lens, we might get to change the generations-long s...

From adolescence to adulthood, most of us can resonate with struggling to find our identity. As we grow and change, we wonder “where do I fit?” and “how does God want to use me?” Our church has asked a lot of those same questions– and over the course of 15 years we’ve been able to hone in on what kind of church we want to be in this community. We’re just getting started!

What do you do when your now isn't the now your later had in mind? Sometimes our best-laid plans fall apart and the situation in front of us will change where we're headed forever. How will you respond?

Why is it that every time we know where we’re going, how we’re going to get there and when we’re going to get there something gets in the way? Inconveniences. Hurdles. Roadblocks. We face these every single day with every single goal. And usually we spend a lot of energy trying to get around them, but what if we shouldn’t? What if there’s something to the “setback?” What if it’s not a setback at a...

There are a lot of people just surviving in life. They’re making it through every day but not much more than that. The week is a list of checkboxes that they work through until the weekend. Truth be told, there are a lot of churches like that too. Just existing. But shouldn’t it be better than that? If there really is a creative God orchestrating all of this, there has to be a point…a purpose.

The number one reason most people have jobs is to make money. Without a job our rent, car note, grocery bill and our Starbucks addiction won’t get paid for. So most of us get up every morning and go to a job we hate, and maybe think is pointless, because it’s a necessity not a passion. And because of that, we’re often left feeling like our lives may not matter as much as others. But nothing could...

Most people look at their phone 2,000 or more times per day. And most of what we find on it stresses us out, makes us feel insecure, or is just bad all together. Usually our reaction to something like that is to run away from it. But if there’s a way for us to make it better–to change it–shouldn’t we? 

It’s hard to run the race of following Jesus when the reality is: we’ll never be good enough! But everything we need to know about running the race with endurance and keeping our eyes on Jesus can be found in an interaction between a guy named Simon and a prostitute.

Your truth, my truth, we all have a truth. But can they all be true? If all truth is relative then how do we actually know anything at all? Does your brain hurt yet? If there is such a thing as objective truth, then it means everything to everyone. And that’s… the truth.

We all grew up being told stories. Some were from bedtime books to help us fall asleep. Others were fables created to help us know good from bad. More often than not, these stories taught us to behave in a particular way and become good citizens as adults. When we grew up though, we learned those stories were just that: stories. We know now they’re not real and sometimes they’re not even ideal in...

Where did all of this come from? That’s a loaded question, right? You might talk to 100 people and get 100 different answers to that question. One of the trickiest parts to answering, “God made everything” is the follow-up question: how? What if that’s the wrong question though?

Not many people argue that Jesus didn’t exist, but there’s still a lot of debate about what difference he actually made. Did he make things better? What did he come for in the first place? Did his death and resurrection change things?

So much of what we’re told as kids is expected to be accepted. The problem is that as we become adults, we start to explore the expected and end up with more questions than answers. Generations have done just that with the resurrection of Jesus. Just like they did the day it happened, we’re all asking… is it real?

Romans 8:14-16 The Church is a family... The story of the church begins with Jesus picking 12 followers and inviting them into family. He committed himself to them because Jesus understood that the greatest healing comes through relationships. The biggest questions in life revolve around relationships, where do I belong? Who do I belong to? Where do I fit in?

Loving people is hard – especially with difficult people. We just don’t feel loving all the time. But if we’re going to be like Jesus, we have to figure out a way to love everyone always, not sometimes. And that’s the key: we can’t do what comes naturally… we’re gonna need something supernatural.