Kindred Church

This message concludes our study of the book of 1 Timothy! In this final chapter, Paul clarifies our focus. He calls us to fight the good fight of faith. He challenges us to remember our fight is not against one another or against culture or anything else, but to pursue righteousness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness above all else.  This message is from our Sunday morning service on June 28...

In celebration of Father's Day, join us for a conversation about Jesus' vision for family, the way he redefines it and broadens our definition. The beauty of the church is that we get to embody these roles not just for our biological families but for one another. We gain spiritual mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters in our belonging to God and to each other. This message is from...

Welcome to VIM - short for Very Important Meeting! These bonus episodes will feature candid conversations between Zack and Lindsey that explore rabbit trails, questions, & insights from sermon study they didn't get to use, honest wrestling with current church & ministry philosophy, and what we're learning about ourselves along the way. In today's VIM, we cover: - Research re...

The church is facing an accountability crisis. We are all too familiar with headlines featuring the failures of faith leaders and many of us carry our own personal stories of pain and spiritual trauma. We know accountability is crucial for developing trust, but what does it look like in real life and in our churches? We begin with Paul's words to Timothy in this letter and what it looks like...

Leadership matters because of what it does to us and the way it influences our own trust in God. This week we explore Paul's qualifications for church leadership and how we should thoughtfully interpret this highly contested list. Jesus is bigger and better than the institutions that represent him, though together we ask ourselves what it looks like for each of us to aspire to Christ-likeness...

Does Scripture really say women shouldn't teach or hold positions of authority? How do we interpret Paul's instructions here in light of the Biblical precedent for women in leadership across the Old & New Testaments? Together we explore the hidden context behind this passage and the implications for women in leadership today.  Women in Leadership Position Statement  This message is f...

In this introduction to 1 Timothy we explore a few of the subtle distortions to the Christian faith the people of Paul's day were in danger of believing and how they are still relevant for us today. Masterfully peeling away all the layers of nonsense built up around Jesus, Paul clarifies us how simple and pure the good news really is: we are no better than anyone else, and Jesus is patient wi...

Why do people so often seem to become the thing that they started out despising? Maybe a tougher question: why do we ? As Esther closes, we see the Jewish people, fresh off of the Great Reversal, begin to treat their enemies just as they had been treated in the past. They called it justice - but what Jesus describes as justice is far different. This message is from our Sunday morning service on Ma...

Zack: I was trapped recently in one of those coffee drive-thru lines where the car in front of you paid for your order. The happy barista informed me of the good news and pleaded that I would continue the hour-long trend. My $3 coffee became a $17.52 coffee. I wasn't happy. Sometimes the decision to pay it forward costs more than we thought it might. Esther experienced this with stakes much m...

Most of us don’t tolerate uncertainty or the unexpected very well. The unknown tends to make us want to question God. Though what if we could learn to treat the unexpected not as a deviation from God’s character or proof of his distance, but as evidence of his involvement? Surprise is one of the ways we can trace his fingerprints across history. The pages of Esther are no different. Chapters 5-7 i...

If God is in control, do my choices really matter? As our story develops we find ourselves caught in this mysterious tension, wrestling with the relationship between God’s provision and our participation. When we neglect one or the other, we either fall into coercion and control or passivity and recklessness. Esther's story invites us to consider what it means to be faithful, to trust God wit...

We kick off the book of Esther by re-evaluating the startling story that we see in the first few chapters. What do we say in the face of abusive power? How do we make sense of times when God seems absent? Esther has a lot to say about things past the normal conventions of women's conferences and kid's tales. This message is from our Sunday morning service on April 12th, 2026. We meet at...

Scars tell a story, they are the evidence of our past and remind us that we've been marked by what has happened to us but still, we survived. As we celebrate the story of Easter, we are comforted by the central role Jesus' scars play in his resurrection. He chose to keep his scars on his resurrected body, wearing the cost of new life on his hands and feet. Together, we reflect on what th...

Today is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. It marks the beginning of the end of Jesus' time on earth as he enters the city and marches toward his inevitable death. This famous scene features two remarkable symbols - palm branches signifying Jewish nationalism and military victory and a donkey signifying peace and the antithesis of war. As Jesus stomps over the demand to use his deity f...

In every relationship, someone has to make the first move. Our relationship with Jesus is really no different. Today we revisit a famous passage about a man named Zacchaeus, exploring how Jesus made the first move and what this encounter foreshadows about the cross and how we might live differently in light of it.  This message is from our Sunday morning service on March 22nd, 2026. We meet at 957...

Growing up is all about developing independence. From the time we are born, each new milestone brings us closer to self-reliance. Today's passage makes us wonder, does our emphasis on independence from the very start of our lives make dependence in our spiritual life something we struggle against? Are there some things we are never meant to grow out of? This message is from our Sunday morning...

Even in the days Jesus walked the earth, there were those looking at the chaos of the world, making predictions about the end-times, and wishing victory would be won by political and military might. Jesus speaks of a different kind of Kingdom. He reminds us the Kingdom is indwelling your heart; it can exist in the very center of who you are, deep down In the desperate part of your heart, mind, and...

This morning we revisit the famous three parables Jesus told about the lost; a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son. Interestingly, these stories weren't told to the lost...they were told to the Pharisees, the religious elite outraged he was spending time such an obviously deplorable crowd. Jesus masterfully uses these stories to communicate God's unrelenting pursuit of the lost, whil...

Jesus analogizes life with him to a narrow door or path. This specific image is meant to communicate two things to us: 1) Walking through that door into his presence, is like being invited to a banquet prepared for us. It's open to the lowly, to those that recognize that they are limping towards the finish line and that they don’t have it all figured out. 2) What we are walking into by choosi...

Have you ever wondered why bad things happen to good people? When Jesus was asked this question, he responded by inviting people to think differently about the present moment because no one knows what the future will hold. We tend to dwell on the past or worry about the future, but Jesus reminds us all we have is what we do with the moment we're in. The invitation to reimagine and re-evaluate...

Jesus warns you can't measure someone's life by the things they own, though we often spend our whole lives in pursuit of more. Jesus warns it is foolish to only live for yourself, though we often spend our lives self-absorbed. Jesus' words to us today about greed and worry are a challenge to all of us no matter our income or station in life. His invitation to selflessness is ultimat...

We deliberately pause from our regular rhythm of service to respond to the current events unfolding in Minneapolis and the national conflict rippling throughout our country. Lindsey provides a guided lament for our collective grief then Zack leads us through communion closing with a powerful visualization practice. We hope you find this grounding and clarifying as we seek to be people shaped by lo...

Jesus reminds his friends we are all susceptible to hypocrisy. It's the kind of poison that corrupts our souls. It makes us callous to the compassion of Jesus, judgmental of those desperate for care and, and closes us off from love. Today we explore Jesus' sobering metaphor about a dirty cup and what it means to live a sincere life, to be people of integrity and honesty in a cultural mom...

We were made for storytelling. Stories are what shape us, they live in our bones and ring in our ears and color our imaginations. Today we reimagine a famous passage about two sisters, about devotion, and about the most important thing in life. We ask ourselves, who's feet are we seated at and what kind of story are they telling us about God, others, and ourselves?  This message is from our S...

In a cultural moment where hatred, viciousness, and violence are being stoked, celebrated, and encouraged the parable of the Good Samaritan challenges us to redefine who we call our neighbors. This story invites us to reimagine what it looks like to love others as Jesus truly meant it and what it means to be a safe place for people to recover from religious trauma and rediscover new life.   This m...