New Life Downtown

Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us take a closer look at the story of Jesus meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well. We see how Jesus came to a lowly person in a hated region going through the toughest time of her life and restored her dignity, redirected her desires, and changed her destiny. Sermon Slides: Encounters 1 - The Woman at the Well

In this conclusion of the series, Pastor Glenn Packiam calls us to see how the Kingdom of God is made visible by the Church, and how the Kingdom kind of life is made possible by a certain kind of community. We come to see why Paul's outworking of the Gospel announcement that Jesus is King was to plant churches. In the final words of Paul's letter to the Colossians, we see that each local church is...

When we think about how we are to live as the church in the world, we can be tempted to pick one of two approaches: prayer or presence. Is the church called to pray for God to work or is the church to participate in God's work by being engaged in the world? Paul's charge to the Colossian Christians is to do both. Pastor Glenn Packiam exhorts us to learn from Paul's words and be a praying church an...

Belonging to Jesus means being formed into a new family. But families are messy and made up of broken people. Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us see the wisdom and the power of Paul's radical call to let the peace of Christ reign in us, to let the Word of Christ dwell in us, and to do everything in the name of Christ.

According to Paul, the gospel establishes not only our future hope, but also our present way of life. This week Pastor Jason Jackson shows us how this works out. Because we already died with Jesus and have been raised by Him, we can take off what kills and put on what gives life. We can set aside things like lust, greed, anger, and falsehood and clothe ourselves in the image and ways of Jesus.

How do we grow? For some, the answer sounds like more rules and restrictions; in short, religion. For others, the key is in more transcendent experiences; in short, spirituality. But Christianity is neither asceticism nor mysticism. It's power is not in its practices or in its experiences. Rather, as Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us see, the way we grow as Christians is to be connected to the Life of...

A distorted view of grace makes us prone to believing in counterfeit gospels. Two of the most common distortions of grace are license and legalism. Amber Ayers helps us recognize how we tend to swing from one error to the other and miss the transforming power of the Gospel. The Good News is that Christ brings resurrection, not repair, and leads us into freedom.

We make meaning of our lives by narrating a story. But what would it be like for God to tell you your story? At the end of Colossians 1, Paul tells this young church their story according to the contours of the Gospel. Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us see what our past, present, and future looks like because of Jesus. What we find is the incredible hope of the Good News-our story is headed for glory!

In this special interview with New York Times best-selling children's book author Sally Lloyd-Jones, Pastor Glenn Packiam and his wife Holly ask Sally to share the story behind her award-winning "Jesus Storybook Bible". Through her stories, we discover the power of the True Story of Jesus the Rescuer and the Repairer of broken things.

There is arguably no figure more fascinating, more controversial, or of more consequence in all of human history than Jesus Christ. Did legends and mythologies about Jesus appear a century or two after his life, or were there confessions of His divinity as early as a few decades after his life? Preaching from what is often called the Christ-hymn in Colossians 1, Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us see t...

The apostle Paul writes from prison to a young church struggling to hold onto the truth. The heart of his message will be the supremacy of Jesus Christ. But here at the start, Paul wants them to learn how to pray. Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us understand how prayer is a way of participating in God's work, what we should pray for, and why prayer is powerful.

Unlike the other commandments, which address words and actions, the 10th Commandment addresses the motives and desires. God forbids us from obsessively desiring what is not ours. As Pastor Jason Jackson points out, coveting is a root sin that leads us to break the other commandments. Therefore, God invites us to desire and delight in what He's already given us.

This week Pastor Jason Jackson traces the trajectory of the Ninth Commandment from forbidding false witness in a court of law, to prohibiting every form of dishonest speech, to commanding truth-telling, and finally, to celebrating living in the truth. God ultimately desires us to be honest people. People whose relationships with others, with ourselves, and with God are bound together and strengthe...

Even if you haven't actively stolen something lately, there's still a robust invitation for you in the eighth word. "Do not steal" runs in conjunction with an opportunity for "open-handed living." Teaching from both Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 15, guest speaker Andrew Stoddard helps you form a vision for what open-handed living looks like practically, and he gives you the tools you need to identify...

The commandment that prohibits adultery is usually where people either keep God out of their private lives or prevent Him from getting too close because of pain or shame. But if the commandments are windows into God's character and our calling, then we need to look more closely at why this commandment exists. Pastor Glenn Packiam explains how sex is more powerful and sacred than we realize, and ho...

Calvin rightly insisted if God forbids something, then he commands the opposite. With the Sixth Commandment, God prohibits taking the life of another human being AND he calls us to do all we can to protect and promote life. This week Pastor Jason Jackson shares how we can pursue this call in our complicated world.

Honor your father and mother. The command seems straight forward, right? In this sermon, Pastor Jason Jackson challenges us to reconsider the text's primary audience and to consider the text's primary assumption in order to call us to embody what the Fifth Commandment values in our relationships and in ourselves.

As we continue our series on the Ten Commandments, pastor, author, and founder of the 24-7 Prayer movement, Pete Greig joins us to preach on Sabbath Rest. Pete helps us to see and receive the Sabbath as a day of rest, worship, and joy!

What's in a name? For God, He has entrusted his people to represent His character when they carry His name.

We know why God would prohibit Israel from making images of other gods, but why does He command them not to make images of Him? In this sermon on the 2nd Commandment, Pastor Jason Jackson unpacks the use of idols in the ancient world and invites us to consider ways that we attempt to confine, control, or silence God in our lives.

What if the Ten Commandments are so much more than arbitrary rules or expired instructions? In the first sermon of our new series, Pastor Jason Jackson shows how the Ten Commandments as a collection reveal God's character and our calling. Then he helps us see the first commandment as an invitation to love the God who loves us.

In this conclusion of the Psalm series, Pastor Glenn Packiam shows how Psalm 150 reminds us that the journey will end in praise. It is God and God alone who can break into the tragic and turn it surprisingly into triumph. Moreover, when we praise now it is a way of anticipating this good and final end.

Where do you go for help, when you need someone to be your protector and guardian? Psalm 121 is a prayer for pilgrims who are aware of the dangers of the journey. Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us to see what it means to call God our help and guardian, and how we can trust Him because of what He has done for us in Jesus Christ.

Psalm 139 is a prayer that reminds us that God knows us, God is with us, and God is forming us. On Mother's Day, Pastor Glenn Packiam talks about how women have a particular way of cultivating the life of God in others?a uniqueness that ought to be celebrated. Holly Packiam and Lisa Beck join him for the latter half of the sermon to discuss how they learned to embrace the call to cultivate the lif...

Psalm 119 is a literary tour de force. This 176-verse acrostic is the longest song in the collection, but perhaps the most astonishing feature is its subject. The Psalmist pens a lengthy love song to God's law because he knows that God has revealed the way of life in his word. Through his lyrics, he shows us how to devote ourselves to the Scriptures as an expression of our devotion to God.