New Life Downtown

Worship is at the very heart of Christian life and practice. Yet it is all too often conflated with singing or music or even a genre of music. How are we to understand what our call to worship actually means? Pastor Glenn Packiam teaches from Romans 12:1-2 and outlines four key features of worship as a response to the glorious Good News.

If God's love won't let go, what does that mean for Israel? Pastor Jason Jackson looks at how Paul answers this question in Romans 9-11. These complicated, confusing, and controversial chapters are bound together by God's mercy. Everything God does demonstrates his mercy, and everyone - Jew and Gentile alike - depend on God's mercy. This realization should lead all God's people to humility and wor...

What do Christians have to say about evil in the world? In Romans 8, Paul zooms out to show what the Good News means for the whole creation. God will redeem in a way that is so strong it will be the very completion and perfection of creation. Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us see the vision of a redeeming Creator and a creative Redeemer, a God who enters into our pain and groans and weeps with us. And...

Romans 8 is like the ending of a movement in a great symphony. Paul intends to lead us to worship the god who has done the impossible. Pastor Glenn Packiam tackles the first half of the chapter, helping us see how God has condemned Sin instead of us, given us the Spirit of Resurrection Life, and made us His children and heirs.

Why is the human experience repeatedly one of setting up standards and falling short? While culture opts for eliminating behavior norms and some Christians resort to a grace that makes no requirements of obedience, the Gospel is actually better than that. Pastor Glenn Packiam teaches from Romans 7 to show how Sin seized an opportunity through the Law to destroy us, but Christ made a way to unite u...

As we continue to explore the effects of grace in Romans, Pastor Jason Jackson unpacks Paul's view of grace and sin as opposing powers. Grace liberates us from the power of sin and empowers us to live a new life under a new Lord. As we present ourselves to God, his grace infuses our life with his and he makes us holy - he makes us like Jesus.

What difference does the grace of God make? We often think of grace as erasing past mistakes, giving us a fresh start. But as Pastor Glenn Packiam draws on gift-giving in the ancient world, we begin to see how this Christ-Gift creates a new status, a new relationship, and new possibilities. The gift we could never have deserved or earned reverses the trajectory of sin and death.

Abraham had faith and God credited it to him as righteous. This week Pastor Jason Jackson looks at Paul's discussion of Abraham in Romans 4. He shows us how the Gospel fits God's character, fulfills his commitments and bids us to believe like Abraham.

After opening with the good news, Paul's 'bad news' continues to get bleaker. The infection of sin has spread to everyone, even the ones who were to be the carriers of the cure. Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us to see our own tendencies to misdiagnose ourselves, to think our sin is a private affair, and to try to use some sort of 'law' to save us. Yet only Jesus by his faithfulness in death and resur...

As we begin our series on the Book of Romans, Pastor Glenn Packiam invites us to look afresh at what the good news is. We uncover the design of creation and the destructive effect of sin on our souls, minds, and bodies. The gospel is the power to put us back together again, revealing that God's faithfulness is stronger than our unfaithfulness.

In this final part of the series, Pastor Glenn Packiam examines how our work can be a way of bearing witness to the Kingdom of God. We tend to think that the gospel spread in the early Church only through apostles and prophets; but the everyday lives of merchants and tradespeople put God's goodness on display. When you understand the difference between 'vocation' and 'occupation', you can begin to...

Why does the church gather in worship? In our day of private spirituality and individual access to sermons and worship music online, it's difficult to know why it still matters that we gather together as the church. Preaching from Acts 2, and Ephesians 2 and 5, Pastor Glenn Packiam explains why the early Christians met at the Temple and then came to understand their gathering as the new Temple-- t...

Since the beginning, the church has gathered together to give thanks. Paul even says its God's will for us to be a grateful people. This week Pastor Jason Jackson explores why gratitude is essential to the Christian life and how we can cultivate it in our lives and in our life together.

The book of Acts tells the story of the rapid spread of the Gospel and the growth of the church. This incredible multiplication of people and places was supported and sustained by the church's hospitality. Pastor Jason Jackson unpacks what makes Christian welcome unique and invites us to continue to embrace others in way that puts God's hospitality on display.

As the series on how the early church grew together continues, Pastor Glenn Packiam examines what it means to be devoted to the breaking of bread. The breaking of bread is a metaphor for the life of the church. Bread, like much of church life, is ordinary. Yet, in the hands of Jesus we become like bread that is blessed, broken, and given for the life of the world.

There are few if any accounts that are more compelling and more challenging than those of the early church sharing their resources in Acts 2:44-45 and Acts 4:32-35. Pastor Jason Jackson illustrates how their acts of simplicity and generosity grew out of their devotion to the apostles' teaching, community, communion and prayer and were inspired by the Spirit.

Fellowship-God's design of us is to be active participants in the community of God by being in fellowship with God and fellowship with one another.

What does it mean to be the Church? How do we grow together as the people of God? In this new series, Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us learn from key practices of the early church, as we see it demonstrated in the Book of Acts.

Even those who don't believe in God recognize evil in some form; there is something insidious at work in the world. But what are to do about it? Preaching from Ephesians 6 in this conclusion of the series, Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us understand what it means to put on God's armor and to participate in His work through prayer.

Paul's statements about husbands and wives, parents and children, and slaves and masters have been misused by some and maligned by others. Pastor Jason Jackson demonstrates from Ephesians 5:21-6:9 how we've missed Paul's revolutionary instructions. Paul calls us to live in a new way in an old world by submitting ourselves to each other in love regardless of our status within the systems and struct...

What do we do about the disorder of the world around us? We are tempted to disengage or condemn the darkness. Pastor Glenn Packiam shows how Ephesians 5 gives us a picture of how we, as the children of Light, can participate in God's re-ordering of the world, through wisdom, understanding, and the in-filling of the Spirit.

When Christians start talking about our view of sexual morality, we are not often perceived as being loving. But what if Paul's admonishment to abstain from immorality and greed are actually rooted in the call to live with love? Pastor Glenn Packiam teaches from Ephesians 5 to demonstrate that sexual morality for the Christian is not simply about being a good person, but is the embodiment of a lif...