New Life Downtown

Our love for one another flows from the reality that God is love. The most radical expression of love is forgiveness. Forgiveness is neither a diminishing of the wrong, nor permission to the wrong-doer. It requires naming the wrong and then choosing to bear the weight of it. Yet, how can we bear the weight of someone else's wrong? We can't; but Jesus has. Exploring the events of the ancient Israel...

What would your life look like if you did not fear death? As we turn toward John's great command to love one another, Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us locate where we are: we have moved from the land of death- the world that Cain built- to the land of Life- the world that Jesus is making. From the way early Christians cared for each other during epidemics of the 3rd century to the way Christian missi...

Who are you, really? A sinner or a saint? Does this change based on how we're dealing with sin in our lives? Teaching from 1 John 2:28-3:10, Pastor Glenn Packiam reminds us that we are already children of God now, and that one day we will be fully like Jesus. This present identity and future hope give us confidence as we join our will to God's work in us and move from the ruts of 'practicing sin'...

What do we do with the reality of sin? With the pitfalls of behavioristic moralism on one side and a grace that makes no claims on us on the other, Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us see see sin as disordered desire which ends us distorting the object of that desire. For St. John, the "world" is not the created cosmos but the systems and structures of a life organized apart from and against God. To mak...

Pastor Glenn Packiam begins a new series on 1 John, helping us see what it means to live in the light. We fear that being in the light means being exposed. But John understood that the Lord is our Light and our salvation, and therefore we have nothing to fear. Confession, then, is not an occasion for shame; it is an opportunity for God's light to flood our lives.

In our fast-pace world where busyness is a badge of importance, we rarely ever truly stop. Yet the sabbath is, at its core, a call to cease from labor. Pastor Glenn Packiam explains how the sabbath is rooted in both creation and salvation. We explore rhythmic and organic ways of entering into God's rest, recognizing that God is with us in both green pastures and in dark valleys.

Have we become so used to the noise and the pace that we find it hard to sit alone with our thoughts? While not all busyness is a sign of unhealthy, many times busyness can mask a deeper brokenness that God wants to heal. Drawing from the story of Jacob, Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us see what it means to come face to face with ourselves and with the God who gives us a new name.

Pastor Evan Reedall shares about the church becoming the light...and the fact that it requires our darkness to be exposed and us to become visible (Ephesians 5). Through personal story and biblical insight, Evan delves into the tension between darkness and light, fear and hope. As we learn to trust in God's work and way, our response is to not just learn to trust, but to learn to be trustworthy.

Probably the most difficult 'question' that is asked - why would a loving God allow such suffering and tragedy in the world. Dr. Steven Todd talks about the 'problem' of calling it the 'problem of evil.' This "problem" language often propels us to try to find a 'solution' when the Scriptures seem to answer the 'who' and not always the 'why' of suffering. "To Whom else can I go?" Peter asked Jesus....

In this 'Family Sunday' sermon, Pastor Glenn Packiam responds to questions on how to know what issues to 'agree to disagree' on in order to preserve Christian unity, what it means when we say the New Life is a charismatic church and where the gifts can be in operation, and how parents can share the gospel with their children.

Pastor Glenn Packiam responds to specific questions emailed from the congregation. This week he discusses going to two services, suffering and the book of Job, healing and the 'now but not yet', and homosexuality.

What is the goal of the Christian life? We are tempted to say, 'Becoming like Jesus'; but that is a result, not a goal. The goal, as Pastor Glenn Packiam points out, is abiding in Christ. But what does that look like? With the help of a panel of seven people in different seasons of life, we explore spiritual practices that function like 'roots' or 'trellises' for abiding in Christ. These spiritual...

It seems to be ubiquitous: everyone cares about justice and global engagement. But what fuels our work for the good of the world? Is it human dignity? A focus on results? In the third and final part of this series, Pastor Glenn Packiam explores the central Table narrative in Luke's Gospel- the Passover- to show both a model for how and a motivation for why we 'prepare a Table' for Jesus in the wor...

New Life Downtown welcomes pastor Andrew Arndt of Bloom Church in Denver, CO. Pastor Andrew brought us a timely and encouraging message on Psalm 23, and what it looks like to trust God in the midst of life's circumstances.

We look at the last 'Table story' in Luke's gospel, the meal with the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Pastor Glenn Packiam shows how Jesus focuses on a few and takes his time with time, letting them give voice to their pain. This is a model for our engagement in the city, partnering with a few ministries for long-term impact. Yet, we are more often like the disappointed disciples given an opportu...

We long for meaning in our lives, yet we insist on a guarded existence. The result is that we only give ourselves to things within our reach. But the Kingdom awakens us to a greater Story and invites us to surrender our lives to Jesus. As Pastor Glenn Packiam shares New Life Downtown's story and identity through the Eucharistic words, "blessed, broken, given", he calls us to take responsibility fo...

Why do we so often hate our jobs and what can we do about it? Pastor Glenn explains how, because of the Fall, our work now involves 'toil' and is tainted by motivations of shame and fame. Yet the joy we do find in our work is a clue that the world will not always be this way. Moreover, when we move from working in the realm of self to working 'in the Lord', we can take heart that it will never ult...

Pastor Glenn Packiam takes us back to Genesis to help us see work as a pre-Fall call, a way we bear the image of God. In fact, work is collaborating with God to cultivate His world. While this call originated in Eden, it can be lived out anywhere-- even in Babylon-- because God is at work in us.

So much of our angst towards work is a failure to see our most important role within the workplace as "image-bearers" of God. Whether our work context takes us into the corporate world or keeps us close to home, God has given us the privilege of showing others what he is like. Sure earning money and striving for excellence in our professions have their place but we can't lose sight of JOB 1; helpi...

Surveys reveal that 80% of us are dissatisfied with our job. It's fair to say that we've lost some, if not all, of what God intended when he created us to work. Work is often just a means to an end and all joy and sense of meaning is gone from the 9-5 of our days. Pastor Brad Baker argues that God longs to restore the joy, satisfaction and sense of sacredness that he infused into work; into us! Th...

As Christ followers we rest assured that it is Christ and Christ alone who builds and sustains us. We are HIS people; the Church only through his great love, power and glory. However, he invites us to participate with him in becoming what he declares that we already are. But what exactly is our role? Some of us have wrongfully concluded that are job is simply to be present and observe. In this fin...

As we explore 1 Corinthians 15, we discover that Paul began his letter with the preaching of Christ crucified and closes his letter with the proclamation that Christ has been raised from the dead. Pastor Glenn Packiam shows what the resurrection means for our faith and for our future. Free from the Enlightenment burden of 'proving' our faith, we can meet our doubts not with certainty but with humi...

In a day when love is often confused with tolerance or sentimentality, we need 1 Corinthians 13 to show us what the Jesus-kind-of love looks like. Pastor Glenn Packiam casts a fresh light on the text to show how love orients us to the future that God is bringing and transforms our human relationships. We no longer love because the other is lovely or will love us in return; we love because Christ h...

Drawing from 1 Corinthians 12 and 14, Pastor Glenn Packiam explores what happens when the Spirit is at work in a congregation. Instead of categorizing Christians as "spiritual" vs "unspiritual", we focus instead on the Spirit who gives generously to believers for the good of the church and the glory of God. When we surrender to the Spirit's work, setting aside both fear and pride, the Lordship of...

To experience the unity we have in Jesus we must learn how to be counter-intuitive and counter-cultural. Simply put it doesn't come natural for us to reach across the potential barriers of race, age, social status and economics to connect with other fellow believers. The community of faith we call home is inevitably full of people not like us or even people we'd rather not be around. We'll learn f...