New Life Downtown

Most of us live in tension. On the one hand, we like the idea of others believing we've got life figured out. While at the same time we long for authentic and transparent relationships where we don't have to hide. Pastor Brad Baker shares the centrality of personal and corporate confession in the life of believers. He answers the question, "How does living in a rhythm of confession help form us in...

We all know we should read the Bible, but, if we're honest, it can be difficult to make sense of it. Pastor Glenn Packiam describes five common ways to misread the Bible, and then invites us to discover instead the Great Drama of the Scriptures in five 'acts.' The call to write our own story is exposed as a sham as we see the beauty of being drawn into God's Story-- a Story of God putting His good...

This series is about discovering a faith that is larger than ourselves, a faith that we participate in but do not posses. The Spirit works through sacred practices that keep us tethered to our Story and our Identity as the People of God. As Pastor Glenn Packiam teaches on water baptism, he reminds us that baptism means a new identity and a new family. Discover what it means to take your baptism se...

In wrestling with the prospect of losing our faith, we are sometimes given the mercy of realizing that the faith isn't ours to lose; it is the Church's, and though we participate in it, we do not possess it. There are practices that have been handed down to us to keep us tethered to the Great Story of God's redemption in Christ. In this first week of the series on these practices, Pastor Glenn Pac...

In this final sermon of our series on relationships in the household of faith, Pastor Glenn Packiam discusses what it means to honor our elders and learn from the accumulated wisdom of our community. In the second half of the sermon, he interviews Clay and Sally Clarkson-- trusted teachers on family ministry who have taught and inspired the Packiams in their parenting-- on how to nurture and disci...

Don't be fooled by these easy-sounding titles; they are meant to be taken in a "tongue-in-cheek" sort of way. After all, as Pastor Glenn Packiam points out this week, the Bible's ideals about marriage are held in tension with its narratives of strained and broken marriages. The beautiful truth is that God meets us where we are, bring beauty out of our brokenness. We explore what it means to say th...

Pastor Glenn Packiam continues the series about all the relationships that matter most with a sermon on finding a good spouse. Drawing from the Old Testament Wisdom Literature tradition and the idealized stories of finding a spouse at the water well, Glenn helps us understand what it means to trust the Lord, take a step, and eventually make the leap of commitment. Yet, things aren't that simple. W...

In this series about all the relationships that matter most, Pastor Glenn Packiam begins with a sermon on friendship. Drawing from the Old Testament Wisdom Literature tradition, Glenn shows how the ideal of good friendships is often in tension with the reality of our experience with friends letting us down. What does Jesus -- God's Wisdom personified!-- show us about friendship? How might we learn...

Brad Baker brings us a word dealing with our perception of critic, exposure, and love. The reality is that when God exposes things within our hearts and lives, even though it can be difficult and painful to look at, it is truly God's love at work. When we walk in concert with His exposure, we open ourselves to His life and His healing.

Pastor Daniel Grothe sums up the series on the Sermon on the Mount by showing us how Jesus is inviting us into a life that cannot be shaken.

How do we know who the true teachers and true disciples are? Jesus says that the mark of a true disciple is not the miracles he performs, but the obedience he lives. In this second to last week of the series, Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us see how true faith produces good fruit? Obedience to the Father. But this fruit is not the result of merely trying harder; it is the overflow of a life hidden wi...

[NOTE: Due to technical issues, the podcast starts about 10-minutes in, with Pastor Glenn Packiam interviewing an artist about Makoto Fujimura's "Golden Sea".] We live in a day where "freedom" is interpreted as "life without restraints." Yet, in light of God's arriving Kingdom, Jesus calls us to follow Him along a narrow road. Far from being a description of a popular hell and a sparse heaven, the...

When we face someone dealing with doubt, our first response is often defend the rationality of Christianity. While there is a place for apologetics, too often we reach for these attempts at certainty because we are uncomfortable with mystery. But to believe is the ultimate humility. It refuses to allow us to stand over and above religion, but under and within it. Following Jesus is foolishness, bu...

What keeps us from bringing our requests to God? Is it the pain of disappointment or the agony of silence? To a people who lived with deferred hopes and dashed hopes, Jesus came announcing the Kingdom and inviting them to ask and seek and knock. Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us see that is because we trust the goodness of our Father in heaven that we turn to Him with our needs. Yet, even Jesus asked...

In a culture that resists critique and evaluation, we tend to think that Jesus warned against judging others because no concrete judgment is possible; everything is subjective opinion. But Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us see that judgment, though possible, is simply not our place. By detailing what, who, and when we can't judge, we see the difference between judging, discerning, and evaluating. Yet...

The origins of the "Kingdom of God" concepts so important to Jesus are rooted in the prophetic ministry of Old Testament prophets, especially Isaiah. In these prophetic passages, Pastor Matthew Ayers (Director of the Dream Centers of Colorado Springs) helps us discover that the ideas of salvation, righteousness/justice, peace, joy, God's presence, healing, and return from exile aren't simply New T...

Possessions have a way of possessing us and deceiving us. Jesus' words about wealth in the Sermon on the Mount were addressed to both rich and poor because regardless of the amount of our possessions, we are all easily enticed and enslaved. Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us see the life of freedom and truth that Jesus invites us into by letting be Lord of all. When Jesus is our master, we are able to...

Where do we belong? Why does it feel like we are caught between two realities? Jesus' Sermon on the Mount is the inauguration of an arriving Kingdom, a Kingdom that has come but not yet come in fullness. In a similar way, we are an in-between people, a people who are not what we used to be, yet are not what we will be. The Lord's Prayer, with its phrases from Jewish Messianic and eschatological ho...

Virtue doesn't come naturally; it must be practiced. Like the great virtue teachers before Him, Jesus gives us a vision of the flourishing human life and practices that move us toward it. But unlike the teachers of virtue, Jesus diagnoses the problem as being far deeper than we imagined: the sinful human heart. As Pastor Glenn Packiam continues the series on the Sermon on the Mount, we see Jesus s...

In culture that says everything needs to be new and exciting, our boredom is often the result of our discomfort with the ordinary--or worse, our soul detoxing from an adrenaline addiction. Where is God in the ordinary places and moments of life? Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us see that the Lord is here, in 'this' place, that drab, ordinary, unspectacular place. God invites us to see ordinary places...

Trust is the currency of relationships; it's what makes community 'work.' But to be trustworthy people, we must be truthful people. Pastor Glenn examines Jesus' call to be the kind of people whose word is so trustworthy that promises are unnecessary. Yet this kind of truthfulness begins with truthfulness before God-- a truthfulness that confess our sin and our propensity to manipulate and exaggera...

Pastor Daniel Grothe continues our series through Jesus' Sermon on the Mount with a look at what it means to not seek revenge and to love our enemies instead.

In this special sermon following the Black Forest fires that resulted in the tragic loss of two lives and almost 500 homes in Colorado Springs, Pastor Glenn Packiam reminds us that when we don't know what to say or how to pray, the Psalms give us language. From Psalm 42, we learn what it means to lament, to remember, and to hope. Our hope is never for a particular outcome nor in a particular thing...

What is it that makes lust destructive? It's the way it distorts our desires. Christ calls us not to eliminate our desires nor to simply postpone them until marriage, but to let the Love of God reshape them and realign them. Continuing in the Sermon on the Mount, Pastor Glenn Packiam calls us to go beyond managing our behavior and to identify the wound of loneliness or rejection that leads us to m...

Murder may seem like a distant idea or a social ill. But Jesus makes us look beyond "certain people" or "certain weapons" into the human heart, to the anger and hatred that make murder possible. What makes anger dangerous? Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us see how anger creates distance between us and the "Other", cultivates disdain, and culminates in destruction. None us want this cycle of violence a...