Resurrection City Church - St. Paul Minnesota

In this sermon, guest preacher and Res City member David Jahnke shares about how we can find hope in the coming of God this advent season through thinking about the story of Christmas from Joseph's vantage point.

What happens when your faith is running on empty? Emphasizing that the gospel is the core foundation of Christianity, this sermon explored how it serves as the lens through which believers must understand their faith. Guest preacher Brett Ripley underscored the transformative power of the gospel, urging christians to stop doing the "should's" of life. Throughout the message, we are encouraged to c...

Understanding Jesus’ Parable of the Talent, we see how Jesus calls his followers to live and act while they wait for His return. In this sermon, guest preacher Joel Nelson reminds us that we are responsible to God for what he has given us, no matter where we are at in life. We are challenged to evaluate how our actions and attitudes keep us accountable to the expectations Jesus has for us.

In Jesus' parable about the prodigal son from the gospel of Luke, we are reminded of the different perspectives that each of the individuals in the parable had and how we are all members of God's family. This message by guest preacher Miles Trump delves into the emotional journey of the prodigal son, the unwavering love and mercy of the compassionate father, and the complex response of the other s...

In Jesus' parable about an unmerciful servant, he reminds us of the necessity of forgiveness in His kingdom. Jesus cancelled a hefty debt for all of us, well beyond anything we are capable of paying back. If we separate our experience of his forgiveness from the rest of our life, that's when we risk acting like the unmerciful servant. In this sermon, guest preacher Michael Bolland reminds us that...

The idea of 'fairness' is woven into all of our lives. We learn rules of fairness as kids, and expect our hard work to pay off as we grow older. Even when we see someone's hard work not getting the reward it deserves, our anger about that proves the place we think fairness plays in the world. When someone gets something we think we deserve, we feel it's unfair and become jealous. In this parable,...

In a special Sunday morning Res City service, Pastor Joel takes a moment to commission Res City's first missionary, Andrea Kidder, and talk about two parables in which Jesus explains how God's kingdom (including in missions work!) grows: unexpectedly and through God's power and direction.

“Where joy is absent, the kingdom is absent.” So says New Testament scholar Klyne Snodgrass about Jesus’s preaching of God’s kingdom’s coming. Joy is supposed to spill out of those who live in it. How many would say that joy characterizes their discipleship? In this message, Pastor Joel explains why this is the case, how joy comes through the kingdom, and we do an extended Question and Response to...

The parable of the Good Samaritan is maybe the most famous of Jesus, and also his most annoying because it challenges us to love and serve people who we might really despise. In this message, Pastor Julie explains what love is and what it looks like to live this parable in our everyday lives.

For our sermon the wheat and weeds in Matthew 13, we had originally intended for it to be a Question and Response-driven message, with dialogue between Pastor Joel and the congregation in the from of an extended Q+R time at the end filling up a lot of the time. Unfortunately, we had some issues with the questions coming through, and so here they all get responded to! We're sorry if you submitted a...

Jesus, like his followers today, seemed to field a pressing question from people on a regular basis: “How can the kingdom of God be present when there’s still so much wrong with the world?” Jesus was preaching that kingdom had come, God had done an amazing work, we should have joy—yet so much still seems to be wrong. Evil and injustice and the general crumminess of life on earth didn’t go anywhere...

Jesus sometimes used parables as tools of discomfort, to put us in a state of unease and self-reflection so we can grow. In Luke 14:27-35, Jesus gives one such parable. It’s about people who have tried to do something but haven’t counted the cost, and are foolish because of it. The question Jesus asks us is, “have we counted the cost of our discipleship, or do we treat it like someone who lives in...

One of Jesus's favorite teaching methods is parables. Some estimate that these stories make up 1/3 of his teachings! So as we seek to follow Jesus, we want to make sure we understand this form of teaching. In this week's sermon, Julie talks about how Jesus's parables are stories to help us understand truths about the kingdom of God. The parable of the sower helps illustrate this point and helps us...

Christianity is unique in the it’s not just good advice, like a wisdom to live by, but a recognition of something that happened in history: a dead man named Jesus who had seemed like a special person in God’s purposes who all of a sudden came back to life. Everything we do is because of that mysterious surprise smack dab in the middle of history. If we take that piece out of the Jenga tower, the w...

Communication is vital. Think about how much it matters to hear words like “I’m pregnant” “I love you” “Will you marry me?” “Not guilty”, “You’ve got the job”, “I believe in you.” It can totally fill someone with life and save them from despair, or even death! Communication is vital. And it matters to God, too. In this sermon, Pastor Joel shares how the Corinthians were misunderstanding the gifts...

1 Corinthians is a famous passage about love that you often hear at weddings. In this sermon, Julie walks through why love is the true mark of the Holy Spirit and why it matters that we show this kind of radical love to our church family. The message ends with practical ways to grow in love by reflecting on God’s love  for us as shown through Jesus.

Res City is four and half years old, and has gone through several phases in our life: from the church plant launch stage, to the survival stage of covid, and now to a spot where we can start to think about the future. But how do we think about the future? What counts as success? Do we have any goals? In this conversation among the Res City Leadership Team--made up of Krista Schroeder, Miles Trump,...

In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul talks about how the church is designed to function with unity in diversity. Even though those ideas seem to contradict each other, Paul shows how true unity comes through a diversity of spiritual gifts and diversity of people all working together in the church body. In other words, the church needs YOU, and you need the church! We encounter threats to our unity through di...

“Your worship gatherings do more harm than good.” Yikes. Not what you want to hear if you’re a leader in a church, but it was true in Corinth. As the letter goes along, we’ll explore all of the reasons this is the case, but in this passage we see two reasons for it: theological problems between how men and women viewed themselves, and a total meltdown of the Lord’s Supper. In this sermon, Pastor J...

At the beginning of the gospel story of Jesus, we’re told about another prophet who gave up the celebrity and authority he had so that Jesus and his kingdom might grow instead. This small but important story sets a pattern for all who follow Jesus—the same Jesus who went even further and gave up not just comfort, authority, rights, and freedom for us, but his very life. In this passage in 1 Corint...

It can be fun to be knowledgeable about something, but it can also present a real challenge to our holiness when we let knowledge replace love. In this passage from 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul talks all about how being the smartest person in the room can make us poor at having a more important knowledge than just facts: the knowledge of love. In this sermon, Pastor Joel breaks it all down.

Despite stories that have been told in church and in the world at large for a long time, the gospel is good news for single people because of who we are in Christ. Together we can cultivate a high view of singleness that is founded on a holy identity in Christ. In this sermon, Res City missionary Andrea Kidder guides us through how to have a deeper understanding of singleness than the ones we are...

On Res City's baptism Sunday 2023, we study a passage in 1 Corinthians where Paul responds to the idea that someone getting baptized and partaking in the Lord's Supper could keep them immune from the effects of partaking in regular idol feasts. Paul's response invites them to think back on the history of Israel in the wilderness, and Pastor Joel challenges us to ask ourselves if the path we take a...

We love our freedom and authority to do what we want in America. It’s a the heart of how we think about so much of our lives. The Corinthians loved their freedom in Christ too, but Paul has learned they are using it in a way that is creating lots of issues in their church, namely in how they thought about sex. In a New Testament vision for how we view our bodies, while freedom is very much a part...

“The church puts business before matters of faith.” This is a real(ish) headline from a newspaper about two pastors who have a dispute between their churches and their feud went public. Not a good look for those who read the newspaper and who a church might want to invite to know Jesus. If we follow a Jesus who has given us the tools of his Spirit and his own example, shouldn’t we be able to figur...