Ridgedale Students

Not every image looks the same... We have to acknowledge the difference in God's image. God doesn't paint in only one color but rather chooses to show His image through a diversity of colors and ethnicities and cultures. Our image-ness gets distorted when we begin to create separations between other image-bearers based off of God's intentional differences.

So what do we do now? We saw in week 1 of the series that the intent of God in creating man in His image is to establish partners or images/idols of Himself throughout the world who will now rule over creation moving it toward the ultimate goal that God has intended it for; a Garden-like city. In the beginning of the story man does just that but then they begin to fail because the idols begin to w...

"Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them have dominion..." What does it mean to be made in the image of God? For many people this question has led to a great deal of poor theology and poor Christian practice. Answering this question is incredibly important for us forming our identity and understanding our purpose. It all boils down to how we answer the question, "What is an ima...

"I will be content if I..." Have a big friend group... Get the perfect significant other... Get into the right crowd... Get the biggest platform... The story of significance plays on our desires from Genesis 3. We all want to be the boss, be the best, or replace God. The eternal question is, "Am I what I do or am I something bigger than my success, security or significance?" Ou...

"I will be content if I..." Can travel where I want... Get into the neighborhood I want... Get all the things I want... Have the body I want... Save enough to feel secure... The story of security walks hand in hand with the story of success. "If I accomplish all the things, then I can get all the things." But just like the story of success, the story of security is a black hole. We simply can't fi...

"I will be content if I..." Make the grades... Start on the team... Get into the right school... Get the right job... Accomplish all my goals... The story of success is one of the most alluring we all face. We wall want to gain the approval of people by being seen as a "doer," a "winner," someone who never misses. But the story of success is never done. When is enough, enough? People fall apart wh...

At our last House Night of the year we look back on God’s faithfulness and growth throughout this school year.

Picture this; you walk into the kitchen on Thanksgiving Day to see an absolute FEAST laid before your eyes. Every favorite food, every incredible smell, everything you could ever want in a meal. What do you do in that moment? YOU. FEAST. You don't just eat because the food is there, you feast because there's desire for what's been placed before you. To feast on the things of heaven is to pair DESI...

"I want a deeper experience of Jesus, but..." This is a statement that probably rings true for most followers of Jesus. We want more of His presence but we also find ourselves engulfed in the things of this world that aren't necessarily "evil" but are not lending themselves toward experience of Jesus. What we come to find in this reality is that we will ultimately starve ourselves of things we don...

Tune in to hear the second message of a two-part introduction to our final series of the semester, Feast or Famine, from one of our middle school guy leaders and interns Joseph Hernandez.

Tune in to hear the first message of a two-part introduction to our final series of the semester, Feast or Famine, from one of our high school guy leaders Zack Naessig.

Listen in as our Student Ministry Associate AnnaKate Potter delivers a message on the nature of devoted discipleship as seen in the life of Mary of Bethany. The teaching texts are from Luke 10 and 11 and John 12.

Enjoy this standalone message from Ridgedale’s College and Teaching Pastor Alan Denton on the life of John Mark!

Listen in to our second Worship Night teaching on the theme Jesus as the Servant King from one of the original RSM interns, Bailey Biddle!

Listen in to our first Worship Night teaching around the theme of fearing King Jesus from former RSM’er and current UTC freshman, Hannah Plumlee!

The dead don't stay dead! When we have died to our sin in Christ we are raised to life, and a life that is totally different from the life we lived before. The hard thing for many of us is that this new life is never really presented to us. We're told to be baptized but the follow up of discipleship and having the way of Jesus modeled to us has been a gaping void in the church for decades. What is...

What is baptism? Why do we do it? What does it symbolize? Why do we repeat the same phrase each time we do it? “Buried with Christ in His death, raised to walk in newness of life.” Tonight we begin a two-week series looking at that very phrase to expand our understanding of a very misunderstood practice. What do we mean when we say that we are buried with Christ in death? What does that mean for h...

At the heart of our fight to trust in trouble is doubt. Like we mentioned in week 1, doubt is present in the introduction of trouble to the world in Genesis 3 and it plays a pivotal role in all trouble thereafter. We must trust when we're confronted with trouble, but before we can reach trust, we have to confront our doubts. What lies at the heart of them? What does Scripture say in response? And...

We are called to reach...but we also live in a world that conditions us to reach for nothing and no one. We lack trust, but trust is the thing we need most when trouble comes. Trust and trouble walk hand in hand but we have to be clear on who we trust and why before we enter into our times of trouble. Tonight we look into why Jesus is worthy of our trust so that we can prepare our hearts before we...

Jesus promises us that in this world we will encounter trouble, but do we really believe Him? Most often when trouble comes our way we respond by questioning God or thinking that maybe His promises were too good to be true. In this series, we'll try to uncover the hidden assumptions of our hearts and work through how we as followers of Jesus walk through seasons of trouble.

God has made us for more. In Session 1 we looked at the call to Kingdom living. In Session 2 we heard from Josh Powell that the pace of the Kingdom is a pace of peace and rest. In Session 3 we close out the weekend looking at what the work of the Kingdom is. From Genesis 1 to Revelation 21 we see a consistent theme pointing us toward the Kingdom being a Kingdom of justice and mercy.

What is the pace of Kingdom living? In session 2 of DNow 2023 we got a word from Josh Powell, director of Ridgedale's Young Professionals ministry on the pace of Kingdom living. From Matthew 11 we see that Jesus is gentle and lowly and His pace is a pace of peace and rest. 

What does it mean to live, "On earth AS IT IS in heaven?" This is the focus of DNow 2023. In our first message we hear the truth that there is more to life in Jesus than what we may experience currently. That we have been made to be worshippers and our worship is meant to be directed toward heaven. 

Confession is treated as a dirty word in many Christian circles today. When we confess, we are reminded of the sin that God has separated us from, but we are also ushered into the joyous remembrance of Jesus' sacrifice! Sin is crafty. It hides in the depths of our hearts, disguises itself within our greatest desires, and masks itself behind just causes. It takes the searching work of God to reveal...

Request, petition, supplication, asking. These are all words we often associate with the work of prayer. But are all of our times of prayer meant to be times of us leading the conversation? Was David somehow incorrect when he told us to, "be still and know," or was Elijah off base when He silently waited on the Lord's whisper? Was it purely punishment that Zechariah was silenced after his doubt in...