Sermons from Southpoint Church

We are a people who have experienced the wide warm welcome of God’s table. We are a people who have experienced the Spirit moving in us, guiding us into understanding the inclusive nature of God’s heart. Having tasted the refreshing water from the well of Jesus’ love we feel compelled to share this love with others who need it. We want to participate in the divine flow, sharing with others what we...

Paul had impressive credentials as a leader. However, the real power of Paul’s life wasn’t how well recognized his preaching was, or how many important people he knew, or how many credentials he had. It was the way he so profoundly and intimately entered through his own suffering and renewal into the cruciform pattern of Christ, returning in love to be a servant witness of what he had experienced....

Rev. Dr. Rusty Edwards, pastor of First Baptist Church, Halifax, managed to brilliantly weave together the more idealized story of the early church in the book of Acts, the messier, behind-the-scenes church context in Corinth, the story of First Baptist Halifax,  the history of Massachusetts, the perplexing historical social realities around us, astronomy, and the story of Southpoint (in a mere 22...

Something is emerging! The Holy Spirit will not eradicate our uniqueness, nor flatten our diversity. We'll find our way together as we listen and learn with patience and compassion and curiosity. Our emotional labour as a community is to be open, to allow ourselves as a community to be broken open to receive this new gift: celebrating and making room for each other.

What is the commonality between Mother's Day and the time of *waiting* before the gift of the Holy Spirit?

God's desire to reconcile all people to God's self means taking down barrier walls and transgressing boundaries. But this community created through reconciliation is not made by erasing differences between groups. It's created through shared relationship with God. In this community of reconciliation we find that our diversity is not destroyed as we build a shared life together.

Have you noticed that in regular times we lull ourselves into believing we know what the future holds? One of the gifts of liminal space is our becoming more aware of the question mark that is always hanging over the future. Listen in as Rev Scott Swanson takes us further into Peter's speech after he and John healed the man outside the temple.

May we place the resurrected life of Jesus at the centre of our attention. May we become a fresh expression of the resurrected life force of the welcoming Christ.

Frederick Buechner said: "Resurrection means that the worst thing is never the last thing." Losses shape us and humble us, and may break us, but they don't define us. We are more than the sum of our successes and failures to be who we want to be! Each day we plant ourselves in the flow of divine Love —which is what really defines us—and be part of that giving and receiving. What did...

What it would be like to wonder what might be waiting — beyond the sorrows we witness, beyond the sadnesses you carry in your heart? Even if you don’t want to run to the tomb yet, maybe you can make some space for wonder, a tiny green sprig growing amidst the stones and sorrow of your heart.

This Lent we've been on a long journey with Peter — observing his journey of faith, and our own — we've been wandering, we've been wondering, but not today! Today, we are walking with purpose. Today, we are waving branches in the air, we are singing and we are celebrating the way God was on the move through Jesus, and the way God is on the move in our midst, now. When the crowds saw Je...

Peter seems to be someone who lives under the groaning weight of high standards.  Being right , doing what is right , and naming what is right seems to matter a great deal to him. In this passage, he approaches Jesus, asking for how to do forgiveness right. Curious about how the conversation unfolding with Jesus? Come have a listen.

Like Peter, we feel angry and scared when what we expect doesn’t come to pass. When certainty gives way to disappointment, we feel disoriented. Jesus invites us to loosen our grip and open ourselves to his love, which is with us in the mystery, complexity, and pain. Jesus’s love, assuring us that after our long sorrow, there will be liberation.

Jesus says to the disciples, "Who do you say that I am?" Peter responds, “You are the Messiah.” These words aren’t an intellectual assertion, but a clear articulation of Peter’s deeply personal, deeply experiential knowing of Christ: This is what I know to be true about you, because I have experienced you to be this—you are the Messiah.”

This post launches Southpoint's Lenten series "Not All Who Wander Are Lost", incorporating material from A Sanctified Art. The theme, at its heart, is that at the deepest level of our life, our journeys—no matter how they twist or turn—are held safely within the labyrinth of God’s love. Be open, keep walking, surrender your feet to the next step, trusting the path will lead you home....

The partnership between Elijah and Elisha reminds us of the power and the importance of companionship, and of the way God longs for us to companion each other. We can do hard things, together. Our theme for Epiphany is that God Calls Us, and we’ll wrap up here with "God Doesn’t Call Us to Go it Alone".

Diving into words of hope and comfort — God’s promise of restoration from Isaiah 40:21-31, written for those exiled to Babylon—Anne unpacks the prophet’s call to hope in God.  This God, who spread the heavens like a big tent, providing a home for all, is vast, creative, and caring; a God of incomparably great agency who comes intimately close and with profound commitment to those who are weary. Th...

This season of Epiphany we look for and celebrate the ways God’s light is being manifest in our midst. When will the manifestation of God come to us this year? Where will this lead us? What will we be called to hear—or to bear? What will we be invited into? Some themes in the Bible are so threaded through everything that we almost miss them. One of these fundamental, basic themes of the Old and Ne...

“We are God’s beloved”. This is our deepest identity. But this is only the beginning of the story. God takes this vast expansive love, as broad as the midday sun, and narrows it into a beam of light, shining within a human life in uniquely personal ways. Our awakening to that light is the next bit of the story. In 1 Samuel 3:1-10, Samuel is waking up slowly to the presence of God calling him, sing...

Instead of dying, Jonah is rescued. The whale isn’t God’s judgement, it’s God’s mercy (kind of an uncomfortable mercy!) The mercy of God, once again, triumphing over judgement… Now, Jonah, having been shown mercy, is feeling a lot of internal discomfort: he’d rather die than live with a God who forgives his enemies… 

Have you ever felt seen, known, and celebrated by someone? Not for what you do, but just for who you are? Have you ever felt that kind of delight for another person, not because of what they do for you, but simply for who they are? What would it feel like to know that God sees you that way? To hear God say:  “You are my beloved. I love you, not because of what you do for me. Not because of how you...

How Does a Weary World Rejoice? “We allow ourselves to be amazed.” It’s hard to describe awe. It's expansive. Something vast, yet near. Awe moves us. Softens our guard. For a moment, we forget about ourselves, lost in the moment. Dr. Keltner is a professor at Berkeley who has studied awe and found it calms our nervous system, activating our vagal nerve. Our heart beat slows, our breathing deep...

JOY "When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leapt in her womb..." In this moment of connection between Mary and Elizabeth, this deeply embodied, energetic exchange passed between them. Something moved between them, woman to woman, child to child. That thing was so palpable that John, the baby, leapt within Elizabeth. Standing together on that threshold of Elizabeth’s house, feeli...

This Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent, is also the very first Sunday of a new liturgical church year. Why does the church year begin here? Because a spirituality that pretends the darkness doesn’t exist is no good to anyone.

Series Wrap up & transition to Advent... !