South Fellowship Church

We are starting a new series today that I am so excited for.  It's called "Brave in the New World," and we, over the next few weeks, are going to be tackling some of the most difficult issues and topics that we face, sort of culturally and societally, in our world today.  Our goal this morning is to set a little bit of ground work and to give us a path forward that we're going to ask Jesus to lead...

Welcome to our celebration of the resurrection.  My name's Ryan.  We get to celebrate the reason for hope today.  That's why we gather.  A few weeks ago, my friend, who's also a pastor in the area, Nirup, sent me a text message.  It said: What's your morning look like MC? {Because people call me MC.  Just kidding, they don't.  I don't know why he said that?}  Have you ever read a text message, got...

We're jumping into Jonah 4, if you have your Bible, you can flip there, swipe there, click there, however you want to get there this morning. It's the final message in the series of Jonah as we continue to journey towards the cross and the resurrection. We've been utilizing this book of Jonah to lead us to Easter. We've been saying, throughout this series, that part of our goal has been to rescue...

This is our fifth Sunday in a series that we're doing on the book of Jonah, that's guiding us through the Lenten season.  Jonah's a short little book in the minor prophets; he's minor, not because he's unimportant, but because he's short.  The book is short.  It's significant but it's only four chapters, and it packs a punch.  Let me share with you a little nugget from the Paulson household.  Most...

We're going to be camping out in Jonah 3 today.  Let me just give you a bird's-eye view of where we've been. The book of Jonah is a story of a portion of the life of Jonah, and you sort of need one step and one phase to build on the other.  Hop online to fill yourself in on the blanks I'll leave out today.   Jonah is a prophet of God who prophesied in roughly the eighth century BC.  He was a conte...

We've been in a series in the last few weeks going through the book of Jonah.  Jonah is the fifth of the minor prophets.  He prophesied in the latter half of the eighth century BC, so a long time.  Jonah is unique because it's mostly a narrative; he's not making big proclamations and all these sorts of things, it's telling us an interesting story.  Hosea and Amos were also prophets at the same tim...

Storms are an interesting deal, aren't they?  We're going to read about one in the life and story of Jonah this morning.  The book of Jonah is literary genius.  Please don't hear me saying it's fairy tale, or parable, but it's written geniusly.  It's intended to be funny.  It's prophetic, which means before it's parable, before it's literal, before it's either of those things, Jonah has a message...

Over the next six weeks, we're going to have the chance to journey with Jonah, to allow Jonah to be our guide through the Lenten season. Our guide to the cross. Our guide to the resurrection. Metaphorically speaking, we're going to take Jonah's hand and we're going to go for a little bit of a walk. My guess is, even if you're not a follower of Jesus and you're here today, even if you don't know mu...

{Ryan Paulson:} Our teaching text is Matthew 4:12-23 today.  If you have your Bible, you can open up there.  I'm going to read it, then Larry Boatright is going to come teach it.   When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he withdrew to Galilee.  Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum, which was by the lake in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali---to fulfill what was said through...

If you really packed the guys in, you could probably get 15 people in one of those boats.  These guys were pros and they'd been on this sea hundreds of times in their lives.  They'd been there in the middle of the night because some of the best fishing happened in the middle of the night.  As they started to go across that 13 mile journey from one end of the shore to the other in the Sea of Galile...

February 13th, just this last week, flight 5763 took off from the Orange County Airport on its way to Seattle.  It didn't quite make it there, because over the High Sierras, it hit what you might refer to as a little bit of turbulence.  One of the passengers reported that, along with the flight attendant, the drink cart hit the ceiling of the aircraft.  Another passenger said that the plane did no...

I can remember when I was freshman in college and went and purchased the album that song (Obsession) is off of.  It was written by Martin Smith, but recorded by David Crowder.  I remember lying in my bed in my dorm room at Colorado State, having my Discman next to me.  I was listening to the song and thinking to myself, "My heart does burn.  Jesus, I want you.  Closer than my skin, yeah."  All tha...

Last weekend as the elders were headed up to Estes Park for our retreat, our middle school group was also heading up to a retreat at Buena Vista.  They had left at 5:00 p.m. and were heading up 285 and there was a sign over the road that said, "Road Closure in Fairplay," which isn't a good thing if you're headed to Buena Vista.  Through a few radio calls back and forth to the various vans, they de...

Dr. Scott Wenig - Guest Speaker

It's a bit of irony that some of the greatest movements in the history of the church have been birthed out of some of the sharpest disagreements.  Some of the things we celebrate most started off as.....well, a fight.  They started off as people on two sides of the aisle unable to come to a conclusion and having very different opinions about the way that things should progress.  In Acts 15:1-2, we...

Last week we started a series we're calling "Life is A Maze....ing."  We're talking about discovering God's will.  It's these questions we all have ---- What job should I take?  What city should I live in?  What relationship should I pursue?  We all have these questions, don't we?  God, what do you want me to do with my life?  If you're God, and I believe that you are, and you have a plan, and I b...

How many of you thought that was a Christmas song [We Three Kings] that we just sang during our offertory? Here's a little pastoral rebuke for you:  It's actually not.  It's not a Christmas song at all.  It's a song about a season that actually begins today.  Christmas technically ended yesterday, and today we begin a season in the church calendar called Epiphany.  Epiphany comes from a Greek word...

Billy Berglund - Middle School Director

I've been reminded, during this Advent season leading up to Christmas, that there are two kinds of people in the world:  There are those that agree with me and are right; there are those that agree with my wife and are wrong.  I grew up watching the movie "A Christmas Story," and I happen to think it's a brilliant film. Not everybody agrees with me.  There's one scene in this movie that makes me l...

Last week I opened up by saying one of my favorite things about Christmas is Christmas movies.  That is true.  One of my second favorite things about Christmas is the songs.  I love singing Christmas songs.  {Ryan asks congregation to share favorite songs with person next to them.}  One of my favorite Christmas songs this year is "Hark the Herald Angels Sing."  But there's a song that's not growin...

If you're anything like me, I get real excited about the Christmas season, I get excited about Advent, and we put a lot of energy into it and then we feel exhausted when it's done.  Are you with me? December 25th hits and we're like, I don't want to see anybody, I don't want to talk to anybody.  I know that Jesus has been born, but I've drunk so much eggnog and had so many parties and I've seen so...

Josh Suddath - Student Pastor My prayer life often feels abysmal. I often feel like I’m just not going to God like I should or as much as I should. But 6 years ago married to a prayer warrior named Kristine and she’s fantastic. And my bible tells me that through marriage and the uniting of our spirits we are two people acting as one. So for the next half hour I’m going to act like her prayer life...

Next week, we will be done with this series on Elijah; we've given seven messages in all. This brings us to the conclusion of this life of the ancient prophet of Israel, Elijah. We saw Elijah burst onto the scene, sort of came out of nowhere. He stepped into the king's palace and made a declaration about drought and a confident call that Yahweh was the King above all kings, the Lord above...

If you've been with us over the last few weeks, you know that we're journeying through the life of one of Israel's ancient prophets, his name is Elijah.  Elijah sort of jumped onto the scene in 1 Kings 17, where he burst into King Ahab's palace and declared, "It's not going to rain again until I say it's going to rain."  Doesn't exactly make you a lot of frien...

Guest Speaker: Author and Spiritual Director Liz Ditty If you could have the 100% complete and honest answer to any question this morning, what would you ask?  When I was twelve, I only had one burning question, and that was.....Does Jonathan Green have a crush on me?  Fortunately, I was a child of the 80's, so my cousin had the foolproof thing that could give me my answer.   The magic 8 ball....