Spark Cast

Our fourth teaching in our Genesis series exhorts us to understand what it means to take care for and serve this beautiful creation. In the commission to tend this garden well, we discover that this is still a commission for us today. This caring is what we were made for.

The third teaching in our Genesis series on the Spirit/Wind/Breath of God hovering over the waters. Whatever chaos you may be experiencing, be comforted to know that God is hovering over your chaos, incubating out of it a brand new life.

The second teaching in our Genesis series on the power of God, creating this entire world by speaking it into existence. Through this lesson, we discover the power of our own words, as created in the image of the Creator.

Welcome to our series of teachings from the book of Genesis. We begin by comparing the creation narrative found in chapter 1 with Enuma Elish, an ancient Babylonian creation myth. Through our study, we discover why the Genesis story has been so powerful and influential throughout history and how it can transform our lives today.

This famous quote from the iconic film, The Princess Bride, is quite appropriate to our current cultural context. Much of the conversation around faith, religion, church, the Bible, and current events often involves a myriad of definitions which makes it difficult to understand one another. Some utilize these words in coarse rhetoric causing even further barriers to faith. This has left many peopl...

This famous quote from the iconic film, The Princess Bride, is quite appropriate to our current cultural context. Much of the conversation around faith, religion, church, the Bible, and current events often involves a myriad of definitions which makes it difficult to understand one another. Some utilize these words in coarse rhetoric causing even further barriers to faith. This has left many peopl...

This famous quote from the iconic film, The Princess Bride, is quite appropriate to our current cultural context. Much of the conversation around faith, religion, church, the Bible, and current events often involves a myriad of definitions which makes it difficult to understand one another. Some utilize these words in coarse rhetoric causing even further barriers to faith. This has left many peopl...

This famous quote from the iconic film, The Princess Bride, is quite appropriate to our current cultural context. Much of the conversation around faith, religion, church, the Bible, and current events often involves a myriad of definitions which makes it difficult to understand one another. Some utilize these words in coarse rhetoric causing even further barriers to faith. This has left many peopl...

This famous quote from the iconic film, The Princess Bride, is quite appropriate to our current cultural context. Much of the conversation around faith, religion, church, the Bible, and current events often involves a myriad of definitions which makes it difficult to understand one another. Some utilize these words in coarse rhetoric causing even further barriers to faith. This has left many peopl...

This famous quote from the iconic film, The Princess Bride, is quite appropriate to our current cultural context. Much of the conversation around faith, religion, church, the Bible, and current events often involves a myriad of definitions which makes it difficult to understand one another. Some utilize these words in coarse rhetoric causing even further barriers to faith. This has left many peopl...

This famous quote from the iconic film, The Princess Bride, is quite appropriate to our current cultural context. Much of the conversation around faith, religion, church, the Bible, and current events often involves a myriad of definitions which makes it difficult to understand one another. Some utilize these words in coarse rhetoric causing even further barriers to faith. This has left many peopl...

In this message, Pastor Kevin charts through Jewish and Greco-Roman first century worlds, considering how Jesus has met and transformed the ancient peoples' expectations in real life. While many of us are challenged to consider the "truth" of Jesus, we discover that historically, the transformational power of Jesus is found in the "realness" of the life that He and His early followers exemplified....

Pastor Danielle reminds us to ground ourselves in the Jewish context and culture to understand much of the teachings of Jesus. As we do, we discover how much more we understand what Jesus is teaching, and how much more powerful the teachings are when understood in context.

Special guest Betty Ann Boeving, founder and executive director of the Bay Area Anti-Trafficking Coalition, shares the story of her journey into the work of justice, fighting human slavery. Betty Ann challenges us all, regardless of personality or spiritual gifts, to embrace Micah 6:8, to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. As we do, accepting Jesus' redemptive power, being pre...

"If you build the Kingdom, people will look for the King!" While the "Kingdom of Heaven" is often thought of as referring to life after death, Pastor Danielle illuminates the historical and textual context of this phrase to mean the fact of God's rule and reign right here, right now. In addition, God's Kingdom is upside-down. Instead of power and authority this Kingdom is about humility. Instead o...

We all follow someone. The question is not whether we follow, but who and how do we follow? In this message, Pastor Danielle encourages us to follow Jesus, and truly follow Him. Through a brief first-century discipleship study, we are encouraged to trust Jesus, take a hand, and to never give up. And ultimately rest in the fact that Jesus chooses us, and believes in us in this discipleship journey.

When we think of temptation, we often first think of sin -- things like money, sex, or indulgences. But the temptations of Jesus are about food, water, and relationship with God. In this message, Pastor Kevin suggests that this illuminates for us that perhaps our greatest temptation isn't about being bad, but rather about finding the core essence of our identity in things other than our Heavenly F...

Happy Easter! On this celebration Sunday, Pastor Kevin teaches through this perplexing and profound question asked by the angels of the women at the tomb. As with other questions found in our culture, and in the Bible, truth is often found in the asking of the question. By embracing this question, and the reply that "He is not here, He is risen!" we deny death the final word and enter a new creati...

Pastor Danielle surveys the image and meaning of water in the ancient Jewish world. Through understanding the diverse meanings of the waters, we see that Jesus' baptism is rich with significance, symbolizing God's descent into the chaos of the waters to bring order, renewal, redemption, and salvation. This baptism ushers in the new Kingdom rule and reign of God, such that even the wind and the wav...

Pastor Danielle takes a historical look at the beginnings of Jesus' life, and asks a series of questions on our identity. These questions are core and central to our existence, and we discover profound answers through understanding Jesus' lineage and connection with the Heavenly Father. So, "Who am I?" I'm a child of God. "Who is your Daddy?" The Heavenly Father. "Who has your back?" He does. And,...

This is the first question we will be asking through our Jesus series. In this talk, Pastor Kevin encourages us to consider the influences our current culture has on our conceptions of Jesus being careful to not worship a Jesus that we have "created in our own image." And may we, through this quest, leverage, not just our minds and intellects, but our hearts and souls as Jesus is revealed to us by...

Since our opening 19 weeks ago, we have striven to communicate the importance of our core values. In concluding this teaching series, Pastor Kevin shares the stories that encapsulate these values, and illustrate the importance of values alongside beliefs. Through "4 acts" (similar to "This American Life"), we are inspired and challenged by these stories to put the way of Jesus into action.

Faith is deeply emotional and spiritual. But faith is also intellectual, and historical. The claim that Jesus was raised from the dead brings the two together in which the richness of our faith meets the historical work of evidence and verification. In this teaching, Pastor Kevin shares the central claim of the Christian faith, and then provides four main evidences that support the historical, phy...

The concept and idea around resurrection did not have its beginning in Christianity. Through a historical survey, Pastor Danielle shares insights into the Jewish concept and expectation of resurrection and how it impacts the understanding of Jesus' resurrection in the first-century. This context helps us understand both how the resurrection of Jesus could have been understood, and why it was so ra...

Sharing a bit of the recent adoption story in the Parish-Neuner household, Pastor Kevin begins the core value of Resurrection by talking about the temptations that emerge in each of us when deception, evil, disappointment, etc., happen as a result of "living between the trees." Yet, resurrection says that we are saved and forgiven as we forgive. Resurrection says we do not have to acquiesce to the...