Sundays at PBCOB

We were blessed to have our friend James Payton preach for us this past Sunday. He continued in on our series on James, diving into the topic of how we understand the dynamic of rich versus poor. - Sermon from 8/1/2021

We looked at James 4:13-17 this past week and explored the theme of boasting (mainly, the idea of not boasting). We ended up focusing on two main ideas - the first being that money is not the sole object of our lives. It's easy for us to fall into the trap of always trying to work or grow, as this is what the general culture praises. The second point was related, in that we also need to...

We looked at the latter half of James 4:1-12 this past week and the idea of "Friendship with the world is enmity against God". This is not a call to flee to the desert, but a continual reminder to follow heavenly wisdom - to seek Godly wisdom and humility. Our call as believers and a church (both local and globally) is not to try to rise to the top and control with power, but to see the true power...

We looked at the latter half of James 3 this past week, focusing in on earthly versus heavenly wisdom. Earthly wisdom is one guided by selfish ambition and envy, whereas heavenly wisdom is guided by humility. We narrowed in on the idea that "wisdom without works is dead", in that, true wisdom helps to shape our character, which impacts how we act in the world. We also focused in on the idea of the...

This past Sunday, we explored James 3:1-12 together - which went into our use of words. James had all sorts of warnings about speech and how we seem to be able to control so much in this life , except for our tongues. We end up both praising God and cursing our fellow humans with it. Our encouragement and challenge this week was to bring life to others - to find ways to bring small joy to those in...

This past Sunday, we explored James 2:14-26 together - the famous "faith without works is dead" passage. We talked about the seeming contradiction of, well which is it - faith or works? We took the angle that James was helping to correct an oversight in the early church - that as faith was spreading, some took the idea of being saved by grace as a license to simply continue with their lives withou...

This past Sunday, we explored James 2:1-13 together, which was about the idea of favoritism. James' audience was bestowing favor among the rich and ignoring the poor - he had some harsh but pastoral wisdom in calling them out on this. We touched upon the subject of racism/prejudice, in that, we all have our blindspots and areas we could grow in. It's easy for us to get stuck in our bubbles, only l...

We continued to look at James 1:19-27 this week, focusing on the idea and the importance of listening well to others. - Sermon from 6/13/2021

I was excited to begin our first sermon series together this week, as we started to dive into the book of James. The basic take-away was that James is all about understanding how to live a wise life and for his audience, they needed help with having wisdom for dealing with persecution, with understanding their social standing before each other, and with how to understand temptations. While religio...

This past Sunday we looked at the idea of being made in the image of God, as found in Genesis 1. - Sermon from 5/30/2021