Teachings from Unionville Alliance

Pastor Derek Burnett speaks about his mission journey and the importance of our answer to the question.

The world is in a state of constant flux. Change has invaded every area of life. How do Christians respond to these changes and how does the church deal with the whirlwind of continuous movement? What is God’s disposition when it comes to change? This message will seek to provide some answers to these issues.

Fulfilling the mission of Jesus presents us as believers with a daunting challenge. Often we conceive of helping people to become followers of Jesus and to help them grow in their spiritual life as beyond our ability. One problem we face is that too often we conceive of this task as being our exclusive responsibility. In this message we will discover that we were never meant to do it alone and how...

While every church has the same mission, to make disciples, no two churches are alike. Each has its own style, passions, gifts and audience. Churches shouldn’t mimic others, but discover how God has uniquely situated them to serve their community. In this message we will discover what makes Unionville Alliance distinctive.

We are called periodically to review where we are going as a church. We need to be clearly committed to fulfilling the mission Christ has entrusted to us. But each generation needs to effectively reach its own. In this message we will reaffirm our mission and begin to unfold a new vision for our church.

We come to the conclusion of our series in the book of Psalms. Whatever happens in our life of ups and downs God has us on a journey with a destination.

Throughout life we will go through amazing experiences and also low times. Depression is a battle that many face at varying degrees. The Psalmist went through a depressing time but sought to encourage himself in God. If we never went through depressing times then we would never know God as the one who encourages and lifts us up. Therefore, we can use our experiences of depression to draw closer to...

We can be pretty casual and imprecise with the superlatives we throw around. "Awesome" can be applied to the most mundane things. In this Psalm we step back to reorient ourselves to recapture the wonder of God and what is truly superlative.

One of the most important emotions that we can express to God is gratitude which is a response to the grace that God pours out on us. Gratitude then should cause us to respond by telling others of God’s love, doing the will of God for our lives, and praising God even in the midst of difficult situations. We can learn all of these things from Psalm 40 as the psalmist expresses his gratitude to God.

Find out how a man after God’s own heart reacts when faced with his own guilt and shame. Repentance, forgiveness and renewal. Learn how to go to God with your guilt and receive forgiveness and joy in your salvation.

The Bible is eminently a book of hope. It holds out the promise of a better tomorrow when life is challenging. The Psalms have plenty of heartbreak prayers that invite the reader to look ahead with hopefulness. That’s what is so confusing about Psalm 88. It leaves the reader cold and seemingly without hope. So how does this dark song find its way into the Bible and what help could it possibly be?...

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Psalm 3 is written by King David at a very critical juncture of his life. He has been reigning as the King over Israel and bringing them into a time of prosperity. Everything seems to be going well until his son Absalom rebels against him to take over the kingdom. David flees from Jerusalem and pens this inspirational psalm about having confidence in God in such a bleak situation. Many of David’s...

What do you do when you are doing the right and good things and people who don’t have any regard for that are winning? What do you do when God seems to unfairly bless the people who don’t honour or follow him? That is the dilemma the Psalmist faces. His journey will help give us clarity when we face these seeming inequities.

Emotions are important. God wants us to express our whole heart to him in prayer. We are given excellent models of this in the Psalms in the very heart of the Bible. In this introductory message we will discover how to enter into the sometimes daunting world of the Psalms. We will unlock a key to beginning this journey of faith.

Many times we live like the Pharisees in a religious box confined by what we think and how we should act. In this message we will compare and contrast the reaction of Jesus and the reaction of the Pharisees to various situations which will allow us to examine our lives and see how we react: like Jesus or like the Pharisees.

Most of us have ideas about what it takes to be acceptable to God. Jesus once again shocks us as he corrects some faulty thinking.

Most of us abhor the hypocrisy that we see in others. The problem can be that we are blind to hypocrisy in ourselves. The Pharisees were meticulous in keeping their own rules but Jesus called them out for the inconsistencies in their lives. They talked a good talk but their lives fell far short of what they claimed for themselves. As we examine the hypocrisy of the Pharisees we may see ourselves i...

The culture of today teaches us to push ourselves forward, get noticed, fight for our rights and to speak well of ourselves. However, the principle of the Kingdom of God is to humble ourselves and the Lord will exalt us in due time. This attitude is starkly different from the way of the world. As we study the Pharisees, we will learn how they preach but do not practice, do their deeds to be seen o...

As Christians we faithfully celebrate Christmas and Easter, but what about Pentecost? Many of us don’t know what it is, let alone why it deserves a prominent place in the worship of the church. In this message we will discover what this special event is and what it means to us.

We all need to live by priorities—putting most important things first. The Pharisees certainly had values and priorities they lived by. Sadly they often got their priorities mixed up. If we are ever going be all God want we will need to learn that we can’t major on the minor.

When looking at the Pharisees and their effort to find acceptance with God we confronted with the truth about what it takes to be in a right relationship with God. Some of the people who seem the most religious may alarmingly not make it with God. The Pharisees demonstrate the wrong way to God.

We all engage in different rituals in our lives. Rituals help to provide meaning for us. God has established sacred rituals to nurture us in our spiritual lives. This week we will examine baptism. Why would a Christian ritual involve someone getting dunked under water in front of a crowd? We will seek to uncover the significance of this special act required by Jesus’ followers.

We all engage in different rituals in our lives. Rituals help to provide meaning for us. God has established sacred rituals to nurture us in our spiritual lives. This week we focus on communion. We will discover the significance of communion and how it can be faithfully be practiced.

We can all blow it sometime. We can let God down and disappoint ourselves. Sometimes our failures can be so devastating that we wonder if there is a way back for us, whether there is a place to serve any more. The Apostle Peter dealt with those feelings and it was going one on one with the resurrected Jesus that helped him sort out his future. Peter’s experience can help us to be restored after a...