The River Church Sermons

America is divided today. Is that a fair statement [or understatement]? Increasingly, our churches are also becoming split up into tribes. More than half of American Evangelicals would prefer attending churches of politically like-minded people. Consider the implications of that posture—it certainly is not all bad, but may not be that good either. Do not worry… the sermon will definitely not be ab...

I love how the Spirit moves in Acts! It is so cool to see and I deeply want that same movement in my own life! While there is no quick fix solution to this, one aspect of the early Christian community is that its Spiritual fire was kindled by the prayers of its people. Meaning, they were people of prayer! Through the book of Acts, there is a complementary nature to the Spirit's moving and people p...

Who exactly runs this church? Who is really in charge? Who is the grand visionary, strategic thinker, master motivator, and deal closer? If the scriptural narrative of Acts gets a voice (which it certainly will in this series), its answer is unanimous: The Holy Spirit of God. Let’s open Acts again and gain both a birds-eye-view and a fly-on-the-wall perspective of the Spirit’s leadership style. Sp...

The South Bay is starving for something real. Something that looks more like the Jesus who captivated our hearts and imaginations. Something that looks less like an organization drooling after money, blind loyalty, or behavior modification. In this adventure, we will embark on a guided tour through the picturesque narrative landscape of Acts, before refreshing in the relational day spa that is Act...

Does it seem like the world around us is changing faster than our minds can process? World events, cultural shifts, tragedy and evil attacks here and across the seas, familiar norms upended, disunity and disparagement, all this may bring confusion, anxiety, and even a feeling of being unmoored from anything solid and reliable. Our teaching team and staff at The River believe strongly that the Holy...

Happy Birthday to THE CHURCH! Not the River Church - we celebrate that in February… but the first Christian church, EVER! I want to CELEBRATE together as we look at Acts 2 and the day we refer to as Pentecost. What happens on Pentecost? The Holy Spirit comes! And why is it referred to as the birthday of the church? Not just because we all receive a gift. But because, as the church, we are continui...

It’s no exaggeration to say that we are living through one of the periods of greatest change in living memory. Smart phones, a global pandemic, remote work, and a slue of hot-button issues are ushering in massive cultural shifts in ways both good and bad. And all this on top of the normal stuff of day-to-day life. The question for followers of Jesus (and those interested in exploring life with Jes...

Stay hydrated; get your heart rate up 3-5 times each week; eat more vegetables. You don’t really need your coach, or mom, or doctor to teach you about this. You know the drill, you have heard it for a long time, now just do this more and more. There are basics in life that are so fundamental, vital for our own health and for the good of the world around us. Once in a while I come to my senses and...

We end our series on the Parables of Jesus with the most difficult of all. It’s in Luke 16:1-15. There’s this unscrupulous, irresponsible steward who makes bad investments on behalf of his master. And upon being fired, he quickly scrambles, acts shrewdly and settles the debts, recovering half of what was lost for his master. His master praises his actions and Jesus tells us to be like this steward...

In a culture that is driven by a victim mentality, our identities often become wrapped up in the wrongs we have endured. So busy nursing our wounds, we become blind to ways that we wound. It’s the longing to place ourselves on the right side of our individual histories. It is the primordial word from the garden, ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.’ Gen...

I love so much about Jesus. Ask him about your favorite hot-button issue, he tells you a story. Seek his take on someone else, he answers with a mirror. Look for a loophole, encounter impermeable love. Let’s sit at Jesus’s feet and listen with our ears and hearts as he replies to one of the most popular questions of our age with a worldview-reframing parable.

"Reality is our friend." It's almost comical how frequently a former boss and mentor of mine would say those words. What he meant was this: there are few things more helpful when making a plan for the future, few things more instructive in knowing what to do today, than having an accurate picture of our true situation. When it comes to navigating our lives, then, there's an obvious question: What...

"Reality is our friend." It's almost comical how frequently a former boss and mentor of mine would say those words. What he meant was this: there are few things more helpful when making a plan for the future, few things more instructive in knowing what to do today, than having an accurate picture of our true situation. When it comes to navigating our lives, then, there's an obvious question: What...

The Christian faith is the largest faith in the world right now. According to Wikipedia, which never lies, there were 2.382 billion people who adhere to the Christian faith in 2020. That is around 1/3 of the worlds population. Incredible! Have you ever wondered how this came to be? How did the Kingdom grow in numbers? How did it go from a small group of disciples to the largest faith in the world?...

We live in a noisy world. For instance, every day we generate 294 billion emails, we upload 720,000 hours of new YouTube content, and we watch more than 1 billion TikTok videos. That’s a lot of content to wade through. Jesus is speaking, he is the Word made flesh, but in an increasingly crowded world, we may not hear him; we might not even be listening. We are forced to decide, to discern, and to...

I am in my third trimester of pregnancy with our third baby. August is almost four and Clara is almost two. There is a lot going on at our house. The range of thoughts and emotions I have around my children in a day is the FULL spectrum. Amusement over silly things they pick up and repeat(August thanked God for Potiphar last night as I was putting him to sleep - LOL!), exasperation as they throw f...

Summer, and especially our 4th of July vacation weekend, give relief from the all too common competitive and dog-eat-dog work world. We once again experience the fresh wind of freedom that marks our beautiful country. This is part of the beauty of Sabbath rest—stepping back and checking attitudes and actions. Competition often leads to comparison ending badly in jealousy, ranking, and hurtful envy...

When was the last time you were absolutely captivated by something or someone? So enchanted that you could do nothing but remain in the glow of the moment? The older I get (I’m 40 now; Barb Bonesteele encourages me to regularly remind y’all), the easier it is to lose the luster of life. So many elements of reality that once enthralled have, with years of exposure, been demoted to “Meh.” Imaginatio...

By the 4th century, many historians, Rodney Stark, Roger Bagnall, and Shiley Jackson Case and others have argued that the spread of Christianity was nothing short of miraculous. By the early part of the 4th century, some estimate that over half of the Roman Empire had converted. They were actually running out of people to convert! Seriously? And yet today, we seem to be in a decline. A century ago...

Our River Sunday worship gatherings are jumping into a new summer series we are calling, “Stories from Another World: the parables of Jesus.” A parable of Jesus is a story about life in the kingdom and what the king is like. Jesus told them on purpose to comfort, to describe, and to provoke. I like what Malcolm Muggeridge said, “All happenings, great and small, are parables whereby God speaks. The...

We are winding up a study from the 3 middle chapters in Romans, 6-8, all about how to live our new life in Christ. Just because we have been resurrected to new life does not mean we actually enjoy the fruit of it. Romans 6:1 begins, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?" The rest of chapters 6-8...

In a world filled with "shoulds," how can we actually live free of shame? Our typical approaches to our problem with shame usually involve either trying harder to keep the rules or trying to care less about expectations, but neither really address the problem at its root. Join us as we learn from Romans 8:1-11, about how finding ourselves in what God has done for us in Jesus not only brings the se...

It’s time to demolish those rusty, crusty, heavy, ugly, weighted shackles that you’ve been dragging—and dragged by—for far too long. Let’s let God shred the labels, lies, and overturned laws that we’ve been told and tell ourselves! As Paul of Tarsus eloquently puts it: Let’s re-entrust ourselves to “the God who delivers us through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 7:25).

Romans 7 reveals the famous internal dialogue Paul has in his mind about failing to keep the law. I do what I don’t want to do. I actually hate what I do since it is contrary to what I know I want to do. If that does not describe the most common area of disappointment for most Christ followers. I do what I don’t want to do. It sounds like something within him is working against his true desires as...

We had the pleasure of hearing from Josh White, Pastor of Door of Hope Church in the heart of Portland Oregon... what a treat! He’s going be famous really soon (and it won’t go to his head as is way too common). Seriously. He’s twice as smart as me, and that is a compliment to him. He’s relevant, edgy, compassionate and just plain brilliant. He’s writing a book, Stumbling Toward Eternity and will...