Weekly Messages - Community Church of Greensburg | Batesville

Followers of Jesus have all experienced a time when someone takes a dig at Christianity and faith. Those moments hit us off guard and leave us wishing we’d been better prepared with a response. In today’s message we learn a simple response we can share with others that quickly summarizes where we have our hope.

How good does one have to be to earn God’s favor? For those of us who grew up in a religious context, it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that we can somehow earn God’s approval. But in order to earn anything we have to work hard… and work is… well… work. The good news of Gospel is that we don’t have to earn what God freely chooses to give us.

People often spend their lives searching for meaning or pursuing some purpose for their lives.  We try to find it in a variety of places and people in a seemingly endless quest to feel whole.  That was Dan's story.  What he didn't realize in the middle of his pursuit was that he was being pursued by someone else.

Has anyone ever asked you what God’s Story is? Some of us may feel more comfortable answering that than others, but trying to help someone understand His Good News, the Gospel, can be hard, especially someone who doesn’t believe what anything in the Bible says. One of the most effective ways to tell someone about God’s Story is actually through your story as far as how God has revealed Himself thr...

Wealth is unpredictable. With a bad economy, a natural disaster, or bad planning, money can disappear very quickly. If being rich is tied to having money, then “rich” is constantly in jeopardy. But if being rich is tied more to a way of living your life, then anybody can choose to be rich, and everybody can choose to be richer over time.

The United States is the wealthiest culture in the history of the world, and yet ironically, worry runs rampant. Will we have enough? Will we be able to live the life we’re told to live? Will we be able to retire when the time comes? Our wealth seems so uncertain and so fragile and yet we place our hope in it. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe placing our hope in something else would lead us to livi...

Stress is unavoidable in life. We all live with some level of it, and we all experience excessive amounts of it from time to time. The issue isn’t whether or not we’ll experience stress, the issue is how well we prepare ourselves to handle stress. Rich people know the secret to preparing for and handling unexpected stress.

Ask any person on the street if they’d like the rich, and you can guess the answer before they give it. We all want to be rich, and yet most of us feel like being rich is just outside of our grasp. If we had a bit more, made a bit more, or won the lottery - then we’d be rich. But what if being rich has less to do with how much you have than it does with how you live? What if it’s less about how mu...

Who is the Church for? Have you ever considered that? Many churches focus on creating religious experiences for those who already know Jesus, but what if there’s a missed opportunity to create environments where those who are far from God can take a step, too?

The cycle of life seems to be work, eat, sleep, repeat.  For many people, work is more of a curse than a blessing, but is that the way God meant for it to be?  Are we meant to be miserable for, what for most of us, is one-third of our lives?  What if there's a better way?

Our natural inclination when others cancel us is to cancel them in return. Tit for tat, so the saying goes. But what if God has something bigger for us than simply cancelling those who cancel us? And what if our response when we’re cancelled has the power to do something good in the lives of those who cancel us?

The tendency in our culture and even in the church is to judge people by their actions and to cancel them based on their most recent bad behavior. But what if there’s something going on on their insides that we can’t see? What if God is doing something in them that’s bigger than their outward behavior?

Religious people have a bad habit of judging others when they fail to live up to a religious standard. What if rather than judging others and cancelling them when they don’t fix their bad behavior, God has something different for his followers? What if there’s a better way?

We live in a polarized culture where a place for civil discourse is non-existent. When people say or do things we don’t agree with, our answer is to cancel them - to put them into time out until they change their behavior or ideas… or to keep them in time out forever. But what if cancelling people isn’t really the answer? What if, by cancelling others, we miss what matters most?

It never fails that on every road trip someone eventually asks, “Are we there yet?” While innocent on the surface, the underlying implication of the question is: “I’m tired of driving and I want to be done.” Most of the time we hear this question, we just tell our kids to stop asking. But what if we were to respond by stopping the car? What if we made “there” here? What if we were to sacrifice the...

Getting lost along the way is just a part of taking a Summer Road Trip, but nobody likes stopping to ask for directions. Even when we don’t know where to go, it is hard sometimes to ask for help. Well, that can also be true for life and our faith journey, Getting help from others to help navigate life and faith can be extremely valuable to getting back on track, but how do we know the directions w...

For some, the idea of stopping at a Rest Stop on a road trip is an unwelcome necessity. Why stop when stopping will only slow you down and keep you from getting to your desired destination? But what if resting on the journey is less of a “have to” and more of a “get to?” What if resting is actually an important part of the journey that helps us get where we’re going without sacrificing something i...

When you put several people in a metal box for multiple hours the question isn't will there be conflict; it's when? The truth is that, when it comes to conflict, most of us either avoid it or do it poorly. But what if there's a way to approach conflict that draws us closer to God and one another?

The United States of America is more divided now than ever before in recent history. Whether from the far left or the extreme right, we have become polarizing in our view of how to move the country forward. But what if both sides are taking the wrong approach? What if there's a different way for followers of Jesus to come together to bringing healing and hope to the world?

Remember when Summer Road Trips were as much about the journey as the destination, filled with things like family sing-alongs in the car? Over time, it seems as if those opportunities for conversations and relationships has been replaced by devices and busy schedules. While communication and dialogue is important in many areas of life, it is even more important when it comes to our faith and faith...

On the road trip of life, who's in the car can make all the difference. Although we can't always choose who we travel with, we can choose who influences us. The real question is are we surrounding ourselves with people who draw us closer to God or drive us further from Him.

Every state has it’s own traffic laws, and knowing the rules of the road is important to the way we drive. Pull a u-turn in a state where that’s not allowed? Well, you’re liable to get a ticket. Unsurprisingly, there are rules for road as it comes to life, too. In fact, it’s when we know those rules and live by them that our lives are better off.

The first step to taking a road trip is deciding where you’re going to go. Wherever your desired destination is will ultimately impact the path you choose to get there. When we have our destination in mind, we are prepared to make course corrections on the journey. So what is your desired destination? If you stay on your current path, will you get there?

We all draw lines in life. Whether we draw them with the foods we'll eat, the shows we'll watch, the people we'll date, or anything else, we all have lines we don't want to cross. Did you know churches have lines, too? Often when peoples' lives fall below the line of acceptable behavior, they're kicked out of the church and told they're not welcome back until they clean up their act. That sounds g...

Have you ever noticed how much of life is focused on preventing bad things from happening? We put kids in car seats, endure lengthy safety instructions when we board airplanes, and even have learned to wear masks and wash our hands so we prevent the spread of a virus. What's funny is that, as much as we focus on prevention when it comes to safety, we often forget about prevention when it comes to...