Haverhill Commons Church

There is a raging battle all around us. The world is full of corruption. Too many violent systems exploit the weakest and most vulnerable, historically children, and women, minorities, and anyone who was different or seen as undesirable. There is a force that makes things harder. That allows and fuels greed. That sows lies and betrayal, that leads to miscommunication and murder.  It’s an enormous...

Have you ever felt like something was too good to be true? So you approach it with skepticism, or try to make evaluate it logically, efficiently, wisely. Some things just have to be known - to be experienced - before we believe it. At first, Jesus seemed too good to be true. But then multides began talking about him. And as the disciples met him, listened to him, and saw him usher in a new Kingdom...

Failure comes in all shapes and sizes. Governments fail. Politicians fail. Banks fail. Churches fail. People fail. And if we dwell on our failures, the narrative shifts in a critical way…it’s not that we failed at a task or assignment…it’s that we ARE a failure. And all of the sudden, we’re in shame territory. Shame anchors us to our worst moments - something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to...

Sometimes feeling pride is a good thing. Authentic pride, experienced in response to a specific event or accomplishment, or felt towards a person or a group that we care about, can lead us to feeling more confident and fulfilled. Feeling pride inspires us to do and be our best. Being proud though, is often where we run into trouble. Being proud leads us to have an inflated self-image. Being proud...

Do you ever feel anxious about gift giving? We want to give amazing gifts, gifts people will love and enjoy. Because when we’re giving gifts, we’re not only thinking about what the other person might like, we’re also aware of what our gifts say about US. If we really want to give someone a gift that they’ll love, we’re much better off simply asking: “How can I show you that I love you?” and listen...

We all want to make good decisions in our lives. And not just good decisions, but the right decisions. So we ask a bunch of questions, and explore, and wonder, and investigate, and research, and talk to friends about it, bring it up with our small group. But when it comes time to actually make the decision and move forward, we often let our fear of making the wrong decision, of ruining our lives o...

Death isn’t something we like to think about very much.  It’s hard. It’s confusing. It reminds us of things we don’t like thinking about and things we don’t like feeling: that we don’t have control. That we are mortal. That our bodies will fail. That we can’t love someone enough to keep them alive. We feel pain. Loss. Helplessness. Anger. So we avoid thinking or talking about it. And yet, when his...

At some points in our lives, most of us will experience what it’s like to be “otherized” - or alienated - because of something about us or something we do that makes us seem different from a group. And being otherized is painful. Yet, most of us have also been responsible for otherizing someone else, because of something we don’t like about them, or because they seem too different from us. This we...

Oftentimes, we are presented with something that is true, but if that truth is confusing, or unexpected, makes us shift our worldview, or challenges our perception of ourselves or the world around us, we decide that it’s easier to keep believing the “truth” we’ve always known, instead of the truth that’s right in front of us. But what happens when the truth right in front of you is Jesus? In our p...

We can be quick to assume that our way of doing things, our preferences, are the right way, even the most holy. And we see these assumptions arise among Jesus' brothers, the disciples, the crowds, and religious leaders in our passage this week. Yet Jesus shows us that if we can’t see past our own assumptions about the right way to do church, or the “best” theological education, or who belongs in G...

The world is full of mysteries and things that we don't always know how to explain. Like how do homing pigeons find their way back home, or how exactly does bitcoin work? Or what is a soul? What exactly happens when you pray? In this week's sermon, we travel down the rabbit hole of one of Jesus' most confusing revelations about who he is and what it means to believe in him. The question is, even a...

Have you ever had a moment in your life where you felt inadequate either because of the resources available to you, or because you felt personally under-qualified to manage a particular situation? Or when you were so overwhelmed by a challenge or a loss that you thought it might consume you? We all face moments like these - moments that feel impossible. In our passage this week, we see Philip pres...

Signs always have a message. Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath, a miracle for the man and a warning to the religious people care about God and care about doing what is right. We can get so used to our customs, rules, our way of doing life that we miss God, and misrepresent God to others. In this sermon we explore the difference between brandishing Jesus as weapon and following Jesus as a disciple…...

Have you ever felt like life is a puzzle you just couldn’t solve? Or maybe like the box was given to you with some of the pieces missing? And even if our personal lives aren’t missing too many pieces, it only takes a few notifications, a few twitter feeds, a few breaking news flashes to see that the world we live in is a very broken, incomplete, fragmented version of what we know in our hearts it...

After Gabriel appeared to Mary, she knew she was going to bear the Messiah, but she still had to wait through Jesus' childhood, teen years, and young adulthood to see how it would all play out. Today, we know how it played out - with Jesus dying on a cross and rising again, defeating sin and shame and death. But we are still waiting for the day when Jesus will come again. This week, we look to Mar...

How do you wait? Do you wait wondering IF God will act? Or do you wait wondering WHEN God will act? This week, Pastor Brynn joins us from Anchor Bay Church, and walks with us through Simeon's story of waiting with expectation, as we consider how we might stay connected to the promises of God in the midst of our waiting.

Our lives are full of waiting. Waiting to hear about a job, waiting to get married, waiting for our health to improve, waiting for the world to feel less chaotic, waiting for justice to come. In this season of Advent, we are reminded that our lives are filled with seasons of waiting. And yet, as we wait, we can find hope in the promise that God has come in human form. The form of a baby - Jesus, o...

Our lives are full of waiting. Waiting to hear about a job, waiting to get married, waiting for our health to improve, waiting for the world to feel less chaotic, waiting for justice to come. In this season of Advent, we are reminded that our lives are filled with seasons of waiting. And yet, as we wait, we can find hope in the promise that God has come in human form. The form of a baby - Jesus, o...

Many people live their lives feeling like God is disappointed with them, angry at them. Taking direction from Paul Petter Waldenstrom, a Covenant theologian, we explore explore the Penal Substitutionary Theory of atonement and how God’s wrath works with God’s love.

If you’re right about everything…and I’m right about everything…and then we disagree…who’s actually right? In John 4, Jesus meets a woman who thinks she knows the right way to worship God. In response, Jesus encourages her to think about worship in a different way. In the process, Jesus demonstrates that while positions are important, people are more important.

It's not hard to look around and think that the church today has lost its roots. From frequent scandals to countless people who have been hurt by the church, it would make sense to picture Jesus coming in to flip tables in the church today. But Jesus doesn't just want to see the church return to its roots - he wants to flip the tables in each of us too. This week, Pastor Brynn from Anchor Bay Chur...

Psychologically, we’re resistant to change. We tend to get stuck in what’s familiar. Something can be the greatest idea in the world, but we still won’t embrace it until we find a way out of our ruts. This is especially true of our religious beliefs and what we think about God. Those are our core beliefs, part of our identity. When something threatens a core belief, our defenses go up. Like Nicode...

It’s easy to think that God doesn’t care about our normal, everyday problems. But here, in this story, we see that he does care. It was in sympathy, in kindness, and in understanding for ordinary people that Jesus acted, and began to reveal who he is. He takes our old lives and transforms them into something new. Something formed out of an overflow of grace. The wine was not just a replacement - i...

What's in a name? Well, a lot! Over the past few months, we've spent a good amount of time gathering feedback, brainstorming, narrowing down ideas, and brainstorming again as we've considered what name best represents who we are as a church. This Sunday, we reveal our new church name and why we chose it, and invite you to join us as we continue on our journey to live out the purpose of the church.

Sometime it's hard to notice when we've begun to place our identity in something or someone other than where we want it to be. When you take a look at your life, what do you believe? And where do you find your identity? Is it in your job, your family, your social standing, or your dreams? These things are not bad things - they are gifts given to us by God. But when we place our identity in them, w...