South Arm United Church's Podcast

Send us Fan Mail Guest Preacher and Presider, The Reverend Maggie Watts-Hammond lead this service as Rev. Lauren was away. Hear Rev. Maggie's wonderful interpretation of the parable of "The Widow and the Unjust Judge". How can we who are called to offer words of hope, faith, strength and comfort preach in a world of such trials and stay clear of politics? The truth is, we cannot.

Send us Fan Mail "Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" our Psalm says today. But there is more to 'fear of the Lord' than the surface level, English translation where we imagine being scared. In Hebrew the word for fear ( yirah ) is also translated as reverence and respect. So, to hold God in the highest regard with reverence and respect is the beginning of wisdom. Ackn...

Send us Fan Mail From the Revised Common Lectionary offerings for this week we return to the Psalms, the mini-Bible, the songs and poetry of the Hebrew Bible. Today we look at Psalm 37, a Wisdom Psalm which seems to speak right into our time today with an age old question, "How do we affirm a Great and Holy God and live in the midst of a messy and often unjust world where wrongdoing seems to...

Send us Fan Mail A rich man who seems to be living easy and a poor man who has it rough and lives right outside the gates of the rich man's home. Two very different people and life circumstances. When they die, they find their roles reversed. The poor man is with Abraham and the rich man is not. He is somewhere else and there is a gulf between them which cannot be crossed. What do we make of...

Send us Fan Mail Did Jesus really say, "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters and even life itself cannot be my disciple"? And if so, what did he mean? First, did he say it? Maybe. Scripture records it as such. Did he mean it? Well, we don't believe in a literal translation of being called to hate anyone. No, we are called t...

Send us Fan Mail This Sunday we welcomed guest preacher, Reverend Jay Olson. Rev. Jay has helped shepherd our church through 1 year with no clergy and 2 years with Lauren as a student minister. Today Lauren was officially sworn in as the minister of South Arm United Church. Hear Jay preach about the Body of Christ and how we are all in this together. 

Send us Fan Mail Today we hear the call to pray for Kings and those in positions of authority. We also learn a formula for structuring our prayers: ACTSI. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplications and Intercession. We start by praising and adoring God. This is followed by Confession where we admit to God the ways we have fallen short of God's best for us and, we receive God's fo...

Send us Fan Mail Again this Sunday we encounter Jesus on a Sabbath, with Pharisees (a sect of religious leaders who were very strict about following the law) and we're presented with a person in need of healing. Jesus asks if it is lawful to heal on the Sabbath, qualifies the ask further and then heals a man of dropsy (edema/swelling). The man leaves healed and Jesus offers 2 lessons: (1) A p...

Send us Fan Mail This Sunday we examined the command to honour the Sabbath and keep it holy. In the synagogue on a Sabbath, Jesus sees a woman bent over for 18 years. She doesn't ask for help but he sees her, lays hands on her and pronounces her healed. She stands up for the first time in 18 years and is restored to wholeness in body and in the community at large. A leader is sure Jesus has b...

Send us Fan Mail Last week we began exploring The Hall of Faith. We looked at some of the biggest names and stories we know in The Bible and how God works through people to accomplish God's plans. Today we continue with a few more such stories along with a warning. Pursuing The Way of God runs counter to the ways of this world and can bring on trouble including persecution and even death. In...

Send us Fan Mail Today we start a 2 week examination of what has been called The Hall of Faith, a 'whose who' of great Biblical figures we know and recognize. As we look at their lives we are reminded that God is awesome, God seeks relationship with all of us, that we too are vessels of God's love and work in the world and finally, that "By Faith," with God, all things are...

Send us Fan Mail After Jesus finishing praying, one of the disciples asks Jesus how to pray. Jesus lays out a shorter form of what we know as "The Lord's Prayer". Following this, Jesus offers a metaphor of how we as humans who are beautiful and messy creatures know how to give good gifts to one another and how much more does our Holy God is altogether Good know how to give us all go...

Send us Fan Mail Rev. Billy Graham is said to have prayed the Psalms daily, such that every 3 months he would have prayed aloud all 150 Psalms before starting again. The Psalms have been called a mini-Bible unto itself. In the Psalms we find the the full scope of human experience. We find people not unlike ourselves laying their very souls bare before God in anger, in distress, in sadness, in jubi...

Send us Fan Mail Today we welcomed back guest Minister, The Reverend Dr. Brian Thorpe. Hear as he shares from God's word and brings the text to life in our time and place.

Send us Fan Mail In today's message we talk about being a gathered and sent people. Gathered into the church to worship, to hear a word from The Word, to pray and to encourage one another on in good works. And then we are sent out into the world to live out our faith, to share the good news and to participate in hospitality - both giving and receiving graciously. And we wonder, who might be t...

Send us Fan Mail In Canada, June is Indigenous History Month and June 21st is National Indigenous Peoples Day. If honour of this, we were fortunate to have The Rev. Murray Pruden join us as our guest preacher and co-presider. Rev. Murray opened our service with a wonderful prayer to 6 directions (East. South, West, North, Up and Down) and he offered a beautiful sermon which you can hear here.  Mus...

Send us Fan Mail Everyday we face a myriad of choices. In each moment we can choose to live by gratifying the desires of the flesh or the way of the Holy Spirit. Are we meant to subdue the flesh and live according to the Spirit 24/7 or is there a way to hold both body and Spirit as holy and be in communication with both? This is the topic we address in this week's sermon. Living in the flesh,...

Send us Fan Mail On June 10, 1925 people from across Canada who were part of the Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church and Congregationalist Church came together to form The United Church of Canada. June 10th, 1925 was the inaugural service in a giant hockey arena in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. That arena would later be famously named, 'Maple Leaf Gardens'.  On the 100th Anniversa...

Send us Fan Mail This Sunday we designated, 'Music Sunday' with special guest musicians and extra hymns. We also took time to honour all students connected to our church who are graduating from various grades, programs and schools.  Made in God's image and even more specifically, in the archetype of Christ, we are called to Love God and Love our neighbour as ourself. From a heart of...

Send us Fan Mail In this service we examined the story of a paralyzed man who lies for years by a pool thought to have healing properties. The story goes that occasionally an angel comes down to stir the waters and the first to get in the water while it's stirring find healing. But no one helps the man get in so he misses his chance again and again. Jesus asks him this strange questions, &quo...

Send us Fan Mail The book of Revelation can be intimidating and scary. But it need not be. For we know God has a plan to redeem and reconcile people and Creation. This has been the Master's plan and Jesus made The Way for it to come to pass by conquering sin and the grave (death itself). The vision John shows us, documenting what God has made known to him, shows us that God's plan ultima...

Send us Fan Mail There is coming a day when God will redeem and reconcile all Creation unto Godself. No pain. No tears. No death. No mourning. A new heaven and a new earth will have been transformed into God's glorious vision all along. From the beginning to the end and everything in between (The Alpha, The Omega, The Beginning and The End) this has been God's heart, God's work and...

Send us Fan Mail During Holy Week we hosted 5 services so the following week, we gave our Minister Lauren a break. Various leaders in the South Arm United Church community took responsibility for various parts of the service. Hear as Olwen Walker shares the message this week.  Music between scripture reading and sermon: "I Danced in the Morning" (Voices United Hymnal #352). Words: Sydney...

Send us Fan Mail Today we look at the popular conversion story of Saul to Paul. Saul a religious leader who persecuted Christ followers is met by Jesus in a holy encounter while on the road to Damascus. For 3 days he is temporarily blinded and fasts completely from food and water. God sends along a disciple named Ananias to find him and lay hands on him. With this, Paul regains his site, is baptiz...

Send us Fan Mail The lectionary today offered up a beautiful Passover Praise Psalm for this Palm Sunday. This Sunday marks Jesus entry into Jerusalem on a donkey and the beginning of Holy Week. The opening and closing verses of our passage today offer up the call to, "Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever".   Music between scripture reading and s...