Sermons

Every year, Easter Sunday serves as a hallmark of our Christian faith; a day when billions of people around the world will gather to hear afresh the centerpiece our faith: that Jesus Christ is risen, that he’s alive! Our brief passage from Acts will lead us to consider this question: what difference does Jesus’s resurrection really make in your life? The answer will be loud and clear: because Jesus is alive, your life can have real hope and real purpose with no illusions.

In one of his greatest books, The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis helps show us a struggle we all have in recognizing the true source of our security and significance. What is it in life that assures me that I’ll be secure? And what assures me that I’m significant? These are two of our most essential needs as human beings. Our passage this week will call us to find joy and peace in putting our trust in the only true source that will satisfy our need: Jesus Christ.

So much of the book of Acts is about growth; growth of the gospel, growth of believers, growth of the church. It’s easy to read this history of the early church, or even to hear ministry leaders talk about similar events in our generation, and think, “That’s not my life. My life is way more ordinary than that.” This week, from this passage, we’ll see that God’s goal is the growth of the gospel, and we are all a part of that…no matter how ordinary our lives may appear.

A good but difficult question we are often asked is, why? Why do we do certain things, believe certain things, or go to certain places? It’s a good question because “why” forces us to think and answer truthfully. This week, one of the questions that arises is why do Christians share the gospel and why do they persist in sharing the gospel even in hard, challenging places? The answer we’ll see is because He wants us to, and because it will be believed.

If you could ask Jesus to do one thing in your life, your community, someone close to you, what would you ask him? Our answers give us a picture that grounds our church’s vision: gospel renewal. Jesus is moving all things from the failure of the garden to the glory of new creation and he’s working through us, his church, to do it. What kind of expectations does Jesus want us to have for what he’s doing in us and through us? The answer we’ll see is probably more than we think.

In this generation and the next. Why would our church have those words in our vision? This short phrase helps define the timeline and the scope of our mission and calling. Weeks ago, we began our current series by looking at the grand story of the gospel; that God is moving all things from the failure of the garden to the glory of New Creation. Now, as we position ourselves within the story, we see that God wants His grace of new creation to go out to both this generation and the next.

The name of our church draws influence from Kansas City, being the City of Fountains, but it signifies more than that. Behind our name is a reality that transcends our church and extends to all of Jesus’s people and churches. It’s a reality that gets at something core to our identity as disciples of Jesus; that we are sent. And as a sent church, we believe that core to Jesus’ calling to us is to be a church that sends disciples.

A question that can evoke many different answers is what a church should prioritize. What should a church build its mission around? We might say loving our neighbors, caring for the poor, seeking justice and all of those are certainly true. Throughout his life, Jesus said many things that He wants his church to prioritize, but one thing He said has stood out to Bible readers for thousands of years. It was in his last words to his closest followers: make disciples.

Guest Speaker Dave Robinson on being a Disciple of Christ.

One of the more confusing realities of the Christian faith is perhaps the part we interact with the most: the Church. What exactly is THE church? In our modern context it’s easy to connect church with a building or a social club or non-profit that helps us grow but as we’ll see this week, none of that gets close to what the Church really is. As Peter will show us, the church is a community of born-again people saved to be with God and bless the world.