The Risks and Realities of Living in a Broken World: At first everything seems so stable and secure, so good. There is life; the touchable and experiential goodness of it all. And there is love. We can’t deny it. But then, somehow, the goodness feels like it is leaking away. The years happen [...]
Series starts April 21, 2013 Doing well? Or doing good? Perhaps it’s time to consider the distinction. Most of us feel pretty happy about life when we are doing well. But is this the only way, or even best way, to evaluate the meaning of our work? What about the effect of what we do [...]
The most common Biblical command is “do not be afraid”. Search your Bible and you will find it repeated dozens of times. It began when God told Abraham, the first man of faith, not to be afraid (Genesis 15:1). Actually, the command could be translated, “stop being afraid!” In other words, Abraham was not only [...]
This is the center. This is the hinge-point of Christian faith. This is the moment we stop and watch, realizing that what we witness is on our behalf, for our life and hope and future. Every year we realize that we need to tell and hear the story once more. Every year we find ourselves [...]
We talk a lot about grace at Westside. We see it as the essence of the Christian gospel and we think we are right about that. But with all our confidence in grace, there are times we remain baffled. What we need is a better imagination, a sensibility more in tune with how God actually works, [...]
We are back at it, revisiting the questions that intrigue and perplex us most. With all of the current conversation on sex and money in our broader culture, one would think we should be moving towards more clarity. One would think we ought to be gaining more understanding, and have less need to talk about [...]
This Christmas it will be hard to miss the buzz. And since we are fans, we feel the need to talk about it. We also sense the opportunity to take a major cultural event — the theatrical release of The Hobbit movie — and turn it into a discussion point about faith and the story [...]
Over the past few years we have been seeing what the Bible always knew: that human stories, when seen through the lens of faith, teach us how to live. The journey of Joseph and his complicated relationship to his brothers will be our focus for this fall season. This is both a common and extraordinary [...]
Perhaps we need to re-learn our Christian vocabulary. First, grace. Was there ever a more comforting hope? But what does grace intend for us? And then, freedom. Was there ever a more captivating vision? But what does freedom look like as we follow Jesus? While we know these words, and love what they represent, we [...]
This is now the third year we have begun our fall season by talking about three essential values: connection, growth, and service. But you won’t often hear us refer to these things in the passive voice, as mere ideas. Instead, we see our community strategy as a three- fold active pursuit: we connect, we grow, [...]
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Bible is now firmly entrenched as a summer tradition. This summer we will make our way through the stories of the early Christian communities. We are going to hitchhike through the book of Acts.
After all is said and done, there are always things we couldn’t find the time or place for, or things that have emerged in our hearts through the course of the year. This June we’d like to have two two-part conversations about Green Theology and Wisdom.
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