Episodes
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This Sunday, Pastor Suzy Silk continued our sermon series through the Book of Acts, The Fifth Act, with a teaching on the early believers living primarily as witnesses of the Gospel. Acts 5 reveals that the disciples had an internal operating system that enabled them to be witnesses of Christ no matter the circumstances they faced. In considering the decision-making framework of our own lives, Pastor Suzy urged us to evaluate what is driving our instinctive decisions: the pursuit of comfort and a good life, or being witnesses for Jesus.
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This Sunday, Pastor Keithen Schwahn continued our series through the Book of Acts, The Fifth Act, by sharing a teaching on the story of Ananias and Sapphira from Acts 4:32--5:11 to illustrate how God is willing to dismantle anything in His Church that claims His name but misrepresents His character. The invitation to the Church today is to believe again that Jesus’ vision for community--marked by worship, learning, love, generosity, and multiplication--is possible, and that confession and full surrender to the Holy Spirit will bring about this necessary revival.
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This Sunday, Pastor Jon Tyson continued our series through the Book of Acts, The Fifth Act, with a powerful message from Acts 4:18–31 on how the Early Church responded to resistance with unified prayer. In this passage, we see Peter and John boldly proclaiming the name of Jesus in the face of commands, threats, and pressure to conform. Today, we are also called to respond to resistance by choosing faithfulness over fear, and pressing in with prayer instead of retreating.
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This Sunday, Pastor Suzy Silk continued our sermon series through the Book of Acts, The Fifth Act, with a teaching on how Peter, empowered by the Holy Spirit, healed a lame man and faced the persecution from religious leaders by continuing to boldly proclaim the good news of Jesus as Lord. Like Peter and John, we are called us to prioritize being with Jesus, and from this place, boldly proclaim the Gospel wherever we go—not because of our qualifications, but because of God’s power.
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This week, Pastor Jon Tyson continued our sermon series through the book of Acts, The Fifth Act, with a teaching through Peter’s bold sermon after Pentecost that launched the Early Church. Through this passage, Peter explains not only how belief in Jesus is possible, but what has been driving the Church forward for the past 2,000 years.
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This week, Pastor Jon Tyson kicked off our new sermon series through the book of Acts, The Fifth Act, with a teaching on the Holy Spirit’s ability to empower believers to be witnesses for Jesus to the ends of the earth. Before Jesus ascended into Heaven after His resurrection, He instructed the disciples to wait in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit came to them. Like the first disciples, we cannot be effective witnesses of Jesus on our own; we need the power of the Holy Spirit.
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This Easter Sunday, Pastor Jon addressed our need to become “God conscious” and receive the hope and life found in Jesus’ resurrection. John’s gospel account includes Mary Magdalene’s discovery of Jesus’ empty tomb and resurrected body, and this story displays how a personal encounter with the living God sparked a movement of hope that is still going forth today. Pastor Jon encouraged those grieving the brokenness of the world and seeking hope to investigate the state of their hearts and consider pursuing a life that is “God-conscious."
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This Sunday, Pastor Jon Tyson closed out our Missional Formation series with a call to follow Jesus’ lead in making discipleship the heart of our mission. Throughout this series, we have established a radical minimum standard through what Church of the City believes are the nine core competencies of being disciples in the Kingdom of Heaven. While God has done remarkable things in this season, Pastor Jon led us back to the question that began this series: Is our plan for discipleship working?
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This week, Pastor Jon continued our Missional Formation series with a teaching on vocational mission and workplace prayer, addressing the tensions many Christians face in bringing these areas together. Since God created humankind for the purpose of work, and we will spend at least one third of our lives at work, it’s crucial that we examine how work fits into our discipleship. Pastor Jon exhorted us to imagine the history shaping impact of a community of people living on vocational mission by committing to lives of contending prayer and redemptive work, and invited us to be a part of it.
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This Sunday, Pastor Ashley Anderson continued our Missional Formation series, where we are exploring what we believe are the “core competencies” of living life on mission with Jesus. This week we learned about the distinctive of The Redemptive Edge and the discipline of blessing beyond barriers. In His final few moments with His disciples in Matthew 25, Jesus prepared them for His death, resurrection, ascension, and future return. He spoke explicitly on the coming day of the Lord, where He will return in the fullness of His glory with all the angels, and the nations will be gathered before Him as He judges them according to their treatment of the poor and oppressed. Pastor Ashley called us to reevaluate our posture towards the poor against the heart Jesus clearly holds for the marginalized and oppressed.
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This Sunday, Pastor Jon Tyson continued Missional Formation, where we are exploring what we believe are the “core competencies” of living life on mission with Jesus. We began our final three weeks of this series on Sacrificial Mission by looking at the distinctive of Disciple Making. The vision of our church is that everyone in our church is sharing the Gospel, seeing people come to Christ, and discipling them into the Kingdom of God. Discipleship, particularly in the West, has become associated feelings of frustration, over dependence on programs, and general confusion around what it actually means to both be discipled and disciple others. In light of this, we have to recover a Biblical standard for discipleship, and receive a fresh vision for multi-generational discipling like we see modeled by Paul in 2 Timothy 2:1-2.
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This Sunday in our Missional Formation series, Pastor Sam Gibson spoke on the distinctive of Crucified and Consecrated, focusing on the discipline of fasting. Living a crucified and consecrated life allows believers to put to death their fleshly desires and makes space for Jesus to resurrect His desires in us. Building a lifestyle of fasting is one of the most effective and powerful practices that brings about this transformation in our lives. Yet, while many Christians know they should fast, they often don’t understand why or how best to approach this discipline. More than just abstaining from eating, fasting is an intentional act of surrender that positions us to receive more of God.
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This week, Pastor Jon Tyson continued our sermon series on Missional Formation by teaching on the distinctive of Communitas and the discipline of core accountability through Romans 16:1-16, which uncovers the communal structure of the Early Church and challenges us to rethink community in light of God’s Kingdom. Jesus’ vision for the Church is more than just a group of people who are formed by their own preferences and opinions, but a people unified by shared mission.
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This week, Pastor Suzy Silk continued our sermon series on Missional Formation by focusing on the distinctive of Discipling the Deficits and the discipline of confessing sin as keys to being counter-formed from the ways of the world into the ways of Jesus. Pastor Suzy called us to walk in freedom by regularly inviting the Holy Spirit to search our hearts, confessing specific sins regularly, and committing to accountability in a trusted group. Confession and obedience lead to greater freedom, intimacy with God, and the increased ability to reflect His image in the world.
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This week, Pastor Al Gordon from Saint Church in London continued our Missional Formation series with a word on Space and Risk. As followers of Jesus, it is mission critical for us to be filled with the Holy Spirit. As God’s work continues to accelerate on the earth, we must be a people who are willing to not only make space for the Holy Spirit’s leading, but take hold of every risk He puts in front of us both as individuals and as a body of believers.
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This Sunday, Pastor Suzy continued our Missional Formation series by unpacking the distinctive of Radical Daily Pursuit through the discipline of feasting on the Word. Often without meaning to, we can lose sight of why God wants us to spend time reading the Bible. This discipline is not meant to be driven by doing things for God so that He will be pleased with us, but out of a desire to commune with the God who desires to commune with us.
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This Sunday, Pastor Jon continued our Missional Formation series with a teaching on the first of nine distinctives and corresponding disciplines of Church of the City’s radical minimum standard for discipleship. We believe compelling missional disciples are marked by three things — tangible presence, counter formation, and sacrificial mission — and the distinctives and disciplines we will be diving into this season make up how to practically live these out in our day to day lives. The first distinctive, sitting under tangible presence, is Revival and Awakening, and the discipline is contending prayer.
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This Sunday, Pastor Jon kicked off our new sermon series on Missional Formation with a teaching on setting a new radical minimum standard for discipleship. He challenged us with a powerful reminder: the true measure of a church isn’t found in its programs or teachings, but in the hearts of its disciples and their commitment to obeying Jesus’ great commission. Pastor Jon called us to elevate our expectations for discipleship, and approach it as a response to God’s love for us, instead of using willpower or performance. As we experience His love, we are transformed and empowered to love Him back.
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This Sunday, we closed out our God Comes Where He’s Wanted Series with guest preacher and friend, Zach Meerkreebs, with a teaching on cultivating the altar of the region. Only when we are heartbroken over our region, as Jesus was heartbroken over Jerusalem, will we begin to prayerfully build the altar of our region through Christlike confrontation, conscreted confidence, and faithful contending.
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This Sunday, Pastor Sam Gibson continued our God Comes Where He’s Wanted series with a message on cultivating the altar of the Church. Pastor Sam acknowledged there is often pain and hopelessness tied to conversations about the Church today, while offering a hopeful vision of restoring corporate spaces of seeking God through tearing down false altars, building up spaces for God’s presence, and tending to those spaces as unified bodies of believers.
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