Who Are the Donkeys in Your Life: hearing God from the voices we overlook

God tells Balaam to go, and one verse later God is angry that he went. The contradiction is real, and someone could have smoothed it over centuries ago. Nobody did. A sermon on a famous foreign seer, a donkey who sees what he can't, and a Bible that kept its own arguments.

Numbers 22:21-35.

You Are Not Your GPA: what your worth was never actually based on

You have a running tally in your head: what you got right, what you did not, and how it compares to everyone else's. Most of us assume the failures are the part that hurts. This is a sermon about the brother who never left, did everything right, and still ended up standing outside the party.

Luke 15:11-32. Last in the series You Are Here. Preached by Pastor Shawn Coons.

One Thing at a Time

Your attention gets pulled in a dozen directions before breakfast. A woman named Martha felt it too, too much to do, and her sister just sitting there instead of helping. Jesus does not hand her a better system. He tells her only one thing is actually needed.

Luke 10:38-42. Third in the series You Are Here. Preached by Pastor Shawn Coons.

Where Are My People?

You can be lonely in a room full of people. A woman in Mark's gospel spent twelve years learning how to be invisible, and when she finally reached for Jesus she was hoping to get what she needed without being noticed. He stopped everything to find her anyway.

Mark 5:24-34. Second in the series You Are Here. Preached by Pastor Shawn Coons.

Ready or Not: what to do when you're not ready and it's starting anyway

Waiting to feel ready may be a trap, because the feeling of readiness doesn’t always come. This one starts with Jeremiah telling God he is not qualified for what he is being asked to do, and with God's answer, which is not "yes you are," but "go anyway, I am coming with you."

Jeremiah 1:4-10. First in the series You Are Here. Preached by Pastor Shawn Coons.

Courage in the Chaos - Esther's Story

What do we do when our fear isn't irrational - when it's based on real threats to our communities? Drawing from Esther's story and featuring insights from W. Kamau Bell's recent show at the Kennedy Center, this sermon explores how to move forward when the stakes are life-and-death.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the choice to act despite it. From Frodo's conversation with Gandalf to Esther's "if I perish, I perish," discover how sacred stories and modern examples show us how to: -Name our fears honestly
-Find our unique "lane" of influence
-Support each other in scary times
-Move forward even while trembling

This is for anyone feeling powerless in the face of systemic threats to their community.

Before the Bible Was the Bible - Week 5

What if the Bible wasn't finished? What if we were still adding books today? In this final installment of our series, we explore how the Bible actually came together - not through secret meetings or papal decrees, but through communities discovering which texts truly spoke God's truth to their lives.

From Marcion's edited Bible to Thomas Jefferson's cut-and-paste version, we examine how people have tried to shape scripture to their preferences. But the real story is more fascinating: how early Christian communities organically recognized which writings carried divine authority, and how even their blind spots (like patriarchy) affected what was included.

Before the Bible Was the Bible - Week 4

What do you do when the Bible doesn't directly address modern issues like social media, AI, or gender identity? In this sermon, we explore how the early church - particularly Paul - tackled their own "new" questions that Jesus never addressed. Through examining Paul's creative problem-solving (think spiritual MacGyver!), and his own cultural biases, we discover a model for faithfully addressing contemporary challenges while staying true to Jesus' core message.

Before the Bible was the Bible - Week 3

The truth of the gospels comes through different voices.

The Bible Before It was the Bible - Week 2

The Old Testament was put into the form we know today by scribes in ancient Israel who took the stories they inherited, retold them and added their own. Likewise, today we don't just inherit the stories of scripture, we re-interpret and retell them.