Advent 2023

SERMONS | ADVENT GUIDE | ADVENT PROJECTS

"Advent" means "arrival." And since the early church, God's people have celebrated the arrival of Jesus' birth during this time of year. As we remember his first arrival, we also look ahead to Jesus' promised second arrival - when He will return and make all things new. So, each week, we'll look at different aspects of Christ's coming and how that should shape how we think, feel, and react to the Christmas season.

SERMONS

To help facilitate LifeGroup discussion, we'll be posting resources for each week of the series.

Week 1: Hope

(Sermon) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 2: Peace

(Sermon) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 3: Joy

(Sermon) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 4: Love

(Sermon) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 5: Christmas Eve

(Sermon)

GRAB THE BOOK

To help us prepare our hearts for the Christmas season, we wrote an Advent devotional guide for you and your LifeGroup to work through during this season. The suggested donation is $8 per copy.

ADVENT PROJECTS

One of our goals as a church family is to be generous people. So every year around the holidays, we press into generosity to think about God’s generosity to us and to talk about how we can grow in walking in the kind of generous love He’s shown to us. 

This year, we are focusing on three practical ways to grow in generosity:

#1. START TITHING

We consider tithing a spiritual practice that helps develop a lifestyle of sacrificial generosity. We encourage church members to set up a recurring tithe because the gospel transforms us to be generous around the holidays and throughout the year. It’s also specifically how we fund and fuel all we do as a church in our city.

#2. PERSONAL FINANCE SEMINAR

We want to equip our church family to be spiritually healthy by stewarding the financial resources God has entrusted us. On January 27 from 9am-12pm at our Downtown church, we’re hosting a practical training class to manage your finances, pay off debt, invest well, and practice biblical generosity.

#3. GIVE TO SERVE THE CITY 

Serve the City is our initiative as a church family to partner with local organizations serving the most vulnerable people in our city. This year, we want to fund the various Serve the City events we do throughout the year to serve these organizations and the people they work with. These funds will also go towards our Serve the City Weekend on March 16, 2024. We partner with the following local organizations:

• Transitions

• Home Works for America

• The Ezekiel Center

• Epworth Children's Home

• Daybreak

• Salvation Army

Fruit of the Spirit

Do you ever feel like there are two competing forces waging war within you as you try to follow Jesus? Do you ever feel a gap between what you want your discipleship to look like and the actual lived reality of your day-to-day life? 

Galatians 5 gives weight to this battle within us, telling us about these two competing forces with competing desires - the Spirit and the flesh. And the invitation for all of us as followers of Jesus is to crucify the flesh and cultivate the fruit.

This series will take nine weeks to walk through the Fruit of the Spirit we are called to cultivate, as we examine the life and teachings of Jesus and how the Fruit of the Spirit was evident in His life.

To help facilitate LifeGroup discussion, we'll be posting resources for each week of the series.

Week 1: Love in a Time of Self-Interest

(Sermon) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 2: Peace in a Time of Anxiety

(Sermon) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 3: Kindness in a Time of Polarization

(Sermon) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 4: Patience in a Time of Irritability

(Sermon) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 5: Goodness in a Time of Brokenness

(Sermon) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 6: Gentleness in a Time of Harshness

(Sermon) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 7: Faithfulness in a Time of Compromise

(Sermon) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 8: Joy in a Time of Cynicism

(Sermon) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 9: Self-Control in a time of Self-Fulfillment

(Sermon) (LifeGroup Guide)