Sui Generis is Latin for being of its own genre or unlike anything or anyone else. Each of us has a deep desire to feel special in relation to our Creator and this is the kind of relationship that God wants with each of us.

This sermon addresses how crowds who are formed around evil agendas serve as seedbeds for Satan. This has been seen throughout history where one crowd sets itself up as possessing the solution at the expense of others. It is based on an “us” vs. “them” mentality. The modern malaise of polarization continues this tactic of the enemy, and as Kingdom people, we must recognize it for what it is and rise above it.

There is a cosmic war transpiring, one where Satan is in rebellion against God. We are caught up in a battle zone, and we, as parts of the church, have roles to play. This sermon explores what this means for us and how we influence the heavenly realms by being faithful witnesses to God’s character. Through the church, the wisdom of God is made known in mysterious ways that we cannot fully know. 

Satan plays a main role in the book of Revelation. This sermon introduces who Satan is and his origin. It also addresses the primary tactics Satan uses and how we can combat and overcome them.

This sermon expounds upon the letter to the church at Smyrna, where Jesus offers encouragement to the church which will be facing suffering and persecution. In their struggles, they are told that they are actually rich, contrary to all of the evidence. If they endure, they will receive the crown of life.

Jesus addresses the church of Ephesus in the first letter to the seven churches, telling them what they did well and what they need to work on. Specifically, Jesus confronts the fact that they have abandoned the love that they started with. They were good at orthodoxy, but struggled to live a life characterized by love. This is an important message for us today in the midst of perpetual divisiveness over ideological differences.

Faith is about capturing a vision of what can be and having a conviction that stirs up action to move toward it. This faith also pertains to the pursuit of racial reconciliation. God has a dream for racial reconciliation that has not yet been fully realized, but as we see God’s vision, we can put our weight toward it, leaning into that vision as if it already has occurred.

John sees a vision of Jesus holding the entire angelic world in his hand, symbolizing his universal authority. This sermon explores the reality of an angelic world by highlighting how our knowledge of the universe is actually very limited. Then we learn the role that angels play and how we can participate in the victory that Jesus won over what the Bible refers to as “spiritual powers” that have held us in bondage.

This sermon explores John’s first heavenly vision where he is told to record what he sees and send it to seven churches. Part of this vision is a sword that comes from the mouth of Jesus, the only weapon that is ever associated with Jesus. Why is this symbol important? What does it mean? And what is the significance of it being his only weapon? The sermon answers these questions.

Christmas is the ultimate expression of God’s compassion, a core attribute and expression of God’s being. This is an expression associated with the Hebrew word for womb, which means that compassion is about entering into the experiences of another. God enters into our life through Jesus and shows us what God is like.

God, at the core of his divine nature, is gracious. This means that God extends his favor to us as a gift, out of his delight in us. This grace is fully expressed in the coming of Jesus, and Christmas is a time to celebrate and receive the grace of God.

God proclaims to Moses that his character is faithful, even when his covenant partners are not faithful to him. Jesus was born to demonstrate God’s covenant faithfulness, coming to those who were not looking for him or able to recognize him when he came. God remains faithful to us today, never leaving nor forsaking us, even when we do not seek him or we rebel against him.

In this second sermon of the Christmas series, we examine God’s forgiving character, how God forgives us, what it means to forgive others and why this is important to our own well-being, and to forgiving ourselves. This core trait of God’s is ultimately fulfilled in the life of Jesus, as he shows us what God’s forgiving nature looks like. 

This opening sermon to the Christmas series introduces a central Old Testament passage that defines the nature of God, which is ultimately revealed in the coming of Jesus, the perfect embodiment of God. In this sermon, Greg addresses a difficult phrase where God is said to visit the iniquity of the parents on their children. How are we to understand this passage when it contradicts both Jesus’ teachings and his actions on the cross?

This sermon examines three key phrases found in Revelation 1:4-8 that help us understand the overarching themes of Revelation and reframe popular ways that this book has been taught. Through these phrases, we learn that the end times is not about waging wrathful war but about destroying lies that deceive.

What are the “seven spirits”? To answer this question, Greg explores the way that Revelation employs numbers to convey truths, with seven referring to completeness or perfection. The seven spirits implies the perfect giving of the Holy Spirit, God’s presence, just as God completely poured himself out in the Incarnation.

What is the endgame of all of Scripture? Since the Book of Revelation points to this endgame, it is crucial that we step back and look at the big picture of God’s purpose. This sermon answers this question by highlighting the goal of the preparation of the bride (God’s people) to be wed to the groom (Christ). 

Jesus, whom the book of Revelation gives divine titles, is at work in our world. This work is manifest in three ways according to this passage: he loves us, freed us, and made us. We put ourselves in a place to receive God’s ongoing love and to live out the freedom that we have been given. In addition, we have been made priests, people who offer this love and freedom to the world; we do this in our normal, everyday lives.

As members of God’s kingdom, we are priests, what Peter calls “living stones,” who participate in God’s transcendent and glorious work to redeem all things. There is not a special class of people designated for this, but God includes us in his work to change the world.

Our focus scripture states that God relates to creation in time, through the past, in the present, and toward the future that is to come. He walks with us in relationship, as is demonstrated throughout the Old Testament. This eternality of God is applied to Jesus in Revelation, highlighting the divine transcendence of the slain lamb.

We are told that we are blessed if we hear and keep the words of Revelation. These words will challenge the norms of the culture that shape us, which means that we must be open to ways that we don’t know we are deceived. But even more than hearing, we must practice keeping these words, internalizing them in such a way that they become part of us.

Many read Revelation as a predictor of the future. This turns God into a fixed, wooden object who does not actually relate to a living creation. But this book was never meant to be read this way. Instead, it points to a living God who relates to a living creation and calls us into a living faith.

This sermon addresses the meaning of “the end is near.” Many explanations that the church has offered have caused great confusion because the book of Revelation has been used as a predictor of the very end of time. However, such explanations misunderstand the genre that Revelation is. When we read this book as apocalyptic literature, we can interpret the symbols rightly and see how it can serve to encourage the church to be faithful to Christ in the midst of spiritual warfare. 

In this first sermon of our new series on the book of Revelation, we are introduced to how this book has been taught in ways that do not represent its meaning. We learn about its true meaning, and we discover why this message is so crucial to our present time. In a time when hope is waning, Revelation points us to the hope found in Jesus so that we might see the way that God brings victory when all seems lost.

While we are to invest in our individual Christian formation, we are also responsible for our formation corporately. We do not live out our faith merely as individuals. We live out our love for Christ together and work out our salvation as a group.

The struggles we face offer us a choice: avoid them or use them as an opportunity to develop antifragile faith. Pain avoidance will keep us fragile, but when we press on with Christ as the goal, we can develop perseverance or what Dan calls, antifragile faith.

In this sermon, Greg shares how God uses afflictions to form our character, if we have a vision for God’s ultimate goal of life and set aside the common goal of the pursuit of happiness. A vision to know God and live in his love will motivate us to enter into training that will shape us to love God and others. This training moves us beyond the never-ending chase of happy so that we might find joy in all things. 

In this sermon, Greg paints a picture of what God is doing now and what God will do at the end of history. He does this by providing three snapshots found in three passages that describe what the end will look like and how God will redeem all things by the power of his love. This gives us a reason for hope in the midst of any current suffering and pain. 

This sermon addresses how God uses the suffering we face in this world to form us so that we might know Christ and his glory. While the sufferings we face are not orchestrated by God, God meets us in these situations and provides us with the opportunity to meet Christ in the midst so that we might be transformed into his likeness. 

Greg shares physical challenges he's experienced lately and how during a visit to the emergency room, he began to understand the meaning of sharing in Christ’s suffering. He uses this experience to show how God meets us in our sufferings and uses them to bring about the transformation of knowing Christ. 

The Apostle Paul wrote that he does one thing: forget what is behind and press ahead to the goal to win the prize of God. In this sermon, Dan Kent explains what it means to forget the past and press on toward God. When we do this we find freedom and joy to move into God’s continuing new work.

Shawna Boren teaches through Jesus’ words about the vine and the branches from John 15, explaining how God works with us so that we might abide in Jesus and have the fullness of his life in us. She helps us identify issues that hinder our abiding in Jesus and how we can move into the life of the vine.

This sermon provides a recap of the Unraveling Truth series, as Dan walks us through four elements of the series: Truth, God, Jesus and the Bible. He explains how these elements are related to each other and how they have implications for how we think and do day-to-day life.

Many people struggle in their faith because they have read in the Old Testament about the violence promoted and done by God. They ask how that violence is actually loving, and how it aligns with the God revealed in Jesus Christ on the cross. In this sermon, Greg provides a way to read these passages so that they point to the cross and demonstrate God’s love for the world.

In this sermon, Dan Kent asks the question, was Jesus a good teacher? He uses the story of the rich young ruler, who called Jesus “good teacher,” and Jesus’ response to help us see the uniqueness of Jesus’ teachings. The questions that this man brought to Jesus hindered his ability to receive what Jesus taught, and in the same way today, our questions limit us.

Jim Beilby seeks to answer the question of where God is in the midst of the realities of our day-to-day struggles. This sermon addresses the apparent hiddenness of God when we are not experiencing his personal presence.

In this sermon, Greg addresses the problem of hell and how many have walked away from the faith because they cannot reconcile a God of love with a place of endless torture. Greg gives a biblical understanding of hell by demonstrating its metaphorical language, how we bring hell upon ourselves, and how it actually is related to God’s love.

Many today view the church as insignificant and irrelevant, and therefore, the church is seeing many exit its doors and never returning. What are the reasons why people view the church in this way? How can the church counteract this perspective? These questions are explored so that we might understand what it means to be the church in today’s world and how we can participate in being God’s people in a way that is both significant and relevant.

Greg interviews Adam Dyer, pastor of Yeovil Community Church in England and the Director of Jesus Collective. Through the conversation, we learn about practical ways God is working through his people when Jesus is placed at the center.

Greg Boyd interviews Bill Doherty about how he came to faith, how he facilitates peacemaking through his organization, Braver Angels, and how we can live in a divided and polarized world.

Based on the claims that Jesus made about himself, we have three options: to say he was a liar, a lunatic or that he is lord. This sermon addresses the question of whether or not Jesus was of a sound mind, and then claims that the only sane human to have ever lived was Jesus, and what the implications of that are.

This sermon addresses two issues people often find problematic about being saved through the work of Jesus. The first is the issue of particularity, or how salvation is an exclusive offer found only in Jesus. The second issue is what we are saved from. Many have argued that we are saved from the wrath of God, but this presents a myriad of problems, many of which actually portray God as inherently angry and violent towards humans. This sermon lays out a different view of salvation, one based in the loving sacrifice of God on the cross.

The Church is to be the representation of God’s life to the world so that the world might see and know God. Yet throughout history, the Church has repeatedly fallen short of this calling. Now, as a result, people are resisting the Christian faith because of the repulsive actions and words of those in the Church. What are we to do with this reality? How do we understand what is going on in the Church? And why did God set up the Church as his primary means for his mission? This sermon seeks to address these questions.

This sermon addresses what Christendom is and compares it to an apostolic posture. While many bemoan the fall of Christendom, could this actually be a good thing as it makes space for us to return to the apostolic posture?

In this sermon, Dr. Kishore Vellody shares his story about how truth has been “unraveled” in his own life – how his journey from a hard drinking atheist in college to one who is passionate about the love of God has played out in serendipitous and unpredictable ways.  

Many find themselves struggling with their faith when they are honest about imperfections that they find in the Bible. This sermon helps us understand the nature of these imperfections and offers a way to reframe the way the Bible works as God’s inspired book.

This sermon offers six reasons why we can trust in the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It also explains what the resurrection means for us, as it offers a sense of hope enduring, everlasting beauty in the midst of fleeting goodness.

Many have walked away from the faith because the church has embraced patriarchal patterns. This sermon addresses what patriarchy is, how Jesus responded to it during his time and takes a hard look at how patriarchy remains a problem today. Here is an alternative perspective that tears down the patterns of control and abuse that deride and demean women, and empowers them to walk as peers alongside men in the world and in the church.

History shows the church has promoted violence in various forms, and many have turned away from the faith as a result. This sermon examines this issue and addresses the alternative that Jesus brings and what the church should offer the world.

How do we understand the problem of evil and its relationship to God’s work in the world? The common perspective is that God causes evil, but Greg offers an alternative view.

We live in a world where most people believe in some form of a God, but more often than not, people do not view God as personal or in a relationship with us. This sermon explores why it is logical to say both that God exists and is personal, and then it examines the importance of cultivating this personal interaction with God.

In a culture where the foundations of truth are unraveling, Greg offers a framework that equips us to focus on Jesus and walk with others who might see things differently than we do.

This sermon covers the problem of science vs. faith and the supposed division between the two that often drives away people from the church. Dan Kent proposes a solution to resolve the differences, showing us how the two can work together and complement one another.

In this sermon, Emily Morrison looks at what happens right after Jesus feeds the 5000 to point out the importance of raising questions about our faith. She offers an explanation of three phases of our faith journey that allow us to embrace the questions and find a way through them by ultimately bringing them to Jesus.

Is it possible to claim to know any absolute truth in an age in which everything is heading in the direction of relativism? In this sermon, Greg gives us three reasons to take relativism seriously and understand why people might think it plausible.

The church too often puts on display bad news that drives people away from God. This sermon confronts this pattern and shows us a different way­—a way of love that can provide an experience of good news.

In this sermon, Greg provides an introduction to a new series on the reason why we believe in and follow Christ. He surveys why this topic is important and some of the various questions that we will explore in the series. Then Greg explains the foundation of his faith that he worked out when he was wresting with questions of belief.

As a conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount series, a panel discusses the high points of the series and interacts with the teachings in a personal way, helping us put the words of Jesus into action.

In remembrance of Martin Luther King Jr., Greg engages the teaching of King to challenge the church to continue God’s call to tear down walls that divide people along racial lines. 

Jesus spoke with authority, but what does this authority mean for today when we tend to distrust authority figures? In this sermon Dan addresses why acting on Jesus’ teaching is so crucial to actually understanding what he said. Jesus’ truth is not merely a set of facts that we give assent to. They are life truths that we can only fully know when we live them out.

In a world full of false messages, we need to hear God’s truth, specifically the truth about who we are as God’s children. This is not merely hearing factual truths about our identity, but opening our hearts to receive God’s truth, which means we must let go of things in our hearts that hinder these truths from sinking in.

Hope sets the course for our lives, as our hope determines our daily actions. But often we go through life putting our hope in that which has no ultimate importance. Christmas redefines hope, showing us what is ultimately valuable, and it demonstrates how God transforms our lives and the entire world.

Loneliness pervades our society today. Jesus came to be with us, driving out isolation and confronting the demonic patterns that keep us from receiving and giving the love of God to one another.

We are meant to live with meaning, but our world seems to offer meanings that ultimately fail to measure up to their promises. Jesus came into the world to give us meaning, the kind of meaning that can only be found from knowing the destination of the journey of life.

At Christmas time, we announce the coming of the Prince of Peace. Yet we look around at our world and peace appears to be the last thing that describes our situation. What does Christ’s peace look like in the midst of the tumult and chaos that we experience on a daily basis? 

In this sermon, Greg addresses Jesus’ teaching on the differences between the wise and the foolish builders and what it means to act on what Jesus instructs. 

There is a distinct difference between false and true prophets. We know this difference by their fruit, by what they promote in the lives of others. The challenge is that because false prophets promote the norms of a culture they are easily embraced as being true.

In this sermon, Greg address the differences between the wide and the narrow ways, and explains how we can embrace the life that comes with the narrow path.

In this panel discussion, Paul Eddy, Dan Kent and Shawna Boren discuss various aspects of prayer, specifically about why prayer matters and how to grow in it.

The end of the Sermon on the Mount offers two ways, or two paths to follow. In this sermon, Dan introduces the tradition of the Two Ways and then connects the way of life to the way of Jesus.

Greg teaches how what we build on the foundation of Jesus Christ will be tested by fire in the Final Judgment. That which aligns with the Kingdom will be purified and that which does not will be burned away.

In this sermon, Greg addresses the question of how Christ died and gave life to all, but at the same time, people can choose death and therefore reject this life. This is set in the context of the end judgment of God. 

In this sermon, Jim Beilby addresses the question about the destiny of the un-evangelized, proposing that people are given the opportunity to receive Christ’s true revelation of himself after death. 

In this sermon, Greg reviews some of the primary ways that God has worked in our church over the last three decades. This retrospective invites us into thanksgiving, celebration, and wonder at God’s faithfulness.

This sermon address the nature of God’s judgment at the end of time and how it relates to the suffering we are encountering in the midst of the struggles of this present life.

This sermon provides a brief report card on how well humans are doing at caring for God’s creation, specifically as it relates to Earth’s climate. 

The vision of Woodland Hills is “Learning to Love Together.” This is practiced in four dimensions: loving God, loving ourselves, loving other people and loving creation. 

There is a direct, organic connection between how humans live in love and the well-being of creation. The calamity experienced at the hands of the environment is a natural result of human failure to care for it as God intended.

God called all people to care for his land and animals as his stewards. This is a basic mandate that was part of the creation narrative.

What does it mean to trust God as the ultimate judge? This is an important question if we are going to live in love and forego judgment of others.

In this sermon, Greg provides a big picture overview of the series on God’s final judgment and why it is so crucial, especially during this time in history. 

We long for justice, and we hope that God will deliver his justice at the end of times. This sermon introduces a series on the coming justice of God and what this means for us today. 

John’s first letter tells us that we are God’s children and that the world is controlled by the evil one. But even more, it tells us how to know Jesus in the midst of this evil so that we might have resurrection life.

We get off the “high horse” by not judging others or seeing ourselves as superior to them. We also get off the high horse by living relationship with others and having the humility to receive feedback from them. 

The story of Genesis 3 identifies the lies at the root of all that is wrong with the world. These lies are fake news about the nature of God, ourselves, others and the purpose of the planet. When we buy into these lies, the resulting actions cause destruction.

The story of the fall of Adam and Eve tells us what it means to lose the true center of life, and how when we orbit around a false center we are trapped in the perpetual judgement of others.

In this sermon, Dan Kent examines how we respond when others judge us. He first looks at how the world teaches us to respond, and then he offers a different response that is shaped by God’s perspective.

In this sermon, Cedrick Baker brings clarity to what it means to be civically engaged in our world in a Kingdom way. He offers insight into ways that we can be God's love and light without falling into the traps of polarization.

This sermon explores the four primary passages from the Bible that explain why judgment is forbidden.

This panel conversation addresses the practical implications of the teaching on what it means to live in love and forego judgment of others.

There were two trees in the Garden of Eden, one representing where we get true life from and one representing a prohibition from what steals from life. This sermon explores the significance of these two trees. 

We live in a system in which everyone judges themselves and each other and creates a hierarchy of those above and below them. Jesus came to confront and blow this system apart.

We become what we practice. We practice what we imagine is the goal of where we are going. As Christ followers, we are to set the goal of living in love so that we can practice love to become more loving.

God calls us to replicate the love of the cross instead of passing judgment upon others. We do this as we live into the reality of our inclusion in God’s love and our identity in Christ, as part of the Triune, cruciform love that God is.

In this introductory sermon to the “Cross Examination” series, Greg lays out the all-important challenge to live in love in the way that is defined by Christ on the cross. This sermon also details how this mandate to love goes against the grain of our culture which is dominated by divisiveness and judgment.

How do we become the kind of person who heeds Jesus’ words on not worrying about our life? Dan Kent answers this question with three basic truths that can change how we face worrisome situations.

Jesus tells us not to worry, but what does this mean in a world full of worry-causing circumstances? How can we not be anxious when there are so many troubling issues that we face? This teaching addresses what it means to trust God in anxious times to the point that we know that Jesus is with us as we face our worries.

The world around us is wrought with pain and suffering. Amidst this reality it can often be difficult to find a sense of hope. To fully appreciate the incomprehensible glory that is going to be revealed to us, we first need to appreciate the full magnitude of the sufferings of this present age. As we engage with the painful news of our world, we turn our eyes to the coming hope that is grounded in the resurrected Christ.*Please note that due to Greg being sick on Easter, we re-used his message from 2018 for this year’s service.

On Good Friday, Jesus experienced the darkness and pain of God -forsakenness, as he entered the depths of the reality of a sin-drenched world. How can this inform our experience of living in a Good Friday World?

Scarcity drives common daily experiences in our world, yet God invites us to trust his ability to abundantly provide. In this sermon, Osheta Moore offers us a liturgy of abundance so that we can embrace God’s abundance in the midst of scarcity.

How do we find freedom from the allure of mammon? In this sermon, Greg offers three practical steps for discovering contentment in God so that we are free from the discontentment that drives the Mammon Game.

At the end of time, we will come before God in judgment, where God’s love will refine and purge. Jesus taught us to live today with this future in mind by investing in treasures that will endure the fire instead of investing in that which will burn because they are not compatible with God’s love.

Jesus taught us to be aware of the trap of money and greed. In this sermon, Greg applies Jesus’ words to today’s situation so that we might escape this mammon game and entrust our money to God. 

Jesus taught us that what we see is shaped by how our eyes are trained to see the world. If our eye is bad, our sight will be corrupted. We need good eyes to see the world rightly.

In this sermon, Greg teaches on Matthew 6:16-21, where we’re told to fast in secret, unlike the "hypocrites" who put fasting on display for public applause. Our reward for secrecy is the beauty of the character that we develop when we learn how to be singularly motived by God’s will rather than social applause. This leads to two questions: How is this secret relationship with our Father going, and what really motivates us?

In this sermon Tara Beth Leach shares about the importance of corporate prayer and how it impacts our lives in a culture that is shaped by individualism.

What does it mean to pray that God won’t bring us to times of trial and to be rescued from the evil one? Greg explores the answers to this question and how it applies to our daily lives.

Jesus teaches about the importance of forgiving others who have done us harm, even saying that the Father will not forgive us if we don’t forgive. What does this mean? Why is forgiveness so important? How do we practice it? These are questions that Greg explores in this crucial sermon for our times.

The Lord teaches us to ask for the Father’s provision of our daily bread. What does this mean in our modern culture where we are taught to take care of ourselves? This sermon by Cedrick Baker seeks to address this question.

Continuing the “When You Pray” series, Greg opens this teaching on the Lord’s Prayer by discussing the analogical nature of the way that the New Testament authors wrote.

This weekend we had a discussion panel in which Greg, Cedrick, Delon and Shawna addressed questions submitted about issues around race and God’s Kingdom. 

On the eve of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Greg talks about how spiritual warfare is rooted in the war between light and darkness, and how MLK taught us to offer light in the midst of that darkness.

Why do prayers go unanswered if God is all-powerful? This sermon seeks to answer this question in a way that lines up with the character of God revealed in Jesus. 

What is the purpose of petitionary prayer? In this sermon, Greg seeks to answer this question by showing how prayer is a means of partnering with God to join our will with God’s

Ruth is an ancestor of Jesus. Her story reveals surprising aspects of what Jesus came to do in our world, how he came to tear down walls that divide us into nationalistic camps. This is a story that we need to embrace so that the kingdom of God might rise up.

The story of Mary, Jesus’ mother, is significant. Through it we can see how following Jesus involves trusting him in the midst of confusion, not the lack of it. Her story encourages us to press through fear and doubt, even when we don’t understand how God is at work in and around us.

Our understanding of God is often controlled by our projections upon him. How, then, do we actually attain a more accurate picture of who he actually his? This sermon seeks to address this question by helping us think through our experiences of parenting and how those experiences influence our view of God’s nature.

The genealogy of Jesus includes a woman named Rahab, a Canaanite prostitute. Such an inclusion is not only shocking, but it also is scandalous. Why was she included and what does it mean for us today?

This is the first sermon of our Christmas series that explores the five women mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus found in Matthew. Here, the story of Tamar from Genesis 38 is told and we are introduced to what Christmas means for women in a culture that is shaped by misogyny.

The imagination plays a central role in the spirituality of most ancient people-groups. God is still speaking today in this way today, but we’ve lost the art of hearing because we don’t take our imagination seriously.

In this sermon, Osheta Moore offers a teaching on the practice of silence, or what she calls holy listening. Then, she offers a means for embracing this holy listening through the discipline of centering prayer.

What is fasting? Why should we do it? What does Jesus say about fasting? In this sermon, Dan Kent explores these questions, and wrestles with the practical implications of fasting in our world that is overcome by the pursuit of pleasure.

In this sermon, Greg addresses the nature of the rewards that we receive from investing in spiritual disciplines. He then speaks to how generosity is rewarded.

Jesus' life and ministry were characterized by prayer. Why did he pray as he did, and what does that tell us about why we should pray? In this sermon, Meghan Good explores this topic and helps us see the importance of spiritual practices to our life in God.

In this introductory sermon to a new series on spiritual practices, Greg lays the foundation for why we embrace such practices by identifying narratives that undermine our adopting them, and proposing a biblical narrative that will naturally and organically compel us to make them part of our lives.

The final teaching of this series is a panel conversation with Bronwyn Lea on the topic of church as family, where Shawna Boren and Emily Morrison explore how the church can move into this experience in everyday life.

This panel conversation between Greg Boyd, Shawna Boren, Paul Eddy and Emily Morrison addresses questions that have been submitted during the series on friendship.

In this sermon, Shawna Boren addresses the question: how do we practice friendship in our culture? She identifies common cultural practices that serve as roadblocks to friendship and then provides five relationship builders that will open up opportunities for cultivating connections with others.

In this sermon, Emily Morrison lays out the biblical teaching of the church as family and what this could look like in modern Western culture where church family is often little more than shaking hands and sharing a periodic pot-luck.

Historically, intimate friendship was valued in the church and in the broader culture. This sermon provides a basic overview of why spiritual friendship is so important and why we need to build it into our lives today.

God has invited us to be his friends, but what does that actually mean? And how is being God's friend actually a more mature relationship than being his servant? This sermon addresses these questions and challenges our common notions of friendship with God.

This panel discussion concludes the four-part series on participating with God in order to share his love with the world. The panel participants provide a new imagination for how we can share Christ with others.

How do we share the gospel in a culture that does not recognize or value the Bible or Christian traditions? The Apostle Paul dealt with this in his day, and his approach serves as a model for us today.

As members of God's church, we are called to share the gospel in every part of our lives. Our family is central to our daily lives, but we often don't think about how we can intentionally live out the gospel in that setting. This sermon addresses this topic.

Technology is a great thing, but it has unintended consequences. What are the consequences of moving church to live-streaming and how should we respond? This sermon explores two options that lie before us.

This sermon employs the image of us sitting next to God in a marriage counseling session so that we might view God as our marriage partner and grow in love with each other.

What did Jesus mean when he told us to be perfect? This sermon addresses this question and shows us how we most often miss Jesus' point.

This panel discussion addresses practical issues that pertain to Jesus' teaching on enemy love.

To love our enemy, we must understand two core issues. First, we can only love when we are allowing Christ to meet our core needs. Secondly, all people share the same basic core needs, but they fall into the trap of trying to meet them in false ways. 

Jesus' teaching style draws you in with something you "think" you know, and then just turns it on its head. He was literally challenging the common thinking of the day.

Jesus taught us to love our enemies. While central to everything he taught, the church has long evaded its straight-forward implications. What then are we to do with his words?

How do we respond to evil? There are three options: We can respond in kind, we can cower to it, or we can opt for Jesus' third option. This sermon explores the third option and challenges us to combat the evil of our world by offering an unexpected response.

God's complete Kingdom that is coming in the future overlaps with the present reality of the world. In the midst of this overlap, we are called to live out the future in the present life that in reality, falls short of God's Kingdom vision.

When we pray "as it is in heaven," what does this actually mean? What are the characteristics of heaven? This sermon addresses this question by identifying the Kingdom as radically forgiving, radically welcoming and radically peaceful. 

The Kingdom of God is the present realization of God's fully redeemed future, and the coming of the Spirit upon the church is the primary means for seeing the present Kingdom come.

Please note that this message has some "PG-13" content that may not be suitable for kids.This panel discussion serves as a wrap-up to the series on sex, marriage and singleness, as the panelists address practical issues around these topics.

Jesus' words about divorce appears to provide a technical reason for justifying the breaking of the marriage covenant. Is this what this passage really means, or is there something more significant that Jesus was saying? This sermon provides an unexpected answer to this question.

In this sermon, Greg challenges the modern myth of romantic love, providing three reasons why it derails us from entering into a biblical view of marriage. Also, Emily Morrison provides a reframe for understanding how singleness plays a part in God's family.

In this section of Scripture we're in, Jesus explains the difference between what people of his day assumed the Old Testament law meant and what it really means. He's making clear the underlying spirit of the law, as opposed to the literal interpretation that focuses on the letter of the law. This points to a "third way" pattern of living out the Kingdom of God that manifests the true meaning of God's law.

This two-part sermon provides an update on the state of what God has been doing in Woodland Hills Church, followed by an exploration of Jesus' teaching on the imagination and its relationship to adultery.

First, Cedrick Baker provides a reflection on his thoughts after seeing the verdict of Derek Chauvin, along with more killings of black individuals at the hands of law enforcement. This was followed by a teaching from Greg on Jesus' challenge to common views of adultery.

This sermon offers two preliminary words about two difficult issues that are hot topics in our culture: race and sex.

If we want to experience change in our life habits that are unhealthy and sinful, we need to learn to embrace the practice of confession. This sermon gives a clear path for entering into this little-adopted habit of the Christian faith.

Our baptism demonstrates how we have died to sin and been given new life alongside Christ's death and resurrection. This is our new identity and it must shape how we view ourselves and others.

On this Good Friday we held a special service as we reflected on Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. Along with worship and unique reflections from artists, musicians and speakers, we also participated in virtual communion.

After a brief introduction, Greg invites panel participants to give insight and practical direction on dealing with interpersonal conflict and reconciliation.

In this sermon, Tara Beth Leach provides insight into Jesus' practical teaching regarding what it means to live in righteousness and reconciliation with others.

In this sermon, Greg provides a recap to his teaching from last week and then invites a panel of three to provide input and practical direction to the role that anger might play in our lives.

Jesus taught that being angry or insulting another person leads to the same consequences as murdering them. This is a radical Kingdom teaching that goes beyond an examination of our behaviors. It focuses on our hearts.

The Bible announces God's good news. However, what do we do with the disturbing parts of Scripture, like the passages that depict God as promoting violence, animal sacrifice, or treating women as property?

The Bible is not just a text to study. It is a way to hear and know God through the central story of Jesus who delivers us from exile.

Jesus claimed that the entire Bible was about him, that he is the center of the Scriptures. This claim requires us to conclude that he was crazy or that he was correct. And if the latter, then we must decide what to do with such a claim.

In the first part of the sermon, Greg explains the decision of leadership regarding its plans for re-opening. The second part delves into the topic of what the inspiration of Scripture means and what it does not mean. It concludes with a panel discussion about trusting the authority of Scripture in a post-modern setting.

Jesus announced that he came to fulfill every part of the law. How was he able to do this when he was accused of breaking the law? He did this by redefining the law of God around the law of love. This is the bullseye of God's Kingdom.

The New Testament raises expectations for obedience to the level of perfection, while at the same time offering mercy and grace when we don't meet those expectations. What is going on with this seemingly contradictory language? How do the two work together so that we grow as disciples?

As we celebrate MLK day, we not only remember the sacrifices and initiatives of those who led the civil rights movement, we recognize how the teachings and actions of Jesus-which ultimately led him to the cross-manifest what John Lewis called "Good Trouble."

This short sermon and panel discussion challenge us to respond to God's call to offer ourselves totally and completely to God by embracing spiritual disciplines that will shape our lives.

God is at work in all things-even in times of great suffering-to bring about his purposes. Those who are called according to his purpose will join in and cooperate with God's work, allowing the Spirit to form them to live into God's new work.

Jesus was born and we celebrate this fact because God loved the entire world. We also celebrate Christmas because God loves each one of us in a specific way. God so loves the world and God so loves you individually that he sent his son.It's WH tradition to share a story with coloring pages for kids on Christmas Eve. This year we hear about Jack the donkey's special journey in The Promised Star. Download coloring pages for your kids (or yourself!) at the link below!

How do we experience joy in the midst of struggle and suffering? Jesus and the early church provide a model for such joy, a kind of joy that does not ignore the reality of the difficulties that we face, but that gives us the ability to see beyond those circumstances to embrace the promise that God is making all things right.

The story of the encounter between Mary the mother of Jesus and Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist offers a model for how we can bring peace in the midst of conflict. A plot twist that shifts the narrative from animosity to blessing. In this sermon, Osheta visits this story.

When Jesus was presented at the temple as a baby, Simeon saw the fulfillment of his hope for salvation. This weekend's sermon explores the nature of that hope, and challenges the common view that our hope is for an escape from the world.

This sermon asks what it means for God's people to be salt and light in practical terms. Dan proposes three practical ways that we can move toward and embrace this call of God upon our lives.

Jesus said that God's people are a city on a hill, a blessed people who are called to be a blessing to others, giving forth light and hope. What does this mean in an Old Testament context, one that lies behind the words of Jesus? And what does this mean for us today?

Jesus said, "You are the light of the world." In this sermon, we learn how being the light is much more than simply doing good deeds. It entails God's call upon God's people to be a distinct people who walk in covenant with him and shine forth an alternative pattern of living for all to see.

Jesus said, "You are the salt of the earth." What are the functions of salt, and what does this mean for us today? How does this shape the way we interact with the world? Greg explores these questions in this sermon.

This final sermon is a panel discussion that addresses practical issues of being a Kingdom ambassador who offers Jesus' kind of love in the divisive political environment that we experience today.

God has called us to seek the peace of the land in which we live, to be God's ambassadors who offer a third way. How do we do this? In this conversational sermon, Bill Doherty, from the organization Braver Angels, shares his experience of leading workshops that include Democrats and Republicans with the goal of helping each group understand the other.

One of the primary means the enemy uses to divide people today is social media. While social media has many advantages, it also is designed in such a way that it can easily be used as a tool of Satan. If we are not intentionally resisting the schemes of the enemy, we will too easily be played by them.

When we disagree, we usually assume that reason, not emotion, is driving the interaction, but actually the opposite is true. Greg explains how our default is to use reasoning to justify our emotions, and how knowing this can help us respond well during a heated discussion.

In the midst of a divided and polarized world, how does the church respond in a way that reflects God's kingdom? To answer this question, we must understand the nature of God's kingdom and how it stands in contrast to the kingdoms of this world.

What is the real cause of the persecution that Jesus says leads to blessedness? The answer is found in the refusal to make enemies of others or to embrace an "us vs. them" mindset. By opting out of this game, we no longer fit on either side and persecution becomes the norm.

In a world where violence is promoted as the solution to conflict, Jesus teaches us that God's children are to be those who live in and offer peace.

In Luke's version of the Sermon on the Mount, he includes Jesus' teaching on those who have embraced idols and are not blessed as they are on the path of woe. This sermon addresses what these "woes" mean and how we can fight against the woe road.

Our world offers continual distractions that overwhelm us and keep us from purity of heart, and therefore hinder our sight of God. To have purity of heart is to have a single-minded focus on one thing, the one thing that matters.

In the midst of a culture of perpetual judgment, God has called the church to be a people of mercy. We will receive mercy to the degree that we offer mercy, and judgment to the degree that we judge.

God created us with a homing device in our souls which causes us to hunger for LIFE that can only be filled through our connection with him. However, we too often fall into the trap of hungering and thirsting after idols that leave us empty and leave us restless.

Jesus taught that those who are meek will actually inherit the earth. What does this counter-cultural teaching mean? How does it relate to being humble and the reality that people are forced to be humble by those in power? This sermon explores these questions and then provides practical direction to embracing Jesus' teaching.

Jesus taught that those who mourn are blessed. This occurs as the people of God know how things should be and set God's beauty in contrast to the ugliness of the world. And thus, we mourn for God to come and bring his deliverance.

The Sermon on the Mount opens with a teaching on being poor in spirit, which refers to an attitude one has before God. It means not being self-reliant, but broken and dependent upon God for life.

This sermon introduces the Sermon on the Mount by asking why we should trust the words of Jesus found in Matthew 5-7. Jesus addresses big life questions and if we don't know why we should trust his answers, then we might place the authority of others on par with that of Jesus. Christ is the expert of all experts, which is the reason his teaching must be heeded.

This concluding sermon in our Race Conciliation series briefly addresses how prevalent racism has been in the history of the church. Then we hosted an extended panel discussion to answer questions we've gotten about race, and to discuss how to move forward as a reconciling people.

We are expected to go through life with friends who look like us. Being close with people who do not look like you is unusual in our culture, and the church tends to perpetuate this pattern. However, God's Kingdom is comprised of people from all kinds of backgrounds that don't look like our own. The question we all face is, "what will we do about it?"

We live in a world where Satan has laid claim to creation, while at the same time God is fighting to redeem all things through the work of the cross. These two fundamental forces are simultaneous, and we see them everywhere. Our calling is to participate in the good work that God is doing in order to advance the Kingdom.

Sin not only resides in the hearts of individuals; it also is woven through the systems and structures of our corporate way of life. Jesus entered into these systems to transform them and he now invites us to join him, offering our voices to bring liberation and reconciliation to our world.

God is inviting us to respond to the volatile issues around racism in a uniquely Kingdom way, a way modeled by Jesus. This Kingdom way provides concrete handles for battling against the rulers, authorities and powers that drive racism in our world.

We primarily think about the problems we face today in terms of individualism, pointing fingers at persons who are making bad choices. However, the Bible speaks of the struggle against systemic issues, what are called "principalities and powers" that shape the structures of how we live. The unique call of Kingdom people is to focus our struggle against these systems, rather than against people.

Why did Jesus die on the cross? The common response-to reconcile us to God-is only half of the answer. The other half, which is usually not preached in the white church, is to reconcile us to one another and creation.

This has been a troublesome week, with the gruesome murder of George Floyd and the unrest that this has caused both in Minnesota, and around the country. Greg offers a Kingdom perspective on the situation and challenges the church to wake up and see the changes that we need. After his sermon he was joined on stage for a discussion with several people of color from Woodland Hills.

In this sermon, Greg shares about the importance of lament during a time of loss and liminality. Building upon the ideas introduced by David last week, he expands on the topic and shares about his own experiences and the emotions he's been wrestling with.

In the midst of the pandemic, many of us are experiencing a degree of intense anxiety. What do we do with that? How do we meet God in that experience? How do we find hope?

From the parable of the yeast, Jesus is teaching us about how the Kingdom of God works. Instead of expanding with landmark gestures and grandiose acts, it infiltrates life in small ways, often hidden from view, but as it expands, it actually touches every part of life.

From the parable of the talents, we can see that God trusts us to participate and partner with him in his work, as we have been entrusted with an offering that can advance the Kingdom. Though we don't often see this reality, we must embrace what God says about us and what we have been given.

The book of Ruth speaks to our deep desires for faithful living, along with specific issues regarding faithfulness in the midst of the struggles of the pandemic. In this sermon, we hear the call to faithfulness and explore what it means.

Individuals are interconnected as a part of the whole of humanity, something we are experiencing during this pandemic. Often, we can tend to view humanity with disdain, and feel that people in general are stupid. However, God looks upon humanity with compassion.

Love, not death, should have the last word. When you love someone, you come to know how much infinite worth they have. The idea that all that they are just ends with death doesn't seem right. Something in the core of our being says, "NO." That gut intuition is a faint echo of the heart of God.

Through a message, worship, creative storytelling, poetry, special music and art, we express the heaviness and hope of Good Friday as we reflect on Jesus' sacrifice for us all.

People have a lot of questions about what God is doing during this pandemic. In this teaching, leaders from Woodland Hills address questions that have been submitted over the last few weeks. 

In the midst of great suffering and ugliness, there is also goodness breaking through. We are seeing this in the midst of this unusual time and it points us to how God works to bring his cross-like love in the middle of horrible circumstances. This teaches us that God is not the cause of this pandemic, but is the one who will win in the end.

In this surreal time, we can let our lives be dictated by the circumstances of our situation, or we can live according to the reality that our lives are "hid" with Christ in God. How exactly do we do this in the midst of so much tumult? One way is to learn to give thanks "in all circumstances," as Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 5.

COVID-19 is impacting the entire world, changing life globally, locally, and personally. How should we as Kingdom people respond to this pandemic?

This week we begin our new sermon series about moral relativism by exploring how early Christians lived out their faith, the point being that Truth is only true when it is lived.

This final teaching in the Listen Up series is a Q&A that speaks to the practical implications about listening to God's voice in our daily lives.

God is still speaking, offering an invitation to dialogue with him. However, this dialogue will be as unique as you as an individual are. The question for us is whether not we will take up this challenge and learn how to listen, or if we will simply go with the status quo.

This weekend we discussed how God's voice gets drowned out by the background noise of our day-to-day lives, and also about how once we tune into God's voice, we find that the kingdom of God is defined by the love of the "other."

This past weekend in Osheta's sermon, "Everyday Whispers of Encouragement" we take a deeper look at "the still, small voice" of God. We focus on the story of Elijah hearing God in a whisper, and how this passage can give us guidance today on how we can tune our ears in order to have ears to hear.

As we continue our Listen Up series, this week Greg discusses how being open to hearing from God through our imagination affects the quality of our faith. Faith is about getting on the inside and working out our questions once we're in relationship. If we are expectant that our relationship with God is a two-way street and that he not only wants to hear from us, but also wants to speak with us, and we're open to our imagination being the place that conversation happens, then we're much more likely to be led by the Spirit in our Kingdom walk.

For many, hearing God's voice and sensing the Spirit's leading is a foreign concept. This sermon addresses why we should be hearing God, and some of the major obstacles that keep us from hearing what God is saying.

As we reflect on the message of Martin Luther King Jr., we can see the parallel between what he taught and what Jesus told us the Kingdom of God looks like. To understand this, Greg unpacks the difference between xenophilia (the love of those who are different) and xenophobia (the fear of those who are different) and how it relates to racism.

This week we look at how our scars, mistakes and imperfections (and even painful tattoos) all tell a story of God breathing and interacting, and enhancing the beauty of an imperfect thing.

In this first installment of a 2-part series centering around Greg's new Inspired Imperfection book we look at what it means for scripture to be "God breathed." Additionally, we explore to the potential consequences of keeping or removing the bible as an authoritative source in the life of a follower of Jesus. Greg makes the case that far from detracting from the bible's credibility, if viewed through the lens of the cross, the mistakes and errors in the writing made by the human authors enhance the bible's authority in showing God's power through the cross.

At the turn of the new year, it is the time to think about resolutions, or things that we want to change in our lives. In this sermon, we learn about four exercises that will bring real change, the kind of change that will impact every aspect of our lives.

Dan wraps up our More Than a Name series with a special Christmas Eve service on Jesus' name of Immanuel - what it really means that "God is with us", and how we tend to carry this piece of scripture out.

Jesus is our everlasting Father. This is not a reference to Jesus actually being the first person of the Trinity. Instead it means the Jesus is our eternal source, which means that Jesus gives us an alternative narrative that empowers us to escape the narrative of death.

What does it mean that Jesus was the Prince of Peace? What is meant by Peace, anyway? And what does it mean for how we are meant to live?

We often say that Jesus is the "mighty God," but what exactly does that mean? How did he come and put on display the might of God? What does the Christmas story tell us about God's might? The answers to these questions don't fit common conventional thinking, but if we don't understand the way that Jesus lived out the might of God, we miss everything.

In the Old Testament, a name is more than what someone is called. It points deeper to his or her character. In the first message of our More Than a Name Christmas series, Greg explores the context of Isaiah 9 and what it meant for Jesus to be prophesied as a Wonderful Counselor.

We are designed by God to love nature, not just to live in it. This is seen in the fact that God often meets us through nature, as such encounters encourage our souls and enliven our bodies. Therefore, in a world that has little room for nature, we must adopt tactics that will open us up to God through nature.

God created us to live in love for others, however, we fall short of this reality. In this sermon, David explores three barriers to loving others: religion, political affiliations and hurry. Addressing these three barriers will not only change your experience of love with others, but also it will change how you love God.

One of the four directions of love is to love yourself. But not the old self that you inherited from the world. Rather, we are to love the self that God meant us to be. So today we look back on the old self we were before, and we remember the new self we are now in Christ.

This weekend we continue our study of how attachment theory can be used as a descriptive tool for our connections in relationships with others as well as how we connect with God. How we have connected with others, both positively and negatively, is usually a good approximation for how we think of and connect with God. Some of this appears to be genetic, some a product of the nurture we received, and some a product of our own free will. In this message, we explore the role of free will in our development of healthy, secure connection as well as what healing looks like for someone who has formed unhealthy attachment mechanisms with themselves, others, and God.

In this sermon, Shawna sits down with Kevin as he explains, more in depth, Attachment Theory: How we experience love, and our relationships with God and others, through a pattern of attachment developed in us as a child. Understanding this can help us see both our natural tendencies in relationships, as well as areas in which we need to experience God's healing.

God is love, and our job is to receive and replicate that love. This means that it is crucial that we rightly perceive what God's love actually looks like, something that some find challenging in the midst of creation that is overrun by violence. How then do we reconcile the nature of God's love when nature itself seems to point to anything but love?

Two sermons in one today: Part 1: How does children's reliance on technology affect their ability to use their imaginations? And part 2: Looking at the Botham Jean "hug felt around the world" and how we might be stuck in a silo and not even know it.

As we continue our Interface series, this week Osheta explores how a Kingdom minded person can engage with social media as a peacemaker and avoid the pits of binary either-or thinking. The medium and anonymity of online life creates a temptation to leave behind self-control and humility in exchange for judgment and unsolicited advice. In this message, we look at 5 principles that can help keep us grounded in love as we engage in social media.

Social media can control our lives, forming our minds and our actions without our even knowing that it's happening. While there is great benefit to social media, we must also recognize it's dangers and develop a plan to live differently. Otherwise, we will end up looking like we aren't part of God's kingdom.

Like many things, social media has such incredible power for good, but also an incredible power for evil. One way that this evil is manifested is through the temptation of presenting ourselves only at our best in order to get LIFE from social media approval. What is the Kingdom response to this temptation?

Why do we keep participating in social media even when it is not good for us? This week, David goes into three big reasons why we are drawn in, and what it could look like to live faithfully to the gospel in our hyperconnected world.

In this introductory message to our new series called Interface, which deals with a Christian's role and interaction with technology, Greg walks through how we got to where we are, both as a human species as well as a Christian sub-culture. There is a general principle of proportionality that applies to all things including technology. It says a thing or person's capacity for good is directly proportional to its capacity for evil. Greg walks through that exercise in counting the cost of our interaction with technology.

There are two fundamental hindrances to living generously as the New Testament teaches. The first is that of the wrong motivation. The common teaching in the church is that we give because we must follow the Old Testament law of the tithe. However, the New Testament provides a different motivation, one that empowers us to give freely. The second hindrance is the modern attachment to possessions. When we address these two hindrances, we will find that sacrificial giving is a "get to not got to" thing, thus finding freedom in giving our time and money for the sake of others.

Generosity is a tricky subject because so many think it primarily relates to how much a person gives. However, God's view of generosity is different. It is about learning to live in agape love where we are not doing what we do in order to get more from others, but in order to give and receive love in a community. When we do this, generosity flows our of hearts in natural ways, with surprising acts that bless others.

The grand story of the Bible is moving toward an end, one where God will reveal himself as he is. But what does that actually mean? When we take into account the entire biblical narrative, one that is centered around the cross, this means that God will fully unveil his love and we will not only see him as love, but also we will see ourselves as God's beloved bride.

In this week's message, Osheta continues our look at the biblical narrative themes of covenant and kingdom by using the Lord's Prayer as a guide. Jesus' own creative and kingdom focused practice that he gave us so that we can grow in our Kingdom literacy. By praying the Lord's Prayer regularly, we reinforce the values of the Kingdom in our hearts so that we can live faithfully into our Covenant.

In this week's message, Dan continues our look at the biblical narrative themes of covenant and kingdom in the story of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness. After his baptism and before the start of his ministry, Jesus was tempted in three very important ways by Satan. In this message we learn how Jesus inserts himself in to the biblical narrative and seeks to fulfill the promises and potential of old testament characters like Israel, Adam & Eve, and King David.

The New Covenant, which was inaugurated by Jesus and we celebrate with the sign of the communion meal, is a reframing of the Passover Meal from Exodus. In that Old Testament story we see how God defeated evil by allowing evil to act upon itself. In the same way, the cross brings victory over sin and defeats Satan through the hidden wisdom of love.

In this past weekend's sermon, we take a birds-eye view of the prophets, and what they teach us about one of God's most core values: taking care of the vulnerable.

This week Greg goes through the covenant God made with king David, and touches on some of the foundational beliefs of Woodland Hills involving finding security only from Jesus instead of human kings, and how God always finds a way to bring beauty out of our sins.

As we continue our Long Story Short series through the lens of covenant and kingdom, in this message we explore the connection between relationship and responsibility in the story of the Isarelites making a golden calf for worship while Moses is on Mt. Sinai. It's all too easy for us to get impatient and lose trust in what we can't see. Grace explores the struggles of the Israelites by reflecting on her own experience in building idols in her personal life.

In the fourth part of our Long Story Short series, Greg zooms in on the calling of Abraham in order to discover the ways in which God's Kingdom is like a mustard seed.

In this third installment of our Long Story Short series we explore what the overall narrative of the Bible is as it relates to our Covenant with God, and the Kingdom ways we're called to live here on earth. Today, we look at the story of the Flood through the lens of the cross finding that there's a new lesson about God's character and God's posture to us when we sin. Greg ends with one practical way we can live out our covenant to God inspired by this passage: by caring for the earth and all it's inhabitants.

In the second part of our Long Story Short series Greg takes a look at what happens when Adam and Eve disobey God by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and what universal lessons we can learn from them about who we were originally designed to be. Life in the Kingdom revolves around trusting God for provision and honoring his prohibition. It's this focus that keeps us secure in our identity and not looking for life elsewhere through judging eyes. We are to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, and him crucified, and this will keep us from judgment of others as well as keep a clear picture of who God is.

Today we started out our new series called Long Story Short, where we will go through the whole bible book by book, looking at the key stories through the lens of Kingdom and Covenant. David started us out at the beginning in Genesis 1 and 2, to explore where the themes of covenant and kingdom show up and what they mean for our identity and intended vocation in the world.

Our guest speaker, Nicole Bullock, focuses on John 5:1-8 and unpacks what it looks like for us to "take up our mats and walk."

In this fifth installment of our Take Heart series, we explore what it means to be encouraged in one solid truth: that God's love for us is unceasing and he is present with us in the midst of incredible brokenness. Discouragement can come when we have a broken picture of God, but we can be encouraged that God always looks like Jesus and Christ crucified. But first, we need to understand the difference between believing something and experiencing something.

In this fourth installment in our Take Heart series we explore what it means to be encouraged in our ability to build skills and competence in the areas God has entrusted to us. Discouragement can come externally from factors outside of our control that can be overwhelming, but it can also come from feelings and patterns of passiveness within that keep us from enacting what God has trusted us to do. 

Today with David, we looked at God's desire for encouragement and what kind of posture we should have in encouragement. He looks closely at the nostalgia of the Israelites when the temple was rebuilt and how it keeps us from seeing the ways God wanted to encourage them in the present rebuilding.

In this sermon with Greg, we get deep into talking about facing fears and problems, but not succumbing to them. Often times when we or ones we love go through hard times, along come four different crowds of people offering various "you'll get through it" type remarks. Though when life falls apart and everything comes undone, whether it be you or someone you know, sometimes all you can do is "Embrace the Suck" and just be present. The time may come where you can sort things out, mend, or find some sort of contentment, but sometimes you just need to be there, in the moment.

Today Sandra shared with us a real-life example of her brother's story, and what to do, and what not to do, when confronted by someone else's discouragement. 

Why did Jesus have to die? Why does the resurrection matter? What, if anything, actually hinges on believing Jesus was crucified and literally rose from the dead three days later? In this Easter message we explore these questions and other implications in believing and living out a resurrection centered faith.

In this Good Friday service, we open with and discuss Hebrews 12, the sacrifice Jesus made for us, and what that all means. Greg explains how we should live our lives by not hiding our sins from Jesus - but we must give them over to him, and keep our eyes set upon him in order to experience the depth of love and intimacy he has for us.

In this weekend's Palm Sunday service, Greg felt led to continue and expand on his message of loving people and losing labels. The brain needs repetition to really get something, and this message is so foundational to the kingdom, that it is worth continuing.

In this weekend's sermon, Greg closes our Crux of the Matter series by discussing the importance of zooming in on the hearts of people as we zoom out on our need to be right.

In the fourth installment of our Crux of the Matter series, where we're looking at how to have difficult conversations with those we disagree with, Osheta furthers the discussion by inviting us to think about our everyday conversations as opportunities for peacemaking as Ambassadors of the Kingdom of God.

In the third installment of our Crux of the Matter series where we're looking at how to have difficult conversations with those we disagree with, Greg furthers the discussion of the relationship between our conscious reasoning and our subconscious feelings and emotional based instincts. Although we like to think of ourselves as rational logic driven decision makers, research continues to show that much of our reasoning is ad hoc and only serves to reinforce our already existing opinions and desires. In this message Greg tackles why these findings don't need to lead to a deterministic world view as well as how to resolve the tension between being created in God's image being and also born with a subconscious that pushes us away from Kingdom values.

Today, Dan Kent shared with us some ideas about how having a proper Jesus-centered definition of humility can free us in our relationships, and help us remain centered on Jesus, put people before politics, and create peace during these divisive times.

This past weekend, Greg opened up our new series with 1 Corinthians 16:14 - "Let all that you do be done in love." We discuss how to be Kingdom people in dealing with difficult conversations on controversial topics, all while keeping Jesus at the center.

In this in-between-series sermon, Shawna discusses how to cultivate and maintain a posture of gratitude in a fallen world. Particularly in a world full of negative distractions fed by social media, sometimes more than our brains can really handle.

In our fifth and final installment of the Priest and Physicist Walk in to a Bar series, we examine how to frame the Genesis creation story with what we know about our history and the cosmos. Specifically, we examine the difference between dogma, doctrine, and opinion and where questions like "how God created" and "when did God create" fit in to that framework. As has been the theme for the whole series, we explore how faith can go beyond reason, but not against reason.

Greg continues exploring the relationship between faith and science, making the point that the laws of science have nothing to do with the possibility of the existence of miracles (and in fact they might even *prove* that there is more to reality than what we can measure).

In this weekend's sermon, Greg continues our "Priest and Physicist" series, in which we examine five arguments against the naturalistic worldview.

This weekend we continued our sermon series, "A Priest and a Physicist Walk Into a Bar..." in which we explore how the science of our universe might point to an intelligence beyond itself.

Today we jumped into a new sermon series, "A Priest and a Physicist Walk Into a Bar..." which explores the (supposed) conflict between faith and science. So we opened it up by looking at the origin of this assumption that faith and science are at odds with one another.

Although all sins in some ways are equal before God, there is something particularly evil and destructive about the dehumanizing effects of racism. Martin Luther King Jr. has by in large been secularized in popular culture as a nice man who wanted us all to get along, but this is an unfortunate caricature of a man whose core foundational trust was in self-sacrificial love and non-violent resistance. MLK Jr.'s message of racial reconciliation, and a refusal to deem another human being as his enemy, is central to the gospel of Jesus.

In this weekend's sermon, Greg provides us with a framework for the importance of prayer. While most of us have been taught about the importance of prayer, it can still feel like an empty duty if we do not have a framework for the reason why prayer matters.

Today Osheta talked about one of her favorite church holidays called Epiphany, and what it means to her. Epiphany honors the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles as told by the story of the Magi in Matthew 2:1-12. To Osheta, it is about how Jesus shows up for many different people in many different ways. 

Our life is made of seasons. We ebb and flow in different disciplines and commitments. In this final message of 2018, and in preparation to start the new year, Greg walks us through three important questions: 1. What does the Lord want me to retain & renew? 2. What does the Lord want me to let go of? And 3. What does the Lord want me to add to my life that wasn't there before?

In this year's Christmas Eve service, we are reminded that Jesus entered into our world in what was seemingly the most inopportune time, in a dirty, smelly manger, and how he continues to enter our lives at all times, good and bad.

This weekend Greg continues our When God Shows Up series by examining why Jesus came to earth when he did, and why showing up at this time in history was both edgy and subversive.

This weekend Greg continues our When God Shows Up series by examining two crucial questions we must ask when we find ourselves in an Advent season: How do we conduct ourselves in this fallen world when misery takes over? How can we hang on to hope when all seems hopeless?

This weekend we welcomed guest speaker Shane Claiborne to share with us a reminder of what it should mean to us this advent season that Jesus came into our lives as a homeless outsider in a violent, unwelcoming world.

In many ways Jesus, and the kingdom he established, was anti-king of all kings. The holiness he embodied was guided by love, not law. Instead of using his kingship to separate himself from the unclean, lowly and hurting in the world, Jesus made his home right in the middle of our pain and our sin. This was unbelievably good news back then and today for all those who are hurting, needy, lonely, sinful or poor. God desires to make his residence in us, just as we are.

We wrapped up our Blended sermon series with a Q&A hosted by Greg Boyd, Sandra Unger and Kevin Callaghan. The audio file, as well as the YouTube video, contain questions and answers from all three of our services on November 24/25, 2018.

This weekend, David wrapped up our Blended series with his sermon in which he modeled how we might unearth our roots, so that we might move forward in Jesus.

In the life of a Jesus follower, there is clear power in testimony. It has the ability to break down walls of mental defensiveness and justification, and speak directly to the deepest parts of another's heart. We all carry wounds around with us as a result of the gap between what we needed and what we actually received. In this message Greg shares some of his personal journey in healing from the wounds passed on to him from his family.

Today Sandra affirms that you don't have to have suffered awful abuse or trauma in order to have stuff that you need to heal from. We all have baggage from our past, so she shares five strategies for healing.

In this sermon of our Blended series, David talks about what we may inherit from our biological ancestors, how these attributes may have shaped the lives of future generations, and how to love our families for who they are, just as God loves us.

Greg starts off the first sermon of our new series titled Blended by examining how to scripturally navigate our biological and spiritual family systems.

Today Osheta summed up our sermon series on kingdom hospitality in light of the parable of the Good Samaritan, and we learned four vital steps to help us practice Kingdom Hospitality. 

Hospitality has a unique meaning and application in the Kingdom of God. In this message, Greg continues our Kingdom hospitality series exploring Peter's revelation in Acts 10 of who's in and who's out of the Kingdom. Through Christ, God has offered a giant bear hug to humanity with an invitation that all are welcome to enter. As followers of Jesus, this should be our primary mode of operation when it comes to interacting with strangers. We present what we have in an authentic way, we ask what would be helpful to those in need, and we always see hospitality in a reciprocal manner.

In today's sermon, Greg gives us one strategy for outrageous, radical Kingdom hospitality: engage in spiritual warfare to resist Satan's designs to hold grudges with one another and destroy healthy relationships.

In this week's sermon, Greg examines 2 Corinthians 5 to uncover a paradigm shifting truth that from God's perspective, all people are in Christ, and explores how this truth shows us that hospitality is at the heart of God's character.

In this second installment of our hospitality centered sermon series You Before Me, Shawna explores how welcoming the Other is not just a mindset, but also a condition of the heart. This continual welcoming and intentional making space for the Other in our lives can only happen when we have a surrendered heart that has first made space for God to dwell in us.

We kick off our new "You Before Me" series with a look at hospitality as the essence of God -- Making space in your life to love and welcome a stranger.

This week Osheta invites us to re-evaluate the busyness of our culture and instead model our schedules and lives on the example of Jesus.

In today's sermon, Greg tackles questions about spiritual warfare and how it related to the nature of God, relationships, and free will.

What does it mean to be saved? Can you ever lose your salvation? These are two of the questions Shawna tackles in this week's Loose Ends sermon.

In this most recent sermon of our Loose Ends series, we look at a verse that many in the "name it and claim it" persuasion use to justify their views, Mark 11:23-24.

There is a very common understanding in many Christian circles that everything happens for a reason, we can't understand what comes to pass because God's ways are higher than our ways, and ultimately every single act, no matter how consistent or inconsistent with the God revealed in Jesus, is a direct result of the power, control, & sovereignty of God. In this message Greg dissects John 9:1-3 confronting all these ideas head on showing how dangerous poor theology and inconsistent exegesis can be.

In this week of the Loose Ends sermon series Greg looks at the Parable of the Wedding Banquet. He shares some general principles for understanding parables and addresses common misconceptions. Here we see that God is not like a violent, unjust king, but rather a God who lovingly invites all to a banquet he graciously prepares.

What do we do when Jesus is the 'loose end'? What are those sections in the Gospel that we can have a tendency to gloss over? What words of Jesus do you hear and sort of cringe about? This starts with being honest with the text rather than avoiding, minimizing, reducing or dismissing.

Osheta continues our look at 'loose ends' of scripture that often get overlooked or dismissed because of their seeming exclusiveness and contradiction. This week's installment examines Jesus' comments about parables and why they were one of his key methods of teaching. At the heart of it all is the question of who the Kingdom of God is for, and what is being asked of us to enter in to it.

This week we look at a passage that some Jehovah Witnesses and Mormons use a lot, 1 Corinthians 15:25-29, and we end up digging into the reasons for our belief in the divinity of Christ, as well as the Mormon practice of proxy baptism and our own practice of adult baptism.

This week in the sermon series Loose Ends, our friend Dr. Sandra Unger explores the often quoted Psalm, "be still and know that I am God." Sandra shares what the command to be still means in the Biblical context and how paying attention to God changes our whole approach to life.

This week Greg taught on Romans 13, a Scripture that has been in the news recently when Attorney General Jeff Sessions used it as basis for why the American government is separating children from their families at the southern border. This passage, although helpful for us to understand how to respect the authority of earthly government in matters of polices, law and order, is not the final word for Kingdom people on how we should live.

In this sermon we continue our look in to scripture passages that often get dismissed because of their obscurity, seeming contradiction, or relative weirdness. This week Greg examined Exodus 4:19-28 which describes a strange encounter Moses and Zipporah had with God on their way from Midian to Egypt involving threat of death, circumcision, and the smearing of blood. This encounter, although interpreted through a warped view of God's character, foreshadows the Passover later in Exodus as well as the spiritual circumcision available to all through Christ.

Today we started our new summer series called Loose Ends, which works to "make sense of the verses we skip". Since we shared communion together this week, we focused on a strange verse related to communion -- 1 Corinthians 11:27-32.

In week three of our Nothing to Lose series Greg provides some guiding principles for living a life of generosity modeled after the example of the sacrifice and life of Jesus.

Our culture tells us that success means gaining more money and more possessions. But the Kingdom that Jesus summons us into rejects this system. In the second week of our "Nothing to Lose" series, Greg shows us that in God's Kingdom, our treasure is stored up when we give it away.

In this first sermon in our new 'Nothing to Lose' series, we explore contentment and generosity. We are constantly bombarded with advertisements and not so subtle innuendo that we should be discontent with what we have. This environment we find ourselves in strongly challenges the kingdom call to live out of a center of contentment and cultivate a heart full of generosity. In this message we explore what the Bible says about these topics as well as how they apply to our 21st century setting.

In previous weeks we discussed the evidence that our consciousness persists in the interim stage between death and resurrection. But what exactly goes on there, before resurrection? Are we made perfect and pure enough to enter the kingdom instantly, or do we have to continue our growth in Christ?

What is your conception of heaven? Is it a place to which you escape when you die? Something only for the future and not for the present? In the fourth week of our Non-Perishable sermon series, our friend David Morrow explores the idea of heaven as the coming Kingdom in which we participate here and now, and the eternal Emmanuel - God with us.

In this third sermon in our Non-Perishable series, guest speaker Osheta Moore shares how anxiety and fear surrounding death can be overcome through looking to Christ, who shared in our death.

This is the second message in our series "Non-Perishable", where we're exploring death from a Kingdom perspective. This week, Greg explains the evidence for life after death, why Heaven may not be what we thought, and how to gain a more beautiful picture of life after death.Greg played a song during his message, you can find that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekZ187l-Vn8

In our new series entitled 'Non-Perishable' we start by exploring why death is such a foreign concept in our culture, and why having a proper perspective on it is so important for our theology and life in the present age. Confusing the works of Satan with the works of God can have tragic consequences to our worldview and interpretations of what comes to pass in our lives, including death.

The world around us is wrought with pain and suffering. Amidst this reality it can often be difficult to find a sense of hope. To fully appreciate the incomprehensible glory that is going to be revealed to us, we first need to appreciate the full magnitude of the sufferings of this present age. As we engage with the painful news of our world, we turn our eyes to the coming hope that is grounded in the resurrected Christ.

In ancient Rome, death by crucifixion was designed for extreme pain and extreme shame. It was important for criminals to feel the weight of their crime, and for spectators to fear what would happen to them if they did something wrong. But Jesus, who had done no wrong, chose to take on the shame of the cross. He knew that his sacrificial death would free us from the shame we carry.We gathered on Good Friday to honor and celebrate the freedom Jesus gave us all by taking on the shame of the cross. 

We wrapped up our Sure. sermon series with a Q&A hosted by Greg Boyd and Paul Eddy. The audio and video media files contain questions and answers from all three of our services on March 24/25, 2018.

In Week 5 of our "Sure." series (where we are honestly wrestling with challenges that our post-modern, post Christian, pluralistic culture presents to our faith), Greg addresses the (apparent) imperfections, errors, and contradictions in the Bible, and shows that they don't distract from it being God-breathed... but contribute to it.

Today we answer the question of why believe in God? Is this like believing in the Easter Bunny? Isn't it illogical and improbable that there would be a personal being out there who created everything and loves the world and every living creature? Our answer: No! When you look at the facts, it's actually MORE logical that the above is true than not.

In this third chapter of our Sure. series we come to Jesus. Who is He? How do we know what we know about Him? Why do we believe it to be true? What are the critiques of the Christian belief in Jesus as a historical figure and what are the rational arguments in favor of the orthodox view of Jesus as Lord? In this message Greg explores these questions and others while explaining what it means to "give the reason for the hope that you have".

What is faith? In what should our faith be anchored? Does our faith stand upon the various church doctrines and dogmas? In this sermon Shawna explores the meaning of faith, that the root which grounds our faith is not our belief system, but the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ crucified is the cornerstone of our faith. What is faith? In what should our faith be anchored? Does our faith stand upon the various church doctrines and dogmas? In this sermon Shawna explores the meaning of faith, that the root which grounds our faith is not our belief system, but the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ crucified is the cornerstone of our faith.

In the first sermon in our 'Sure.' series, Greg examines the nature of truth. Is all truth subjective? Is all morality relative? In western culture a premium is placed on tolerance. Greg explains the history of this movement and ultimately how it squares with the teachings of Christ.

During this final sermon in our Next Level Relationships series, Greg and Kevin have a conversation where we learn about the cycle of conflict. They discuss why we find it so easy to get pulled in, and more importantly, some tools from Jesus that we can use to short-circuit the cycle.

Why is it so easy to blame others when we are in conflict? In this fifth sermon of our Next Level Relationships series, Greg looks at what our brains and bibles can tell us about blame and how to navigate conflict.

Conflict is the "elephant in the room" of all relationships - we either want to ignore it or focus completely on it. Yet as Kingdom people, how do we deal with conflict in ways that reflect Christ on the cross? In the fourth week of our series, "Next Level Relationships," Osheta Moore shows us how to tell better stories about those who seem like our enemies, while seeing each other as fellow image-bearers of God, and never enemies.

In the third sermon of our The Next Level Relationships series, David Morrow looks at the critical role that listening plays in healthy relationships. Dave discusses three challenges to, and three lessons for effective listening.

This week we explore vulnerability, and how we all tend to use the serpent's tools of hiding and idolatrous performance to protect ourselves from judgment and shame. We learn that Vulnerability is the only onramp to real connection with others, and is also the key to enabling us to receive our life and fullness from God alone.

We tend to break the world in to sacred and secular, but in reality this is a false dichotomy. No matter where Jesus was or what relationship he was in He was fully present as a walking talking embodiment of the Kingdom of God. Instead of walking around with hungry hearts using others in an attempt to fill up our need for security, significance, and worth, we are called to mimic Christ in all our relationships by being filled by our relationship with the Father and letting that overflow to those around us.

For all of the events that take place in our lives from day to day, month to month, and year to year, it's important to take time to reflect, review, and ask God where He was working within these events and what He is doing through them. In the final message of 2017, Greg talks about the discipline of reviewing, and reflects on how God was working through Woodland Hills Church this past year.

For most of us the Christmas story is a religious story that has become predictable over the years. But to its 1st century audience the Christmas story was anything but religious and predictable. In this Christmas Eve sermon Greg shares, how the Christmas story was irreligious and unexpected to its original audience and how if we look at the story with fresh eyes we will see a God that pursues us relentlessly at all cost, meeting us right where we are.

As we continue our Christmas series, "Do you See What I See: Looking at How to See Christmas Through God's Eyes," we focus on the shepherds. As with most of Luke's Gospel, being centered on Jesus' interactions with the marginalized (including the shepherds as a key part of the birth story) is no accident. In Jesus' day the shepherds as a people group were one of the more despised, untrusted, unclean, & judged people in society. In this message we learn how to stop automatically categorizing who's in and who's out based on superficial judgements of worth, and how to recognize the marginalized peoples in our own society and what God might have to say through them.

Christmas is a time of year where we claim "Peace on Earth" and "Good-will toward humanity." But do we really mean that nice-sounding sentiment? Even more so, do we really understand the story that undergirds this time of year, in the first place? In our new Christmas series, "Do You See What I See," we explore Christmas as it was in the 1st Century: on the margins.

In today's final sermon in the "Overcome" series, Greg discusses the last critically important key to overcoming temptation: Community.

In this segment of the Overcome series we continue exploring the nature of temptation from a spiritual warfare perspective. Satan's primary weapon he uses against us is deception, therefore as followers of Jesus our primary defense is to saturate ourselves in the truth revealed in the crucified Christ about who God is, who we are, and what our relationship to others is to be. In this message Greg looks at each of the pieces of armor of God that Paul lays out in Ephesians 6.Extra downloads from this messageOur Identity in ChristWielding the Sword of the Spirit 

We all struggle with temptation, and it begins in our mind. But how do we resist our own thoughts? In the second message of our "Overcome" series, Greg shows us how to see our enemy and understand his strategies, and then unpacks how to overcome them.

We kick off our new "Overcome" sermon series with a talk about temptation and the core principle to overcoming it: analyzing our thoughts around a temptation and then taking those thoughts captive in Christ.

The fear of failure affects so many of us. So deep is this fear that it has the capacity to keep us from saying yes the adventures into which God invites us. Failure is not a thing to be avoided, but rather a thing from which we can learn and grow. In this message, guest speaker Kris Beckert shares with us a word of encouragement regarding the transformation that can be found within experiences of failure.

Dr. Sandra Unger joins us this week to unpack the ways God can use course corrections around our relationship to money and finances, to bring greater joy and hope. Spiritual disciplines like simplicity and generosity help us to humble ourselves before God and ask for His help in having a kingdom relationship to money and resources.

We continue our Course Corrections series by looking at small changes we can make in our life now, that have the potential for large scale shifts if followed out in the future. In this message David Morrow shares how the areas of leisure, entertainment, and social media can affect our Kingdom journey and what changes we might make now to ensure we don't become slaves to their influence.

Today's sermon focuses on a strategy from Philippians 2:3-8 that demonstrates a kingdom way to engage with other people during conflict: remembering that our "map" (our brain's interpretation of sensory input) is an incomplete representation of reality, and to step into and seek to understand the other person's "map".

Most Americans define themselves as distinctly unhappy. Why is that and what can be done about it? Is there really a "secret" to happiness? This week in our series Course Corrections, Greg explores one small tweak that may have the biggest impact in our lives - gratitude.

Like a GPS, sometimes the Holy Spirit redirects our path to bring greater adventure and blessing. In celebration of Woodland Hills' 25th anniversary Greg explores the ways the Holy Spirit has redirected the path of Woodland Hills, and what course correction means for followers of Christ.

Hospitality is the intentional inclusion of the stranger and "others" in our jobs, churches, neighborhoods, cities, and beyond. What exactly does this look like and why don't we do this? In the second message in our "There Is No Them" series, Greg unpacks two Scripture passages that help to identify Jesus in the face of the strangers around us, and gives us practical tips on how to better represent Christ's Kingdom in our world.

Today Greg opens our two-part series called "There is no Them" with a message about the amazing consistency and unmistakable clarity we find in both the Old and New Testaments about our calling to welcome and embrace strangers into our lives and communities.

When did we grow out of our imagination? At what point did we cease living into the adventure that is life, that is following Jesus? We are told, at far too young of an age, to "put away childish things", to create a life that is predictable, linear and safe. But is that the kind of life Jesus invites us to live? This week Brianna shares with us the adventure of being Dreamers and Doers in the Kingdom of God.

In our last sermon in the series Turning the Tables, Greg takes a final look at New Testament passages often appealed to in order to justify violence. This week we examine the Parable of the ungrateful servant. 

In this 4th installment of our Turning the Tables series, we examine how Jesus prophetically acts out a reinterpretation of a common Jewish racial understanding of the Kingdom of God. In both the interactions with the Roman centurion in Luke 7 as well as the woman (Canaanite descendant) in Matthew 15, Jesus reinterprets what it means to have faith in God and who the Kingdom is open to. The repercussions of this unequivocal 'no' to racism, and the hatred and de-humanization that accompany it, apply just as much to our 21st century culture in America as they did in 1st century Israel. 

One of the core convictions of Woodland Hills is that God is indiscriminately loving and opposed to all violence. But many Christians since the 4th century have not wanted this to be true. It's more comfortable for us to hate our enemies and be justified in doing so. So some Christians have gone to great lengths to argue that Jesus was not actually opposed to violence. Debunking these arguments is what Greg focused on during this 'Turning the Tables' message.

It is common to hear objections about the differences between the God of the Old Testament and Jesus in the New, but what about the views some hold that Jesus wasn’t actually non-violent? How do we handle the Scriptures that seem to imply He engaged in occasional violent acts? In this second message in our series, Turning the Tables, David Morrow shows how Jesus cursing a fig tree had nothing to do with violence, and everything to do with liberation from that which enslaves His people, both individually and collectively. 

In our new Turning Over Tables series, we examine how central Jesus (as well as other new testament authors) placed our call to non-violence. In fact at one point in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus pre-conditions being considered a child of God to our love toward enemies and refusal to return evil for evil. Many throughout history have tried to twist scripture to fit certain personal or other non-Kingdom nationalistic agendas, but Jesus’ call to us is that His Kingdom is not of this world. What makes His followers distinct is our refusal to engage in violence no matter the “just” circumstance.

In this final sermon in our Moving Pictures series, Greg looks at how the past can be redeemed and give way to a healing future. All people carry wounds and brokenness from their past and many of us continue to live those hurts in the present. Greg examines how through the love of Christ all people’s pasts can be transformed and integrated into God’s great story of redemption.

Each of us is unique. We each have our own story, our own calling, and our own distinct set of giftings, talents, and experiences that shape our uniqueness. However, many of us are stuck living in stories of all the reasons we are disqualified from having a life of purpose and impact in the kingdom. Shawna uses the unlikely heroes of 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' to remind us that God can nullify any of the objections our minds present that keeps us from living out our identity in Christ. 

Later this month Woodland Hills will be doing our annual baptism ceremony at Lake Phalen, and so in light of that Greg used this week's sermon to talk about baptism and contrasting it with the magical way of thinking about it that we see in the movie 'Oh Brother Where Art Thou'.

The word “repent” is often associated with fear based tactics like street side preachers shouting “turn or burn!” Though fear based attempts to motivate change rarely have lasting positive impact. The New Testament picture of repentance is instead displayed as a joyful invitation to acceptance of the grace and mercy poured out by a God of love. 

This week in our Moving Pictures series we explore the film 'The Adjustment Bureau' to better understand the complexities of a world with free will. Every decision we make unfolds massive ripple effects, making it almost impossible to know why things happen as they do. Our hope in the midst of this beautifully complex world is found in God who is infinitely smarter than we can ever understand.

The story of the transforming power of love over shame is all around us. This past weekend Sandra showed us this theme in the movie 'The Beauty and the Beast', and we learn how powerful love can be to defeat even the most paralyzing shame.

This is our first week of the new sermon series, Moving Pictures. In this series we will look at different movies that show a particular theology. This week we were entertained with the film, Bruce Almighty, a film which highlights the question of free-will. Greg takes us through the illusion of fatalism. The foundation of fatalism (also understood as determinism and/or Calvinism) suggests the world and all its happenings are determined. All that unfolds, including all suffering, is a result of fate, a pre-determined destiny of events established by God. But, there is a different way of understanding the world and God’s relationship to the created order. God created a world with free-will; where humans have the capacity to freely choose life or choose death. God is a relational God and longs for relationship with humans who freely choose love. With the free-will understanding of the created order we discover God is not the author of all that unfolds in the world, but that humans play an integral role in what comes to pass. 

Throughout the Old Testament we get clouded pictures of the character of God. Hebrews tells us that God gave our forefathers many glimpses of the truth. But through Jesus Christ, God gives us the full revelation of the truth. So what are we to do with the pictures that suggest God is an angry, wrathful, violent God? In this sermon, Greg points out various Old Testament stories that are glimpses of the truth of God’s character. With a careful reading that goes beyond the surface picture of the story we see that the greater revelation of the truth that God is a God who is rich in mercy, slow to anger, gracious and compassionate, that God is love. 

The underlying theme behind our 'Glimpses of Truth' series is the idea that before we had the full revelation of God in Jesus, people only caught glimpses of him. He showed himself, but like the sun on a cloudy day, people's view was obscured by their culture, so what they saw was not the full revelation but one marred by their own expectations and fallenness.But despite this, there were still a few instances in the Old Testament where we can see glimpses of the Christ-like God that we know.

God gives us dreams for our future. Yet, the circumstances and demands of life have a way of causing us to put those dreams away or forget them all together. How do we allow God to awaken us to the dreams he offers us? In this powerful message, Nicole Bullock (Co-Pastor of Blue Oaks Church in Brooklyn Center, MN) shares the story of a Shunammite woman who makes room for God in the face of paralyzing discouragement. Nicole also shares her own story of keeping faith in God through the uncertainty of seemingly-hopeless circumstances.

In week three of our 'Glimpses of Truth' sermon series we continue to look for portraits of God in the Old Testament that look like Jesus. This week we look at rules. The first five books of the Old Testament alone contain 613 different rules. Using Hebrews 1:1-3 as our springboard we can see that God gave rules to accommodate Israel’s needs as well as to protect and bless. In fact, in Jesus we see the ultimate expression of God’s desire, not for rule following, but for hearts given to Him in love.

A surface level reading of the Old Testament gives the appearance that God has chosen Israel as a favorite nation, and has therefore discriminately blessed and protected them in and against other nations. Just as we discovered during the cross centered series, if one looks below the surface there actually is much more than is first apparent about the cultural understanding of God’s interactions with His people, the Israelites’ hearts, and God’s true calling and intention for their nation. 

This weekend we kicked off our new sermon series, Glimpses of Truth. For the next six weeks Greg will be covering the ways in which the Spirit of God was consistently working in the hearts of God’s people to reveal as much of God’s true character as possible. Throughout the Old Testament we read many examples of how the spiritual immaturity of God’s people determines their understanding of God’s true character. Never coercing nor shaming, but through love and immeasurable patience, God meets us exactly where we are and carries us on to the full revelation of Godself that is finally found in Jesus Christ.

The Resurrection of Christ is central to the Christian message, yet it can be hard for some people to believe. Usually when people die, they stay dead! If Christ rose from the dead, it confirms his claims. Either Jesus rose from the dead, or the disciples were lying (Hoax theory) or the story is legendary (Legend theory). In this message Greg looks at the reasons to believe in the resurrection of Christ from historical evidence, and he examines problems with Hoax and Legend theories. 

“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus experienced separation from the Father on Good Friday, and many of us feel the same way. But God is here for us! Our Good Friday service included testimonies, a sermon message, worship and communion.

If we read the Old Testament assuming that it all is about the cross of Christ, then we can see how God stooped to the level of the cultural conditioning of the Old Testament authors to allow himself to be portrayed as violent. In addition, when we read carefully, we can actually see, within the passages of violence themselves, the nonviolent character of God breaking through.

God is a God who stoops down, out of love, in order to meet people where they are. He is a heavenly missionary who accommodates that which he is against in order to win people over to the truth. This metaphor of a heavenly missionary helps us understand what God was doing when we read about the violent depictions of God in the Old Testament. 

The Old Testament often portrays God as either doing, commanding, or threatening violence. For many, this is a huge problem because these depictions contradict the way Jesus lived and commanded. What are we to do with this contradiction? In this sermon, Greg invites us to see that there is something else going in these portrayals of violence, and we can only see this something else when we understand what was going on when Jesus died on the cross. 

Fear is part of the journey in this life, but for many, fear is consuming. As a result, it serves as a roadblock that keeps us from entering into what God has for our lives. God provides a way for us to move beyond fear and into a life of love. This is possible not because we have a guarantee that everything will work out as we wish, but because, even in the midst of the ups and downs of life, we know that God's love is greater than the fearful circumstance we face. 

In the Kingdom of God freedom is an end in of itself. It is part of our nature as created beings to be free and not be ruled over by one another, any agent in the spiritual realm, or by substances or behavior patterns. For many people addiction is one of the key stumbling blocks that perpetuates cycles of shame, hiding, and a lack of fullness of life. In this message Greg explores what lies at the heart of all addictions, substance or otherwise, and how we go about untangling ourselves from their grip so we can step into the full life that God desires us to have. 

This is the fourth week in our Overwhelmed sermon series. Today we discussed the challenge of unforgiveness and resentment. Brianna suggests that living out of a false identity can be perhaps the greatest source of our struggle to extend forgiveness to ourselves or to others. The way to freedom from our unforgiveness is to remember the truth of who we are in Christ, and to be transformed more fully into our true identity by being transformed by the renewing of your mind. 

Greg talks about depression, and how to take our thoughts captive to find the Joy of God.

In the second week of our Overwhelmed series Greg unpacks the topic of shame. We begin by looking at the origin of shame in Genesis 3; what shame is and where it comes from. Next we look at how God defeats shame on the cross and welcomes us to live shame-free lives through His unconditional love. 

This initial sermon in our Overwhelmed series was a foundational message about the root of everything that holds us back. God has designed us to have power over our brain and our thought life and it is our responsibility to be disciples of our brain. We must fight against the cultural lies of our world by daily renewing our mind by focusing on who God says we are. Here is a link for the video that we played before the teaching. 

Sometimes time doesn’t feel like such a gift. In fact if we’re not living in right relatedness with how God intended us to function, it can feel much more like a burden. Throughout history technology innovations have made false promises about giving more time back to their users, but in fact we have as many distractions as ever to keep us from living the simple, undistracted, others oriented life God calls us to. In this message we explore what can be done to take back control of how we’re living our life and spending our time so we don’t fall in to temptations that lead to getting our life from how busy we are.

God lovingly entrusts us with money, possessions, and resources. As followers of Christ we are called to surrender all our gifts to the Lordship of Christ. Because God is an other-oriented God who lovingly pours out blessings, and we are made in His image, then we too should be people who use our resources to bless others.

This weekend we honor the memory and life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with a message from Dennis Edwards and Greg Boyd. King dedicated his life to the pursuit of the one new humanity inaugurated in the life of Jesus and this sermon focuses on King’s commitment to justice, peace and love.

Everything that we have is a gift from God that we have been entrusted with. But these gifts are meant to be given away.

This weekend service recognized our teaching pastor and dear friend, Seth McCoy, as he gave his last sermon here. Seth and his family will be transitioning from Woodland Hills to serve God’s Kingdom in another capacity. We celebrate and thank the McCoy family for serving, loving and participating in our larger Woodland Hills family. In this sermon, Seth discusses his affection for Woodland Hills and for the process of following your calling through three lenses: A telescope, a microscope and a rearview mirror.

Jesus is the Light of the world, and this Light has always been at work within us, whether or not we've been aware of it. Once we surrender to that Light, we find ourselves swept up into the greatest love story of all time!

Keeping the Light. Throughout the biblical narrative, we see that Jesus is the light of the world. And that light is shared with humanity in order that we may shine the light. In the Old Testament, Israel was called to be the light to other nations. With the Incarnation, Jesus came as the light of the world. And today, the family of God is to bear witness to the light of the world. Greg shares with us how we are blessed to be conduits of light, to shine and share the light.

In this third week of our Across the Universe series we are reminded that the counter-cultural beauty of the Christmas story is in the reality that the God who created the vast expanses of the universe became small and vulnerable. While it is often the case that we marvel at what is grand and big, the message at Christmas is that oftentimes the most profound experiences of God are in the seemingly mundane moments of life. Our call is to be a people who remember and remind others that the God of the universe does not only go half way for us, and so we should go all the way in love for others.

As we move toward Christmas during our Across the Universe series, Seth explores what it means when God, the Creator of the universe, calls us home. This message took a look at what home means, and what we’re being invited in to, as seen through the unique lens of the prodigal son.

In the sermon this week Greg reflects on how the heavens tell of the glory of God. The vast and beautiful universe, bigger than the human mind can conceive, points to a marvelous creator. This same awe-inspiring creator is the one that became human to love and save all of humanity.

In this final sermon of the Without Borders series, Greg explores our ultimate weapon for fighting the powers of this present darkness. (Hint: it isn't more darkness)

Fear and Faith. Throughout much of the biblical narrative we encounter stories of people who danced between fear and faith. Stories such as the fear of the disciples on the stormy sea, to the townspeople after witnessing the healing of the Gerasene demoniac, to Jairus and his daughter. Yet, in the midst of these fears, we also encounter the Jesus who is bigger than our fears. The Jesus who tells us, “Do not fear. Instead, have faith.” In this weeks’ message our guest, Pastor Dennis Edwards from Sanctuary Covenant Church in Minneapolis, MN, takes us on a journey through these stories and exhorts the church to live in love – for there is no fear in love.

In this final pre-election sermon, Greg reminds us that while the kingdoms of the world rise and fall and are ultimately doomed, the kingdom of God is everlasting and truly deserving of our hope.

In this third week of our Without Borders series and a week before the election we are reminded that Jesus' challenge to us in loving our enemies was designed to remind us that God has no human enemies. He has called us to be agents of peace, to find the commonality between us and to build on it. This practice will be exceedingly challenging during this election time. We are quick to blame and quick to judge. Jesus invited people on the polar opposites of the political controversy of his day to be brothers within his community of disciples.

Jesus calls us to be His ambassadors. Living as an ambassador of the Kingdom God instead of a citizen of the kingdom of the world requires an awareness and intentionality to not buy in to the “me first” culture of the world. Christians throughout history have usually migrated to one of two extremes in our relationship with the world. Either we withdraw and isolate ourselves from the culture to the point of irrelevance, or else we acquire as much power as possible in order to force or legislate Kingdom of God behavior in to the culture. Neither of these work, or are what we're called to. Instead we're called to a third way as an ambassador and missionary in a foreign land where we interact and show the people the Kingdom by how we live, love, and steward our talents and resources, and then invite others to join.

This weekend Greg taught about the difference between the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of God. In the kingdom of God, Jesus is our King (and president) and followers are marked by their indiscriminate love and refusal to rule over others. During this election cycle believers are called to put their trust in Jesus alone and not be pulled into trusting in the rulers of this world.

In this final sermon of the Worth the Risk series, we look at how the cross offends our worldly values, and how we as followers, and the church as a whole, are called to respond to this confrontation.

We often craft together ideal images of of what a “good Christian” family ought to look like. Images of the idealistic post-war, bourgeois nuclear families are more frequently articulated as the “biblical” family. But, is that accurate? Greg provides for us a snapshot of the various families portrayed throughout the biblical narrative. From Adam and Eve to Solomon and his many wives and concubines, to Abraham and Sarah, we gather a sense that “biblical” families are just as messy and dysfunctional as what we may witness today. The hope of the family unit is Christ! The Christ who works within the mess of it all to make something beautiful.

In this third message of our Worth the Risk series, Greg talks about marriage relationships and explores the meaning of Ephesians 5:22, which says that wives must submit to their husbands.

Being made in the image of God means that we are created to make and keep commitments. In this second segment of our Worth the Risk series, Seth explores commitment’s role in our relationships. A kingdom relationship is a creation in and of itself, and that creation requires constant care in the form of honest conversations about the things that come between us. Our tendency is to avoid conflict, confrontation, and rebuke because we believe a lie. We believe we can’t be honest and keep our friendships, but like all forms of deception this lie leads to relational death.

Greg opens our new Worth The Risk series with a discussion of commitment, the constant desire to find something better, and argues that you can only know the Truth about anything by passionately committing to it.

One need not look very far to see examples of discord, hostility and disunity within humanity and even within creation. Culture wars, political wars, theological wars and military wars abound. What, we might ask, is the source of all this hostility? And, more importantly, what is the source of true peace, true unity, true harmony? Paul tells us in Ephesians that Jesus is the one true peace. Jesus IS our peace and the Holy Spirit is the unifier. A new president or policy or military leader or social activist will not bring peace. Only when people accept the one (Jesus) who IS peace, who IS harmony will true unity come.

We wrapped up our summer God In Us sermon series with a Q&A night on Tuesday, August 30. It was hosted by Greg Boyd, our senior pastor, and Paul Eddy, our teaching pastor. It was a Q&A on the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts.

Hope is a vital part of life. In this segment of our summer series on the Holy Spirit, Seth explores how the Holy Spirit fuels our hope by giving us a vision of God’s plan for the world and by empowering us to take action towards bringing that plan into reality.

As we continue our summer series on the Holy Spirit, this week Seth explains the role of the Holy Spirit in producing fruit that serves as evidence of a follower’s life in the Kingdom. As a way of understanding the fruits described in Galatians 6, a description and function of the soul is first explored. We use our will not to grit our way into a Jesus looking life, but rather to surrender our life, in order to gain the life the God promises. Our job is to surrender. The Holy Spirit's job is to produce the fruit in us.

In this sermon Greg goes over the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit. After explaining each gift, he addressed why he believes these gifts are still relevant and important for the church today. He ends with an encouragement to zealously seek after all gifts God has for you.

This next sermon in our series, titled God in Us, focused on the meaning, biblical background and practical application of being filled with the Holy Spirit. This phrase has created much controversy in the church today while often creating more division than unity. The evidence in Scripture emphasizes that there is a difference between having the Holy Spirit as a follower of Jesus and the act of being filled with the Spirit, but that this filling of the Spirit looks more like the extravagant love of a married couple than any spiritual test.

This message is the fifth sermon in the series. It lays the foundation for identifying, understanding, and utilizing spiritual gifts.

In this fourth message of the God in Us series we explore what it means that the light of the world has taken up residence in us. Throughout scripture we see the theme of darkness and light battling back and forth. In Genesis we read of the Spirit hovering over the darkness and bringing order to the chaos, light to the darkness. In the gospel of John, Jesus calls himself the light of the world, and promises his followers will have the Holy Spirit in them if he goes away. So what does it mean to have the light of the world living inside us?

God makes amazing promises over the kind of life we can live through the power of the Holy Spirit. This power will flow out of us like a river of living water. But we frequently experience a distance between the kind of full life that God promised and the kind of life we live now, don’t we? So how can the distance of this gap begin to close? Paul tells us, one of the key ways in which we can do this is through the practice of being transformed by the renewing of our mind. The primary place in which The Holy Spirit meets with us is in our minds, and we, through the power of the Spirit, can choose our thoughts, we can set our minds on things that are above.

This weekend's sermon is a response to the recent police/black lives matter conflicts from Baton Rouge, Dallas and here in Saint Paul. We took a break from our current 'God In Us' series to talk about this together.

This second sermon in our God in Us series focused on the broad question of, “Who is the Spirit?” This message focuses on three characteristics of the Holy Spirit: The Holy Spirit is God, The Holy Spirit is personal and the Holy Spirit is distinct in nature. Greg emphasized that the main role of the Spirit is to show us clearly the person of Jesus and help us to recognize God when we would have no other way of recognizing Him. The Holy Spirit is working to remove the veil in our mind and can do this through our imagination.

We began our new Holy Spirit series by hearing stories from Rob & Fred, friends of Greg's and podrishioners from a house church network in Philadelphia. They shared about what it looks like for them to choose to live in the flow of the Holy Spirit on a day to day basis.

We held a Q&A night to wrap up our Flesh and Blood sermon series. In the final sermon of that series we examined how racial reconciliation is a vital part of the gospel message. To further discuss this we asked Dennis Edwards, the Senior Pastor of Sanctuary Covenant Church, to join Greg for this Q&A on a Jesus-way of addressing racial issues within the church.

In this, the final part of the Flesh & Blood series, we examine how racial reconciliation is a vital part of the gospel message. To be a Jesus-follower is to be one who seeks peace-making and is always striving towards reconciliation. We discover that we are only able to achieve reconciliation to the degree that we are willing to learn about perspectives that differ from our own.

In this, the third message in our Flesh and Blood series, we focus on Jacob's story in Genesis. His story is a great illustration of how we build walls inside ourselves, and it brings to light who we are really protecting ourselves from.

Jesus caused a stir in his community when he read the words from Isaiah 61 in his synagogue and announced their fulfillment through his own life and ministry. It’s no surprise; these words outline a powerful declaration of the Spirit of God at work. This sermon explores what happens for us everyday 21st Century believers as we embrace Isaiah 61. When the Spirit moves we are transformed; we become rescued and redeemed people that renew and rebuild communities.

In this second message of the Flesh and Blood series, Seth describes the unceasing realities of conflict not only in the world in which we live, but also in our own lives; our own relationships, and our own hearts. Walls of conflict exist all around us, and those walls are torn down because one man chose to die. Through Christ’s death, the walls of conflict and separation are torn down. As the head of the church (that is Christ) leads the body (that is the church), the conflicts that divide the world are torn down and truth, justice, mercy and peace become embodied.

In this first message of the Flesh and Blood series, Greg dives in to relational conflict by properly defining kingdom peace and kingdom war. We live in a fallen creation whose inhabitants too often reflect the ideals of the enemy rather than participating in the triune God’s invitation to reflect His perfect love to each other. The principalities and powers play us off one another creating human enemies, but in reality the battle is not against flesh and blood. We were created to fight and protect, just not against each other.

Week four of our Love. Walk. Do. sermon series focused on stories of justice for human trafficking victims. Mark Moore, Church Mobilization Director at International Justice Mission (IJM), shared stories of what IJM has done to actively bring justice and healing to human trafficking victims.

This message examines Christian hope and how we are called to prophetically speak hope into seemingly hopeless situations. While hope is vital, certain understandings of God’s character and role in radical suffering can leave victims of trauma with passionless hope. But when our picture of God is rooted solidly in the revelation of Jesus, it is possible to have a passionate faith, regardless of the circumstances. *We have Jessica's book available for purchase; please email Jodi at jcremers@whchurch.org if you're interested!

This third sermon in our Love. Walk. Do. series focuses on the importance of doing justice. There is always a danger in attempting to find solutions to justice issues with the political system where all solutions are ambiguous in nature. We are called to actively DO justice in our church and communities as a sign-post of the beautiful Kingdom of God because all of humanity has unsurpassable worth.

We all want a place at the top. A place of prominence and authority. From the story of Esau and Jacob, to James and John, to me and to you, the desire for a place at the top can frequently be seen. But for Jesus, a position at the “top of the Kingdom” can only be found through humility.

In this first message of the Love. Walk. Do. sermon series, Greg tackles the first portion of the prophet Micah’s depiction of what God requires of us – to love mercy. Loving mercy means loving it when people don’t get the negative consequences they deserve. If justice is about collecting a debt, then loving mercy is about hating debt collecting. In a very counter cultural depiction of the Kingdom of God, Greg examines how we can’t truly love mercy until we realize the extent to which we depend on it from God.

A popular view of faith is as an absence of doubt. But Greg shows us why this view not only is a barrier to new believers, but is also a dangerous way of doing faith.

Jesus commanded His followers to love, and He commanded us not to judge. Yet the Christians of today are known outside of the Church as arrogant, judgmental, and intolerant. What is wrong with this picture?! In this message, Greg shares three ideas on how we, who say we follow Jesus, can truly become the humble, serving, loving people that the Church is supposed to be.

This Easter we heard from Greg Boyd on how the resurrection confirms that Jesus is the true revelation of God. Jesus is the exact representation of God and the truth is that the mercy of God triumphs over judgment. It is our task to align or re-align our picture of God with the person of Jesus seen in the resurrection.

In this sixth and last installment of the Everyday Influence series, Seth explores the positive ripple effect of us sharing the impact Jesus has had on our life. We don’t share the good news for a variety of reasons, but the promise of scripture is that if we show up and share, God will provide the power to our words that has the potential to change hearts. We don’t have to be perfect; in fact that’s part of the good news. Our story, infused with the power of the Holy Spirit, is enough.

For the fifth installment of our Everyday Influence series, Sandra shares her own life example of being stuck in a “box” of self-proclaimed righteousness, and how she realized that we are all in the same box: the big box of “screw-ups.” It is within this big box that Jesus dwells, and does his great work.

We can all struggle to hear and obey God at times – but why? Is it that we’re not listening well? Or that we’re afraid that we might not like what we hear? We’re not alone in those realities – even Jesus’ disciples found themselves there, hiding from others and living in fear. But when they received the Holy Spirit, they had supernatural help to overcome their fears – and so do we! The truth is, we shouldn’t be afraid of what will happen if we listen to the Holy Spirit, we should be afraid of what we’ll miss out on if we don’t!

In this third installment of the Everyday Influence evangelism series, Greg shares how the real good news is meant to impact all of our relationships, especially with those that don’t know Jesus. We were created with an innermost need and desire for significance and value that only God can satisfy. We were also born into an environment filled with lies and deception about how that desire is to be satisfied. Our call to share the good news starts with our experience of the good news. Greg shares how listening and learning are just as important in evangelizing as speaking and sharing. As the saying goes, no one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.

This week we heard from Seth McCoy during our second installment from the Everyday Influence series. Seth explored how being a priest is the best, hardest and most important job in the world. The primary role of being a priest is in learning how to give and receive mercy based on the good news of the Gospel.

The first in our new sermon series about evangelism, Greg takes a look at the message itself. He looks at the most frequent (and often cringe-worthy) ways the “good news” is often presented, and then helps us see the really good news that we should be sharing.

“When Jesus saw THEIR faith, he said… ‘Son, YOUR sins are forgiven… Pick up your mat and walk.’” Satan tries to isolate us, but the truth is that everything in the Kingdom is in relationship. We NEED others, and others NEED us! To allow the Enemy to keep us from sharing God’s blessings is to remain in a cage of deception – but to love others as best we can, even though we’re still imperfect ourselves, is to be set free! We sat down with Jim to hear some of his story. Click here to see that interview. 

This week we heard from Greg Boyd during our fourth installment from the Cage Free series. Greg explored the custom made cages that can be built overtime in our soul and the need to perform consistent soul audits. The enemy will take advantage of any area of wounding to lie to us about our real worth. We need to sit with God to become aware of these wounds, allow God to remind us of how much we are loved, and come up with a plan with God and others for how to move beyond this place of woundedness. We also sat down with Laure to hear some of her story.Click here to watch that interview. 

We live in a world that isolates us – brokenness and loneliness are all around, and they’re caused by our Enemy who is at war with God. But Jesus overcame the Enemy, and now we can all not only be healed of our own brokenness, but we have also been gifted to bring healing and freedom to other’s lives as well! We sat down with Melany to hear some of her story. Click here to see that interview. 

In this second installment of the Cage Free series, Greg explores the connections between truth and lies, behavior, and our trust in God to meet our innermost needs of security, worth, and significance. Getting free of the bondages that cage us requires examining everything in our life through the lens of Jesus. Deception is the main tool of Satan, so ultimately it is the truth that sets us free.

In this opening sermon of the Cage-Free series, Greg gives us an overview of the basis of the Spiritual Warfare worldview. This view is central to our picture of a Jesus-looking God who does not himself cause evil or suffering.

This week we heard from a guest speaker, Jeremy Jernigan, teach on the topic of his new book, Redeeming Pleasure. The topic of pleasure within the church has often been shied away from because of an assumption that pleasure is connected with guilt and shame. Jeremy emphasized the need to seek pleasure on God’s terms where we will experience maximum pleasure rather than seeking pleasure on our own terms which ultimately leads to less pleasure.

Our modern lives tend to get so busy that our everyday realities can keep us from seeing and experiencing that God loves us and is always with us. Emmanuel means “God with us”, and while it may sound a bit surreal, the Christmas story is as true today as it was on that first Christmas – God IS here with us!

This was the message from our Christmas Eve service in 2015.

Waiting is really difficult, no matter who you are or what you’re waiting for. We see examples over and over in scripture of characters who waited well and others who struggled and tried to take things in to their own hands. In this message Seth explores what it means to wait in hopeful anticipation for Jesus’ coming this Christmas season.

Christ offers complete peace and security, but only when our eyes are fixed on him alone as our King.

For children, Christmas is a time filled with wonder and awe. But as we grow, we tend to lose our sense of wonder and awe not only about Christmas, but about our world, our lives, and everything else! We all innately long to return “home” – home to a place where love overwhelms us and all things are new and glorious – and we long for someone who will take us there. But could that ever really happen? Praise God, for as wondrous and awe-inspiring as it sounds, that’s exactly what Jesus did for us on that first Christmas!

This week we begin our Christmas series, The Night that Changed the World. This first week focuses on the peace that comes through Christ. Greg delves into the distractions that can get in the way of experiencing this peace of Christ. This peace of Christ requires an intentional inventory of the degree to which Christ has full reign over both our outer and inner lives. In this sermon we look into some crucial questions and practices to submit all of our lives to the reign of Christ to experience true peace that can only come through the Prince of Peace.

In this sixth and last installment of the Formed series, Seth explores more in depth how ideas and identities we take upon our self that are not from God keep us from growing mature in the faith. God has provided the type of soil fertile for growth and He sees the potential in us as seeds. At the center of our calling is to mimic the type of soil Jesus has been to us by our love toward others. We are to be the type of soil where others will experience the Father’s love.

So why DO bad things happen to good people?! What IS God’s plan for overcoming evil, and why does it so often seem like evil is still winning?! Yes, God does have the power to take anything that Satan intends for evil and to work it to bring about good, but this is not work that God intends to do alone. He “comes alongside” us to “work all things for good”, but this is a process that requires OUR cooperation!

Personal experience is an important element of faith, so if we lack this, the life-changing depth of our faith will suffer. Today we talk about how to enhance the way we experience our faith, so that it feels more real and can affect us more fully. 

In this installment of our Formed series, Greg Boyd explores the importance of the Practice of No in the life of Christian discipleship. The story of Elijah and his experience with God on Mount Horeb are the foundation of this sermon as Greg examines how God lives in the quiet in the midst of a world that keeps getting louder and more sensational. The discipline of simplicity is an important tool to learn how to keep our gaze focused on Jesus rather than constantly looking for more.

In this second installment of the Formed series, Seth explores what it is that holds us back as followers of Christ, or creates a gap between the person we want to be and know is inside of us and who actually are. We know that Jesus wants to give us an abundant life, but our reality is often one of spiritual scarcity and daily bondage to destructive ideas and behaviors. In this message we examine what it looks like to surrender our will and trust in our heavenly Father.

We desire to follow Jesus – unfortunately we also have some desires that conflict with following Jesus. And try as we might, those conflicting desires just won’t go away. So what are we to do?

Ministry is not the work of seminarians or professionals. It is the job of each and every one of us. Jesus is the Hope of the World. But God is not coming to rescue us out of the world; he is rescuing the world through us. Today, Greg urges us to find our particular passion or gift and get to work!

In week four of Throughline, Seth discusses how and why we build community.

In this third installment of the Throughline series, Greg explores what it means to mature in the Christian faith and how that impacts our decision making.

God clearly shows amazing hospitality towards us from Genesis through Revelation, and yet we rejected Jesus, and we continue to reject countless others day by day. We have a superiority issue that Jesus confronted throughout his ministry, and he taught us to live a better way. It’s time for us to learn and practice some genuine hospitality!

In this first sermon of our Throughline series, Greg reflects on our history as a church, and reaffirms our central theme of Love: our first and last and only job here on earth is to do all things in love. Just as love provides purpose to a marriage, it provides our mission as a church, as well as to us as individuals as part of the body of Christ.

In this final installment of our Mixtape series, Greg Boyd explores the theological and practical ramifications of spiritual warfare in the lives of the earliest followers of Jesus and how that applies to our lives today. We find critical principles for lifestyle warfare in the account in Luke 10:1-18 that provide practical ways to live out the beauty of the Kingdom of God in everyday life encounters.

In this sixth installment of the mixed tape series, Seth shares his experience with the church’s call to make disciples of all the nations. As followers of Jesus, we are called on to learn and receive our Father’s heart so that not only will we know Him better, but so that we can express His heart for the broken world through our lives.

Sandra discusses some of the difficulties and obstacles to getting our life from the fullness of Christ.

In this next installment of our Mixtape series, Seth McCoy explores the richness of the early church as described in Acts 2:42-47. The beauty of the early church is evident as we look at this passage and explore the spirit of this church and how that could affect the spirit of the church today. We also look at the myths of this early church as often perceived or romanticized today and breakdown any misconceptions that might get in the way of living out what God has for His church today.

In this third installment of the mixed tape series, Greg shares his experience in growing in a non-violent world view during conflict. As followers of Jesus, we are called on to mimic our Lord and be peacemakers. We learn that being a peacemaker is not just doing activities that promote a lack of conflict, but it’s about rather putting our trust and whole source of worth and significance in the one who is peace, Jesus.

Early Church fathers said that every movement of God toward us begins with the Father, comes through the Son, and is accomplished in the Holy Spirit, while every genuine movement of humans toward God originates in the Holy Spirit, and goes through the Son to the Father. So if God’s movement toward us is accomplished in the Holy Spirit, and if our genuine moves toward God originate in the Holy Spirit, then we need this Spirit! Today we learn more about the Holy Spirit, and why Jesus left the earth so the Holy Spirit could come and fill it – and us – with God’s love!

The upcoming Mixed Tape series will be a collection of scripture passages that have moved and inspired the body of Christ over the centuries. In this first message of the series, Seth takes a look at Colossians 3:1-14 and what it means to get our life from being hidden in Christ. We also take a look at our role of choosing to die to the old way of living and not letting it pollute our current reality.

Greg Boyd finishes our Twisted Scripture series by delving into the passage in Genesis 6:1-7 on the issue of the Nephilim. This controversial passage deals with the creation of hybrid beings, the Nephilim, that are the offspring of fallen angels and daughters of humans. This passage has led to many distracting theories and conspiracies that have served to move us away from the tasks of the Kingdom of God. Our job, as Kingdom people, is to stay vigilant to all the ways the principalities and powers of this fallen world are constantly trying to spiritual engineer the Kingdom and our identity in Christ out of this world. We need to fix our eyes on Jesus and be careful of this temptation to slowly lose our Kingdom calling.

Today Brianna explores the concept of forgiveness that is so central to the Kingdom. Is it a condition of God's forgiveness of us? Or is his forgiveness unconditional no matter what? And if his love is unconditional, does that mean it doesn't matter whether we forgive others or not?

The Kingdom of God grows through witness and repentance, not by childbirth. The direction of people’s journeys through life hinges on whether or not someone is willing to tell them about what God has done. Are you telling others what God has done in your life?

Most evangelicals believe that God said the nation of Israel will exist forever, therefore its national and political boundaries must be fully restored before Jesus returns. But what if the “Israel” that the Bible refers to in this context is not a specific nation with geographical boundaries, but all who are the people of God?

In this fourth week of Twisted Scripture, Greg takes a look at Matthew 26:11, and what it means to “always have the poor with you.”

In this continuation of the Twisted Scripture series, Greg explores the various differences in opinion about baptism, and clarifies where WHC falls in this spectrum.

In part two of the Twisted Scripture series, Shawna explores the uses and misuses of a couple common Old Testament Proverbs. Often times in the Christian culture of the 21st century we see the book of Proverbs as a collection of nice sayings or one liners to guide our day. When we oversimplify the Proverbs they can often times come across very formulaic. We miss the cultural context they were written in and the oral tradition of wisdom they were meant to pass down to the next generation.

Seth McCoy begins our Twisted Scripture series by discussing the topic of prayer by focusing on Matthew 7:7-11. This passage has a tendency to be misrepresented by our own cultural contexts that can distort the language of this passage into an individualistic prosperity gospel. It was argued that the ultimate goal of prayer is to ask, seek and knock in order to find the beauty of a life lived in submission to God and for the purpose of advancing the Kingdom of God.

The Bible can seem to conflict itself depending on how it’s being interpreted, but what if the conflict isn’t with the Bible at all? For example, the story of creation often results in conflicting views and beliefs among people. But what if the conflict isn’t with the story itself, and is instead found in what lies behind the story – the very conflict we are to be standing with God against?

What does it mean to be “made in the image of God?” Most people think it’s some unique attribute of being human – like our ability to speak, or to love. And while that may be part of the picture, there is much more to it. The living God breathed his life into us, brought us into his temple, and invited us to rule and reign with him by being living examples of his character and love to all creation!

In this exploration of the Genesis 1 creation story and the young earth theory of creation, Greg presents three reasons why he believes that Genesis 1 was not intended to be taken as a literal account, but rather a narrative to express important truths about who the early Jews were and who their God was. Further, whether you believe in the young earth theory or evolution or some other view, the important thing that we all can agree on is simply the fact THAT God created the world and all life - not HOW he did so.

In part of two of this two-part series on living wholeheartedly, Seth focused on the kind of heart that honors God. The focus of this teaching is the importance of gratitude, as noted through common myths about gratitude and possible danger of ingratitude or unspoken gratitude. We all have such a debt of love and the God-honoring way to pay back this debt is through gratitude and practical acts of love.

In part one of this two part series on living wholeheartedly, Seth shares the importance and role of the local church in building God's kingdom. The early church had a very clear vision of their role in the world. They functioned out of their Spirit given gifts to continue the growth Jesus started while on Earth. We are invited and called to live the same style of Spirit led life.

Many people face a “crisis of faith” when it comes to understanding the story of creation as told in Genesis 1. When read as a chronological account of events and compared to modern-day science, it’s often reduced to an angrily defended “matter of faith.” But the creation story is not a scientific journal – it’s a beautifully poetic account of a good God and His love for us!

During our weekend services on April 11 and 12 we hosted Q&A sessions with Greg Boyd and Paul Eddy. We included all three services, so enjoy listening to ALL the answers.

In this Easter message we delve into how the Resurrection brings freedom from the accusations of the principalities and powers through the power of self-sacrificial love. We also look at how the Resurrection brings freedom from the fear of death and our mindset of scarcity in order to live a life that is truly sacrificial. The way to get our best life is to stop trying to get our best life now, but to live out of the abundant generosity given to us through the Resurrection.

Good Friday is the day when we remember Jesus’ work on the Cross. This year, Greg frames the story of Christ's sacrifice from the perspective of parent and child relationships.

In the last message of Mixed Signals, we take a look at Islam and how Kingdom people should be responding to the growing worldwide Islamic movement. We explore the growing disparity between the life Jesus led and calls us into and the normal worldly response to those who are different or potentially threaten our way of life.

Atheism, which means “without God”, makes a lot of sense – if your understanding of God also omits the reality of Satan, because then God appears to be the only one to blame. But when Satan is held accountable for his ruthless reign, and God is understood to look like Jesus, a life “without God” makes no sense.

In this fifth installment of Mixed Signals, we explore the Gnostics belief of the church in Colossae and how those relate to the New Spirituality movements rooted in Eastern thought of our day. We explore the biblical perspectives on pantheism, interacting with spirits and reincarnation and ultimately see how finding enlightenment in anything or anyone other than Jesus is deceptive and misses out on the loving character of God.

In this fourth installment of the Mixed Signals series, we explore how humans have historically given God, or the gods, attributes we ourselves have desired. In our present day this trend has manifested itself in a very generic, distant, tolerant, and civil picture of God. God is viewed as an ambiguous force defined by His power, and viewed as merely a giver of moral guidance wanting us all to get along. Greg and Seth expose how this misguided picture of God has led to a large population of Christians still viewing themselves as Lord of their own life.

In this week's theological meat-and-potatoes sermon on Hell and Salvation, Greg explores the fallacy of relativism, the singular truth of Jesus as the light of and way to the father, and whether this means that those who do not believe in him are doomed to an eternity of suffering in Hell.

This week, Brianna Millett addresses how we are to respond to the “mixed signals” we get from the multitude of competing viewpoints in our modern world. How do we state our beliefs effectively? And what does the Bible teach about sharing the Gospel with unbelievers?

We start Mixed Signals with a sermon on how to respond to questions about our faith in the midst of an increasingly pluralistic society. This sermon is focused on the way to respond to these questions as people of God and how to hold on to the most important beliefs with gentleness and respect.

Jeremy discusses other-centeredness and how our worldly definition of success differs from the Kingdom definition. He starts by examining the moment of clarity that we get when we “see fire,” or when emergencies arise - do we put on our own oxygen mask first, or do we take care of those around us first, at our own possible peril? The world (and airline safety speeches) tell us to take care of ourselves first, and only after that to worry about those around you. But Jesus tells us something different.

In this final installment of the Women on the Outside series, we explore the story of the woman at the well Jesus encountered while traveling through Samaria and how he dives right in to the gender and racial tensions of the first century Jewish culture.

We continue our short series on Women on the Outside this week by looking at the moving story of a prostitute who anoints the feet of Jesus with perfume and how we can learn much from how Jesus saw and responded to that woman.

In this third installment of the Women on the Outside series, we explore the story of a Phoenician woman Jesus encountered while with His disciples in the Tyre and Sidon region. We discuss how Jesus held the challenge and beauty of His mission as first the rescuer of the nation of Israel with His overall mission and call to make disciples of all nations.

Through the story of Mary and Martha, Brianna explores some affects of social norms and encourages each of us to embrace our unique role and mission in the kingdom.

This week we kick off our new series, Women on the Outside, with the story of the woman healed from sickness and how it relates to our role in God's Kingdom.

In our final week of B.C. we explore covenants. Through Christ, God fulfills all his promises, and by yielding to him and giving up control, we can set ourselves free.

For our 2014 Christmas Eve services we continued our B.C. series with a look at the prophecies leading up to the birth of Jesus.

This week in B.C., our Christmas series, we look at a few “interesting’ aspects of Jesus genealogy in Matthew. The bloodline of Jesus is remarkably multicultural and multidimensional.

This week we kicked off B.C., our Christmas series, with a look at what God's plan was before time even began, why it's dangerous to think of the Incarnation as a rescue mission, and at the intimate relationship we're drawn into with God through a baby in a manger.

This week our guest speaker, Jeremy Jernigan, takes us through the historical view of shepherds as having a poor reputation and a despicable nature. Despite this, Jesus took on the identity of a shepherd, turning the image on its head and redeeming it. In Jesus, what we actually see shatters what we expected to see.

During our weekend services on November 29 and 30 we hosted Q&A sessions with Greg Boyd, Kevin Callaghan, and Sue Krautkramer. We included all three services, so enjoy listening to ALL the answers.

In our sixth week of Heart Smart our team of panelists read and responded to Dear-Abby-style letters about difficult relational situations from members of the church community. For each letter, they gave advice on how to approach the problem from a Kingdom point of view.

Learning how to love the people in our life that we find challenging to deal with is often very difficult. This week in Heart Smart we look at some biblical examples and instructions on how to do love our enemies in the same way we love our friends.

Forgiveness is central to who God is and how he loves us. In week four of Heart Smart we look at the process of taking baby steps towards both receiving forgiveness and extending it to others.

The topic for our third week in the Heart Smart series is communication. Communication is the essence of all relationships and as such, it is a very important aspect of who we are as image bearers of Christ. We should see communication as a Kingdom activity worth learning to do well.

In our second week of Heart Smart we look at the New Testament teaching on reigning over the relational brain. Understanding how God wired our brains can help us to learn how to take our thoughts captive to Christ.

We begin a new series this week on emotional intelligence and the roles this plays in our relationship. This week we take a look at the role Jesus plays in our relationships and the importance of letting Christ be the source of where we fulfill our need for love.

Guest speaker Jeremy Jernigan takes us through the text in John 15 and describes what it means to remain in the vine and experience the vibrant life that Jesus desires us to have. The more we remain in the vine, the more closely we get to Jesus, and the more vibrantly we'll experience life.

We finish our short series on the spiritual gifts today with a sermon discussing the gift of tongues and the interpretation of tongues. As the most controversial of the gifts, we will correct false beliefs and discover the Scriptural truths and blessing that come from speaking in tongues.

In this week's sermon, we discuss the supernatural gifts of faith, healing, and miracles Christians receive from the Holy Spirit. We describe what each of these gifts are, as well as how we can ask for them and use them in our lives today.

This week we hear from guest speaker Shawna Boren about the gift of prophesy. Shawna talks about the importance of staying awake to the Spirit's movements in our lives and how that will help us acting in the gift of prophesy.

This week we continue our short sermon series about the spiritual gifts. The first of the gifts we discuss in detail are words of wisdom and words of knowledge. Greg talks about how we discern these words from the Holy Spirit and tells us how we can best use them for building up the body of Christ.

This week begins a sermon series discussing the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit, or those gifts often referred to as the supernatural gifts. Before discussing each gift individually, today we discuss two pieces of information needed to understand the gifts. We'll discuss listening to the Spirit and using our gifts to build up the body of Christ.

We need reminders of why we praise and worship because it’s easy to forget the meaning amid the distractions and idols of our culture. In this message Greg explores the reasons why we do and do not worship, and looks at the method and tradition presented in the scriptures.

Greg has recently returned from a three week trip in Europe, and today he shares stories of how the Kingdom message of a Jesus-looking God, radical love and non-violence is truly spreading all over the world. The joy of his travels, the opportunities to see the work of fellow Kingdom people, and the vast beauty of God’s Earth as seen on the Alps came to a crashing halt with his visit to Auschwitz. Sharing his experience at Auschwitz, Greg addresses the timeless question of “Where was God in all that suffering?” and teaches that God is always on the inside of pain and suffering, not as the author of it, but as the Redeemer of it. And he reminds us that, in the end, Christ, not evil, has the final word and he will be (and is) victorious.

This week we look at the twisted interpretation of Matthew 22 and Romans 13. This is a text with a long standing tradition that teaches Christians to serve both the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms in which they live on earth. In this sermon, we will learn why this interpretation is false and how to better understand it.

The popular culture’s influence through media such as fairy tales, comic books, and movies has impacted how we understand stories from God’s word. For many, as we read popular Old Testament stories like Jacob and Esau we automatically look for a hero and a villain. We look for actions to imitate from the “good guy” and actions to avoid from the “bad guy.” Vanessa explores how this approach to biblical stories is misguided and gives context and insight to the complicated and messy, yet redemptive relationship between Jacob and Esau.

For many, faith is about attaining as much certainty as possible in order to be a true follower of Christ. But the Bible tells us faith is about committing to a course of action in the face of uncertainty. God is not seeking all the right answers from his people in order to let them into heaven; no, he is our loving Bridegroom who seeks to be in a covenantal relationship with us in the midst of our uncertainties.

For many Christians, salvation has been reduced to a one-time prayer where one mentally and verbally agrees to a few key theological beliefs. The Bible and Jesus' life, however, present us with a more holistic salvation that involves wholeness, new life, and transformation. Instead of viewing salvation as a legal contract, we are invited to join Jesus in a covenantal marriage where his life is poured out for us and our lives are poured out for him.

Our Twisted Scripture series continues this week as Greg explores Hebrews 9:18-22. This scripture passage is commonly used to support the penal substitutionary atonement theory in which our guilt was transferred to Christ and He was punished on the cross on our behalf. Greg raises several objections to this line of thinking and discusses the use of animal sacrifices as a method of atonement in the Old Testament.

This week in our Twisted Scripture sermon series Shawna Boren discusses with us the misuse of Jeremiah 29:11. We take a look at how the verse, when taken alone, can claim life is always good. The problem with this use of the verse is that life is not always good. Life delivers us times that bring suffering. This week we look at how this verse can be better understood.

The Book of Job has often been misused as a way to explain the mysterious ways of God in suffering and pain. The truth is that the Book of Job is there to teach us that God does not inflict pain and suffering, rather it is the cosmic warfare that we cannot see which interferes with God's true will for his people.

Romans 9 is the most widely used text in the defense of predetermination. This week we will untangle the text in order to see the Scripture the way it was meant to be—within its correct social and historical context, as well as giving regard to its intended audience.

The Bible is filled with stories of God's people being named and blessed by God. God gives his people a new name in order to give them a mission. Our guest speaker, Brianna Millet, teaches what it means for us to be given a new name through stories such as Abraham, Sarah, Jacob and Peter.

The little things we do in the Kingdom make a big difference. In this sermon, Greg shows that the incarnation and cross are spiritual and physical realities for us.

Evangelism is important. However, there’s a lot of baggage that comes with the term and how we are to evangelize to others. In this sermon, Greg Boyd and Stephanie Danielson share with us how to spread the gospel by living a life that compels others towards Jesus.

The Bible shows us that our prayers make a difference in this world. Yet, our picture of God doesn’t always line up with that truth. In this sermon, Greg shows how the world operates when it comes to our prayer and what a difference it makes.

Have you ever noticed that we tend to judge others by their actions and ourselves by our intentions? In this sermon, Jeremy Jernigan shows us the story of Simon Peter, and how our faith can be get stuck when we think about our past failures and that faith happens in the disappointment of failure.

On Easter, it is important to remember Christ’s resurrection and the meaning, purpose and principle behind it. In this sermon, Greg shows how the meaning of Jesus’ resurrection has changed over time and how we should be looking at it.

Good Friday is the day when we remember Jesus’ work on the Cross. This year, Greg take a look at the Cross through the eyes of Peter.

During our weekend services on April 12 and 13, we hosted Q&A sessions with Greg Boyd, our Senior Pastor, and Paul Eddy, our Teaching Pastor. We included all three services, so enjoy listening to ALL the answers.

A lot of Christians today believe in a literal rapture before the judgment of the world. However, these beliefs come from literal interpretations of several scripture passages. In this sermon, Greg takes a look at these passages and offers a different take on how to interpret them.

Revelation provides us with a beautiful vision of the future as well as a way to live in the here and now. In this sermon, Greg shows us how the symbolism of Jerusalem and the Bride shows God’s heart for creation and our holiness.

In our contemporary Christianity, there is a pervasive view that God acts violently during the end times. But this view stands in contradiction to the Cross and Jesus’ teachings to love our neighbors. In this sermon, Greg shows how God does not act violently in Revelation and instead shows how lamb-like love wins.

The Book of Revelation was written to seven churches that were facing persecution for their faith. This week we look at the words Jesus gave to them in order to encourage them to endure during their suffering.

Many people see Jesus as coming back to this Earth as a roaring lion that will seek its vengeance upon our enemies. However, in this sermon, Greg shows us how God’s power is best expressed by a sacrificial lamb, and it will continue to be expressed that way in the future.

Everyone believes the world will one day come to an end; however, we disagree on how, when and why. In this sermon, Greg begins the series on Revelation and shows us three things to keep in mind when reading the book of Revelation.

In order to understand Jesus’ temptation in Matthew 4, we have to look back to the stories of temptation and testing that preceded it. In this sermon, Vanessa Williams shares with us how we can stand strong during these times.

Self-control can often feel like God is just trying to stymie our happiness. In this sermon, Nick Cunningham shares with us why this isn’t true and points us to the real reason Jesus calls us to self-control.

We all have times in our life where we go through the motions and don’t pay much attention to what’s going on around us. In this sermon, Greg reminds us to look and be thankful for the things in our lives.

As we continue our series in Colossians, we navigate a difficult teaching that was used to make a case that slavery was OK with God. In this sermon, Greg shows how this passage was a cultural teaching designed to teach about relationships that were never meant to promote slavery.

Marriage in the Bible can be misunderstood, and it often leads to questions of who should be the boss in our relationships. While it talks about headship and submission, these topics have been abused throughout the years. In this sermon, Greg shows how to interpret these passages and see the bigger picture when it comes to our relationships.

Mark 12 is often used to describe how we should give our money. But it would be a mistake to use a despicable situation to draw up expectations for giving. In this sermon, Abe Johnson shows us how this situation was not how it was supposed to be and how we should really interpret this passage.

We all have monsters in our life that we deal with. Often, humanity tries to make sense of and control these monsters. In this sermon, Pastor Jonathan Martin shows us how God treats these monsters and how we should react to them.

The story that we live by is very important to the way we see this world. In this sermon, Greg shows us how the story we live by is dictated by our social context. In addition, we learn how to reinforce the gospel message in our lives.

At the end of every year, it is good to look back on that year and resolve things that have been left unresolved. In this sermon, Greg shows how unresolved anger is pollution in our lives, and we should resolve it and shake off the devil.

This Christmas Eve, Greg reads us the story of a little lamb and how that lamb's love plays into the Christmas story. Instead of seeing a God who only works in power and looks a lot like humans, we see a unique beauty in the story of Jesus about a God of grace and gentleness.

When people think of peace, they often think of the absence of conflict. But God’s peace is much more holistic and reaches far into our souls and not just our actions. This shalom of God is about restoring our unity with the Father. In the third sermon of our advent series, we look forward to peace.

Why did Jesus come to earth? The most common answer is he came to save us. This week we discuss another answer to this question. Jesus came to show us the perfect joy of his Father and to give that joy to us. It is by knowing that the Father takes joy in each of us that we can begin to grow in the joy he desires for us.

We all have a song of hope in our hearts. During this advent season, it is important to remember that God is the one who we should look to write the words of that song. In this sermon, Greg shares how we sometimes get in the way of seeing God’s hope.

This week’s sermon includes practical ways we can live a more generous life. Our speaker, Shawna Boren, challenges us to explore the role God has for us in living a simple life and finding our true peace in him. She talks about some ways we can be more giving of our time, resources, money, and possessions.

In America, we’ve been conditioned to always stretch our budget and time to get the next best thing. But God is calling us to a simpler lifestyle that will not choke our Kingdom purpose. In this sermon, Greg points out some practical tips to grow the Kingdom seed in our lives.

We live in a warzone where there are powers trying to derail us from living a life like Jesus. One of these powers is consumerism. In this sermon, Greg shows us how consumerism is anti-Christ, and we should change our mindset in order to fight back.

In American culture, we are constantly being told to buy products and be discontent with our current situation. Like lab rats, we are constantly stimulated and tested to change our situation. Greg speaks to how we are called to step out of this consumerism rat trap and find a different way of living.

During our weekend services on November 2-3, we hosted Q&A sessions with Greg Boyd, our Senior Pastor, and Paul Eddy, our Teaching Pastor. We included all three services, so enjoy listening to ALL the answers.

In our sixth week of our sermon series, we shed a new vision on the Book of Revelation. Greg empowers the church to interpret the text through the non-violent, self-sacrificial love of Jesus. There should be a joy found in the hearts of the church—the bride of Christ—as we look forward to the final consummation of Jesus and the church.

In week five of our sermon series, we look at the role of the Church. A universal Church was born out of the ministry of Jesus, and this Church is empowered to look like the Cross. In this sermon, Greg shows us why it’s so important, as the Church, to keep our eyes fixed on the cross.

In week four of our sermon series, we discuss Jesus. Jesus is the center of everything in the life of a Christian. We see how God’s redeeming work in creation culminates with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. This has many implications for our own lives.

In week three of our sermon series, we’re diving into the tragic nature of not trusting God. The history of Israel is one of a people who have trouble trusting God to provide for them. However, the people of Israel are not the only ones with trust issues.

In week two of The Forest In The Trees, we take a look at the early history of the Hebrew people and the formation of the nation of Israel. Throughout these stories, we see a constant message of keeping faith in God despite their circumstances in this world.

The story of creation has interesting details. But getting lost in those details can make us miss the big picture. In the first week of our new sermon series, The Forest in the Trees, we take a look at creation and how the story of Adam and Eve fits into the big picture.

Worship is important. However, worship isn’t just about singing. In this sermon, Greg shows how worship takes many forms and brings many benefits to the Kingdom.

This week, Jessica Kelley shares with us her testimony. In addition, she tells us why having a solid picture of God is so important when we go through suffering.

Jesus calls us to abide in him, and we will bear much fruit. Jesus wants us to be always present with him just as God is omnipresent. However, this requires us to allow God into our lives. In this sermon, Greg shows us how to be fully present with Jesus in every moment.

In life, our emotions can be on a roller coaster, and our prayer life can follow this same pattern. In this sermon, Shawna shows us how we can find rest and a safe place in prayer with God, no matter our circumstances.

Do you ever feel, during prayer, that you’re talking to the ceiling more than God? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. In this sermon, Greg explains how using our imagination is not only a time honored way of praying, but the way in which God speaks to us in this world.

During our weekend services on August 10-11 we hosted Q&A sessions with Greg Boyd, our Senior Pastor, and Paul Eddy, our Teaching Pastor. We included all three services, so enjoy listening to ALL the answers.

In order to be in a relationship with another, we have to be honest with the other person. The same is true for our relationship with God. In this sermon, Greg shows how we need to be honest with God in our prayer.

As disciples of Jesus, we are to spend time with, know, and reflect Jesus and his life. Yet, we oftentimes replace Jesus with things of this world. In this sermon, Mark Moore tells us about waiting at the feet of Jesus.

If God is all-powerful, does he need our prayers to change this world? And is it even worth praying if we can’t see the results? In this sermon, Greg addresses these questions as we begin a new series on prayer.

Guest speaker Sandra Unger speaks about what it means to be part of the Jesus Tribe. She discusses the reasons people are prone to label people so quickly. She talks about the common place occurrence of tribalism within our culture, and how as Jesus people we can work to overcome such separations today.

In this week’s sermon, Greg contrasts the difference between judgment and discernment. He distinguishes the place, people, and purpose in which discernment, between helpful and un-helpful things, should occur for Kingdom people.

A sociopath is a person who, for whatever reason, cannot feel emotions. They function by replicating behaviors in their life. In this sermon, Greg shows how religion can sometimes be sociopathic, and we are called to not judge others’ behaviors.

During our weekend services on June 22-23 we hosted Q&A sessions with Greg Boyd, our Senior Pastor, and Paul Eddy, our Teaching Pastor. We included all three services, so enjoy listening to ALL the answers.

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were tempted to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They did this because they didn’t understand that God was protecting them. In this sermon, Greg shows us how the Cross has undone the effects of this original sin and how we are to act in light of the Cross.

In this dog eat dog world, we’re programmed to judge others. But to love others with unsurpassable worth, we must ascribe worth to them at cost to ourselves. In this sermon, Greg talks about how to put on love and take off judgment.

Love is not defined by warm and fuzzy feelings. As followers of Jesus, we look to the cross to understand love. In this sermon, Greg shares with us why our love for one another is so important.

In life, we try to put our best foot forward. Whether it’s interacting with others or just convincing ourselves, we hide the dirt in our lives and the shame that we feel. In this sermon, Jo Saxton shares with us the meaning behind Jesus washing his disciples’ feet and what it means for us.

God designed creation so that we would live in community with God and express God’s love towards each other and creation. However, sin disconnected us from God. In this sermon, Greg shows how we were created in the image of God to love others and creation and shows us how to reconnect with God.

In an episode of the Twilight Zone, a young boy gained omnipotent powers, and people were forced to accept his every decision as good—or else. In this sermon, Greg shows how many people view God this way, and he opens up another way to view God.

We held a Q&A night to wrap up our Kindred sermon series on Tuesday, April 17, 2013. Woodland Hills recently started moving in a direction toward Anabaptism and this series was a way to unpack what that meant for us as a church and to educate those that attend here about the history of the tradition. Once the series was over, people brought any further questions to this Q&A night. The total length of the file is about an hour and a half.

Jesus tells us to hate our life in order to keep it, and if we love our life, we’ll lose it. Guest speaker Shane Hipps shares with us what life Jesus wants for us. He also talks about his personal experience with the Anabaptist tradition.

God’s design for creation is beautiful. But, sometimes, we don’t follow God’s design for our life. In this sermon, Greg and Vanessa Williams address the battlefield in our mind and how to keep God’s goodness flowing to us. In addition, Greg gives a Kingdom response to the Boston Marathon bombings.

In the movie, Wizard of Oz, the characters are all looking for something they think they need. As Christians, we do the same. Whether it’s a new job, a marriage, a lack of a marriage or some other change that we’re looking for, we all look for something else that we think we need. In this sermon, Greg shows us that we have all we need for joy, and we just need to activate it through faith.

Putting off immoral behavior can seem a lot like legalism. So, how do we reconcile that we were saved by grace not works and that we need to put off immoral behavior? In this sermon, Greg shows that we need to trust in God’s reality instead of how we define our own reality.

Christ’s death and resurrection changed EVERYTHING! When we see this emerge from the story of God, it revolutionizes the way we view God, ourselves, others, and creation.

Good Friday is the day where we remember Jesus’ work on the Cross. In his death, Jesus showed us what love looks like. The radiance and power of the Cross is the center of who God is and who we are called to be in his image.

All of us seek for peace in our lives, but peace is just a small part of God’s shalom. Shalom is right relatedness between us and God, each other, and creation. In this sermon, Greg shows how the Anabaptists seek after shalom in every part of their lives and how we can seek after shalom as well.

We often define ourselves according to what we have to offer this world. But what happens when what we have to offer isn’t enough? In this sermon, Steve Wiens shows us how our wounds and inability to offer something can actually be used by God in glorious ways.

Baptism and Communion are important sacraments to the Christian community. In this sermon, Greg shows us how the Anabaptists understood these sacraments and how Woodland Hills performs these today.

The Anabaptists saw that the building is not the Church. God wants to dwell on this Earth, but it is not in a building. It is in his people. In this sermon, Greg shows how we are to demonstrate the beauty of the Church in our lives.

When you read a book with a twist ending, the ending reframes the entire story. The Bible is no different. In this sermon, Greg shows how Jesus’ message reframes how we are to understand the Bible, and he shows us why the Anabaptists shared this belief.

Throughout Scripture, we see a strong emphasis on positive traditions in the Church. In both the Old and New Testament, God repeatedly calls his people to be anchored with a sense of history. In this sermon, Greg explains why the Anabaptist tradition is closest to Woodland Hills.

How we respond to misfortunes and tragedies depends on how we frame them. In Colossians 3, Paul writes that Christ is all and is in all. When we frame our life within this understanding, we begin to see how we can live through misfortunes and tragedies.

It is extremely difficult to not worry in this life. In this sermon our guest speaker, Nick Cunningham, shows us how to deal with worry in this life. Through setting our priorities in order, being aware of God’s goodness and participating in that goodness, we find that we have much less to worry about than we thought.

The ancient Israelites were called to be a chosen people who bless the entire world. But, like the Church today, they often made their chosen status a blessing only for themselves. In this sermon, Greg calls us to become evangelists by living a Kingdom life.

We are God’s chosen people, predestined to be holy and blameless. But does God create and choose those who will be blameless and those he will blame? In this sermon, Greg shows how God does choose us but we also have the ability to choose him and get on board the predestined train.

What does it mean to be one of God’s chosen people? Some people think back to middle school gym class and how they might have been last-picked for the team. In this sermon, Greg talks about the idea of being chosen by God and how being chosen isn’t the same as predestination.

It’s a simple but profound truth that God looks like Jesus. This truth becomes all the more important when we face struggles in this world. In this sermon, Greg shares the story of Henry and Henry’s family that faced a battle no parent wants to face.

In 1914 at the beginning of World War I, enemy soldiers spent a week celebrating Christmas with each other. We can learn much from this stunning slice of history, and remember that the “peace on Earth” we strive for around Christmas should be our calling throughout the year.

The poverty of the manger exemplified the power of God. In this sermon, Greg shows that God really is like the baby swaddled in clothes in the manger. The kind of power that God exhibits is foolish to this world, but it shows the type of God that we can follow with all our heart.

We have lost the mystery of this world. We go about our daily lives and are not filled with wonder at what happens. In this sermon, Greg shows how viewing the world like a child will increase how much wonder and mystery we see.

Waiting is hard, especially in the western culture of want and gratification. In this sermon, Greg tells us about Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s writings on advent, and how getting in touch with our emptiness through silence and solitude can lead to peace.

TOHU wa BOHU is the term the Old Testaments writers used to describe the formless, empty and chaotic world before creation. In this sermon, Greg talks about how sexual immorality is outside of God’s plan for creation, and it leads us back to TOHU wa BOHU. If you are struggling with these issues and would like to speak with someone or you have experience dealing with this issues and would like to help others, please contact Andrew or Anita. Andrew - alangbehn@whchurch.org or 651-287-2062 Anita - abarton@whchurch.org or 651-287-2065

In the last week of our blessed revolution series, we revisit each of the beatitudes and see how we are blessed because of them. While the world may not count them as blessings, we can begin to see that the Kingdom will be a great blessing in the future.

Being a peacemaker is more profound than simply being skilled at ending arguments. Our peacemaking is working against the corruption and conflict that pervade this world. In this sermon, Greg shows us how the cycle of conflict and how we can live in a way that breaks the cycle.

As we continue our series on the beatitudes, we find an increasing understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. In this sermon, Greg talks about mercy and being pure in heart. He also shows how God doesn’t reward us for being merciful and being pure in heart, but there are natural, good consequences in doing these things.

God designed us to get all of our life, worth and value from him. But when humanity signed our declaration of independence in the garden, we started to fill our lives with the things of this world. In this sermon, Greg calls us to become dependent on God in ways that might cause us to mourn. Additionally, Greg addresses the marriage amendment vote in Minnesota.

Jesus commanded his disciples to be the salt and light of this world, but being the salt and light has been misunderstood in many contemporary Christian circles. In this sermon, Greg talks about the purpose of being salt and light, and he calls all of Jesus' followers to step out of the crowd and become disciples.

It is the 20th anniversary of Woodland Hills Church! In this sermon, Greg goes back to the foundations and history of this church, and shows how dependence upon God has been a mainstay of the culture at Woodland Hills Church.

Our true self is hidden away in heaven, free from corruption and destruction. In this sermon, Greg asks us to realize what this true self looks like, and he calls us to embrace this true self in whatever ways we can in this life.

The same power that defeated Satan and destroyed the bonds of evil is at work in you this very day, but feeling that power can be difficult. In this sermon, Greg talks about the deep truth of your life and how to embrace it.

The study of quantum physics reveals that reality is not how our eyes perceive it. In this sermon, Greg shows how beautifully bizarre reality is and how beautifully bizarre our relationship with ourselves and Christ is.

The Church of Christ functions like a body. When one part of the body doesn’t work, it affects the rest of the body. In this sermon, Greg calls the Church to respond to God’s call for us to serve one another.

Continuing in our series on doubt and faith, Greg finally addresses the passages that have caused confusion about faith. He sets aside the mental gimmickry for something much more substantial and beautiful.

An ecotone is a boundary between two different ecosystems (such as a Mountain and a plain). In this sermon, Steve uses this to describe how we interact with God and with each other.

The Bible is full of characters that are dealing with significant issues of faith and doubt. In this sermon, Greg takes a look at the model of strength tester faith and shows how God doesn’t want a people who won’t be honest with him

During our weekend services on August 11-12 we hosted Q&A sessions with Greg Boyd, our Senior Pastor, and Paul Eddy, our Teaching Pastor. If you'd like to listen to all the questions, note that there are separate downloads for the three different services. [This is the recording of the 9:00 Sunday service.]

During our weekend services on August 11-12 we hosted Q&A sessions with Greg Boyd, our Senior Pastor, and Paul Eddy, our Teaching Pastor. If you'd like to listen to all the questions, note that there are separate downloads for the three different services. [This is the recording of the 11:00 Sunday service.]