This Sunday's Worship Materials can be found in the "Featured Sermon" below. We meet in person at Harper Park Middle School, and the service is also livestreamed on our YouTube channel.

Pastor's Thoughts

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Heart Prep for Sunday, March 1st

First, a quick thought on the weekly heart prep. Most weeks, I give a quick summary or teaser of what I'm planning on preaching. But this week is a little different. This week, the passage not only has words that point us to the Lord, but its point also is instructive in how we prepare our hearts to come to worship. There's a lot happening this Sunday, and I wanted to prea...

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Heart Prep for Sunday, February 23rd

Are you a dog person or a cat person? I'm neither, they're way too much work and I have enough to do and plenty of kids to take care of. But there are certain families that always need a dog or a cat. And the irony is, of course, that my family has had one or the other for almost the past decade. I have fond memories of our dog, Dixie, sitting under our dining room table w...

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Heart Prep for Sunday, February 16th

How many of you have seen the recent movieA Beautiful Day in the Neighborhoodstarring Tom Hanks and Matthew Rhys? The main character, Lloyd, is an Esquiremagazine writer assigned to interview Mr. Rogers. When they first meet, Lloyd has a black eye, which Mr. Rogers asks him about. He tells him that it was a softball injury "I made the play at the plate."But it wasn't a so...

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Heart Prep for Sunday, Feb. 9th

We are looking forward to having our good friend, John Armstrong, speak at both our Men's Retreat and preach this weekend. He will be speaking on "How to be a Godly man in a #metoo world" at the Retreat, then preaching on Ephesians 5:1-21, "Children of Light." John is a Marine who grew up in Texas (had George W. Bush for a Sunday School teacher at one point!) and has been ...

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Heart Prep for Sunday, February 2nd

This week, we're in Mark 6:45-56. This is the famous passage of Jesus walking on the water, followed by a completely non-famous passage about his healing work in Gennesaret. And as we come to this passage, we will end up talking a lot about paradigms. Paradigms are funny things. They're wildly important because they control the way in which we understand the world around u...

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Heart Prep for Sunday, January 26th

This Sunday's sermon text (Mark 6:30-44) will move us from the halls of Herod's palace out to the lakeside country. From a royal feast with all of the important, influential people in attendance to a crowd of peasants and farmers who forgot to bring dinner in their rush to hear the new prophet speak. The manipulation, lies, violence and twisted morality of the royal family...

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Heart Prep for Sunday, January 19th

You might have missed the news that two days after Christmas last month, Islamic State terrorists beheaded 10 Christians in Nigeria in retaliation for the death of one it leaders. It's a grim reminder that the forces of darkness are still coming after Christians, and that there is intense, brutal persecution still going on around the world. This Sunday's passage, Mark 6:14...

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Heart Prep for Sunday, January 12

Have you ever gone back to your hometown after being away for a few years? Sometimes those visits are wonderful, but often they can be disappointing or even painful. Perhaps you expect people to be very glad to see you, but then your interactions don't quite live up to that. Maybe you're just reminded of how glad you are that you left and have made a new life somewhere els...

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Heart Prep for Sunday, January 5th

Happy New Year to you all! I hope that this holiday season has been a blessed one for all of you. I also hope that those of you that have been sick are on the mend! As we look forward to a big 2020, I think it's fitting that we talk about our passage for this week. We've finished our series in the Psalms for Advent, and we're hopping back into our series on Mark this week....

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Heart Prep for Sunday, December 29th

Merry Christmas from the church staff and leadership!We hope that everyone had a wonderful day yesterday and that you've got some good family time scheduled during these last few days of 2019.We always enjoy a more low-key worship service the Sunday after Christmas, and it's fun to see parents, grandparents, and extended family that are in town visiting our members.We have...

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