Christ

Revelation | The Advent of Jesus

SERMONS | ADVENT INITIATIVES | RESOURCES | TEXT-IN QUESTIONS

The word Advent means “arrival,” and this time of year, the global church celebrates the arrival of the birth of Jesus. But this celebration is not an end in itself. It’s a reason to hope as we look ahead to the second Advent - the return of Jesus. 

For the next four weeks, we’re looking at the book of Revelation and what Jesus’ second Advent will look like. Far from being a book filled with hidden codes and secrets, Revelation teaches us how to live between the first and second Advent. Because Jesus was born, we can live with the hope that Jesus will return. All our hope for the future is tied to a baby that gives us a “no matter what” hope for the future.

This series is part of our Year of Biblical Literacy initiative.

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

Week 1: Pulling Back the Curtain

(Sermon) (LifeGroup Guide) (Sermon Outline)

Week 2: The Baby Who Slayed the Dragon

(Sermon) (LifeGroup Guide) (Sermon Outline)

Week 3: The Way of the Lamb vs. the Way of the Dragon

(Sermon) (LifeGroup Guide) (Sermon Outline)

Week 4: All Things New

(Sermon) (Sermon Outline)

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

Each year, we focus on three practical ways to grow in generosity:

INITIATIVE DETAILS

1 -   Start Tithing

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

2 - Give to Serve the City 

Serve the City is our initiative as a church family to partner with local organizations serving the most vulnerable people in our city. This year, we are raising $20,000 to fund the various Serve the City initiatives we do throughout the year to serve these organizations and the people they work with. These funds will also go towards our Serve the City Weekend on March 22, 2025. We partner with the following local organizations:

Transitions

Home Works

The Ezekiel Center

Epworth Children's Home

Daybreak

Salvation Army

3 - Personal Finance Seminar

We want to equip our church family to be spiritually healthy by stewarding the financial resources God has entrusted us. On January 25, 2025 from 9am-12pm at our Downtown church, we’re hosting a practical training class to manage your finances, pay off debt, invest well, and practice biblical generosity.


Check out our Year of Biblical Literacy site for more articles, podcasts, and book recommendations.

BOOKS | COURSES | ARTICLES

Throughout the year, we want to know the concepts and passages you wrestle with. We'll answer some of these questions in podcast episodes throughout the year.

To submit your topic or question, text "DOWNTOWN" followed by your topic to 855-855-0655.

Jesus &

Jesus Christ controls the universe with His power. He is supreme, and how you view Him changes how you view everything else. But Jesus is also intimately personal -  what does Jesus have to say about you? What does He say to you in your hurt? What does He have to say to you in your doubts? What does He have to tell you when you screw up?

For this series, we’ll spend seven weeks looking at how Jesus interacts with different types of people in Scripture and what He has to say to us too.

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

Week 1: Jesus & the Bully

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 2: Jesus & the Outcast

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 3: Jesus & the Little Ones

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 4: Jesus & the Doubter

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 5: Jesus & the Hurting

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 6: Jesus & the Jealous

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 7: Jesus & the Prideful

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

The Family Guide resembles the weekly LifeGroup Guide and is designed for a family to do together once a week.

It has the same familiar elements (Catch Up on Life, Sermon Discussion, Engage the Heart, Review the Mission) and is meant to be a 30-minute family rhythm.

Upon This Rock

Finding your way toward spiritual health in the chaos of modern life can prove quite difficult. When you survey the mental health landscape in our culture, things don't get any rosier. It can feel like solid ground to stand on is hard to come by, so we are taking a season to study and meditate on five simple verses that offer a robust Christian worldview--a place to stand against the winds and lies around us--not only so we can stand, but so we can provide much-needed hope and stability to those in our neighborhoods and workplaces.

These words are from the Apostle Peter, who himself went through the agony of failure, and felt the throes of instability around and inside of him, only to come out on the other side standing firm, offering these words of life to us so that we might stand on the truth they convey as well:

6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, 7 casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. 8 Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9 Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. 10 And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. 11 To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.

1 Peter 5:6-11

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

Week 1: Upon This Rock

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 2: Humble Yourselves

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 3: Cast All Your Anxieties on Him

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 4: Watch Out for the Lion

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 5: Resist Him, Firm in Your Faith

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 6: Know You are Not Alone

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 7: The Bad Won’t Last Forever

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 8: Forever and Ever, Amen

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

We want to focus on tools to help us learn to follow Jesus more closely. Therefore, we'll do a couple of things for this series to help us in our spiritual formation.

The first is to memorize 1 Peter 5:6-11. In LifeGroups, we'll tackle one verse at a time each week.

Second, we want to focus on one of the five spiritual practices below. Each is proven to improve mental health. Just click on one of the practices for tools to grow in that area. We're asking everyone to spend the next five weeks focusing on that particular practice.

Fruit of the Spirit

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

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

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

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

Week 1: Love in a Time of Self-Interest

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 2: Patience in a Time of Irritability

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 3: Peace in a Time of Anxiety

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 4: Kindness in a Time of Polarization

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 5: Faithfulness in a Time of Compromise

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 6: Goodness in a Time of Brokenness

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 7: Gentleness in a Time of Harshness

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 8: Joy in a Time of Cynicism

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

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

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

In Christ

The terms “in Christ,” “in Him,” and “in the Lord”  are used in the New Testament over 150 times to describe what it means to be a Christian. For the biblical authors and the early church, this concept was foundational in understanding who we are with God and with others. So, what does it actually mean to be “in Christ”? 

For seven weeks, we will unpack this theological concept and its practical implications for our lives. As a church family, it’s our hope that as we do, we can further meditate on what Jesus has done for us and enjoy Him more.

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

Week 1: Enjoying Our Union with Him

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 2: From In Adam to In Christ

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 3: Adoption

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 4: Imputed Righteousness

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 5: Sanctification

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 6: New Creation

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 7: Restored Honor

(Sermon) (Transcript) (LifeGroup Guide)

For this series, we want to focus on a particular tool to help us learn to follow Jesus more closely. Given that this series is helping us further meditate on what it means to be in Christ, our corporate practice is Gospel Fluency.

For those looking for additional reading to go along with our series we recommend checking out the following: