This Sunday is Mental Health Awareness Sunday, in honor of May as Mental Health Awareness Month. The sermon today focuses on a story in the book of Acts about the early Church’s first major conflict about what people needed to do to be considered a part of the community. What are the requirements to belong? What barriers are still in place today that make people feel apart from us? How can we work together, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to break down these barriers as part of our mission.
4/25/2021: How Can I Understand the Bible?
This week, we start reading passages from the Acts of the Apostles and the epistles—all of which are centered around the formation of the earliest Church in different communities. Starting something new is never easy! There are no clear rules and guidelines; people seldom agree on the best actions to take; conflicts can threaten the whole enterprise. And yet, here we are as the global Church thousands of years later. This new thing was not perfect, but it worked.
The story in Acts today shows how the good news about Jesus (God’s love embodied) reached someone who was both a foreigner and a sexual minority. It all started with them trying to understand the Bible. Is that something you struggle with today in 2021? We learn better together, so let’s think about this story together…
4/18/2021: GREEN SUNDAY (Launch of COA Green Team)
This Sunday is incredibly special, as it is the beginning of a new mission focus in our congregation. Our worship, prayers and music today (in honor of Earth Day coming up this Wednesday 4/22) will be focused on the care of God’s creation. The service will also include a special invitation for every person in our community to join us in pledging to be a green congregation; adapting our practices and lifestyles to prioritize environmental stewardship. This is an exciting and groundbreaking day for us, as we join so many other wonderful congregations and organizations doing this good work. We hope you are as excited as we are, and that you will join us in prayer and action!
4/11/2021: How Do we Recognize Jesus Among Us
Christ is Risen!
Did you miss Easter? Maybe you attended a service, but you just can’t connect to the Hope? Maybe it’s hard to recognize in your life today. And if so, you are in good company with Jesus’ disciples on the road to Emmaus after that confusing first Easter morning!! Let’s think together about how we can learn to recognize Jesus with us, even in the hardest of times, and how we can make Jesus more manifest in the lives of others in need.
NOTE: sermon pre-recorded before service and included as a video within worship
EASTER SUNDAY 2021
On this holiest of day that we look forward to every year, we also are mindful that it is our second Easter during global pandemic. It is our second Easter where we are gathering in virtual space only for worship with COA. We have all suffered loss in the last year. It may not feel much like a “normal” Easter. The hope and joy of Easter may feel far away and may not even feel “REAL”. That has been our theme throughout Lent: trying to get a sense of who Jesus is “IRL” (in REAL life), and connect lessons we learn from Him to these lives that are increasingly digital and UN-real. How is Jesus made real in our lives just as they are, even with all that we have gone through of late? Where is the good news even in the midst of all the bad news? I promise you friends, it is there….
Christ is risen…. (He is risen indeed!)