This sermon is guest preached by two active members of the COA Youth Group, Zoe Barbour and Sean Cain. They spent months putting this together, and it is filled with lessons that can apply to all of us at any age.
6/7/2020: Being and Doing in Life with the Spirit
In this Pentecost season, as we think about the movement of the Holy Spirit in our lives (in our broken world), how can we grow with that Spirit? How can we catch up to what God dreams for our world? What is the best thing for us to be doing at any given moment so that we can become the people God means for us to be? We use lessons from a simple, short story about two sisters visiting with Jesus.
5/31/2020: God’s Gifts to Us–How Do We Receive Them?
In honor of Pentecost, this sermon explores the Holy Spirit and its gifts to us. One of God’s most important gifts through the Spirit is unity even amidst great difference and division. Our world needs that gift now more than ever, but are we open to it? Do we think unity means we have to all be the same? How does Pentecost reveal God’s dreams for our broken world?
VIDEO OF WORSHIP INCLUDING MUSIC
5/24/2020: Resurrection–What It Means for Life Now
This sermon explores one of the central themes of the Christian faith: RESURRECTION, using one of the most famous passages in the Bible about it: 1 Corinthians 15.
What does it mean that we believe in victory over death? Not just for Jesus, but for us? What does this look like in an age of pandemic fears? How does resurrection connect to re-opening after quarantine?
Musical Offering from COA Contemporary Worship Team: “Love Lifted Me” by Tasha Layton
5/17/2020: More than a Wedding Reading: Love and Faith
This sermon explores one of the most famous passages in the Bible—1 Corinthians 13. What does it really tell us about love, beyond romantic love and weddings? How do we live out the call of this love in our everyday lives; in the Church; in this pandemic era?
MUSICAL OFFERING FOR THE WEEK PREPARED BY MIKE JARJOURA (COA Assistant Music Director): “Love Is a Verb”
“How wonderful it is that no one need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
-Anne Frank, from her wartime diary The Diary of a Young Girl
Back in the 1960s when folk masses were in vogue, William Flanders wrote a folk hymn entitled Love Is A Verb. Love is a verb, not a noun. Love is not a thing; love is what one does. Love is action. What an interesting and profound thought! I may be wrong, but if we really want the world to look different the next time we step outside, we need to make love a verb, not a noun, and do some love. That is a challenge that is for each one of us!