Grassroots Church | Thunder Bay, Ontario: Recent Episodes
Grassroots Church
The series in Theodicy continues with Part 4 as Pastor Steve begins to address the question of suffering with a loving God directly through beginning with a discussion on God's sovereignty. What is God's will? Does it always get accomplished? How much free will do we have? These and other questions are raised and discussed as Pastor Steve dives into theological waters discussing Calvinism and Arminianism.
Cory presents the next part in our series on theodicy. Using scripture, theology, psychology, and literature, he explores how suffering unravels our sense of order, plunging us into chaos. Yet, he argues, the biblical story holds both chaos and order in tension, showing us a God who enters the chaos through Christ’s suffering and redeems it through resurrection. Through Genesis, Job, and the wisdom literature, Cory reflects on how we rebuild meaning after trauma, and how Christian hope enables us to remember order—even when surrounded by disorder.Download the Discussion Guide for this message.
Guest speaker Cory Hoogsteen continues our series on suffering. He looks at the calling for all Christians to address suffering with witness, lament, and solidarity. Then he looks at how one of the causes of suffering is the human need for loving relationships.
This message was originally delivered on June 1, 2025.
As Pastor Steve begins a new series exploring the various ways we try to reconcile a loving, all-powerful God with a world of evil and suffering, he begins by confronting the hard truth that the answer to "Why?" is not what we most yearn for in our suffering.
Download the Discussion Guide for this message.
The 3-part series on the politics of Jesus concludes with an investigation into Romans 13:1-7 - one of the most challenging passages of scripture concerning government and authorities and the believers' responsibility to submit to it. Listen in as Pastor Steve provides insight into what this looks like for those whose allegiance belongs first to the Kingdom of God.
Download the Discussion Guide for this episode.
Pastor Steve continues Part 2 of the series on understanding the politics of Jesus by addressing the "powers and principalities" that Paul and others spoke often about. With help from an analogy by Tim Mackie of Bible Project, Steve shares how Jesus followers are to overcome and push against these spiritual forces in their in-breaking of God's Kingdom in our midst.
Download the Discussion Guide for this teaching
Pastor Steve begins a new series discussing the politics of Jesus and what it means to practice these politics in our time. Part 1 sets the context by understanding Jesus as a deeply political figure who comes to lead a revolution of self-giving love as the Kingdom of God is revealed on earth as it is in heaven.
Download the Discussion Guide for this message
Pastor Steve concludes the series on being confronted by Calvary by looking at the other side of the cross - the Resurrection. What traits do "Resurrection People" embody? When we've put to death those parts of our self that need crucifying, we rise to live out of love, not approval; out of courage, not fear; and to bring life, not to consume.
Download the Discussion Guide
Taking a pause from the current series, Pastor Steve spoke on the expectations of those lining the streets of Jerusalem and the reality of who Jesus turned out to be as revealed by the cross. As a preparation for the business meeting that followed the service, Steve shared about how Grassroots Church understands the person of Jesus and how that is reflected in our ministry as we seek to shape bright disciples, restore faith and shelter the vulnerable.
Download the Discussion Guide for this message
The series on the cross continues as Pastor Steve looks at David's journey to carrying the ark back to Jerusalem. David's initial attempt is self-centered and is motivated by convenience. David must die to this and in doing so demonstrates that proper worship, proper obedience is costly. This pattern of worship and posture toward God is carried on in Jesus' own words when he asks us to take up our cross and follow him.
Pastor Steve provides part 2 of the uncomfortable topic of being crucified with Christ, of dying to self, of, well, following Jesus to the cross. The process of moving from admiring to following Jesus involves the necessity to be disciplined and we do this through intentionally allowing life's experiences to shape us in the way of Jesus. Listen in... and be ready to get uncomfortable!
Pastor Steve begins the Lent season (albeit a few weeks late!) by focusing on the call of Jesus to "take up our cross." He asks the tough question: are we admirers or followers? And encourages us to move toward the hard call of following Jesus.
Pastor Steve concludes the series on the Bible by considering how Jesus followers are to understand the Old Testament in light of Jesus. To see how this is done, we read the New Testament--including Jesus himself--who applied a "hermeneutic" to his scriptures that looks very different than most modern day methods of interpretation would allow.
Pastor Steve continues the series on the Bible by exploring other ways of knowing outside of interpretation and study - namely, through meditation. Using the ancient practice of Lectio Divina, we explore how meditation can serve to open up the truths of scripture to our hearts and our souls. Tune in!
(Notice: at the end of the message, Steve walks the community through a meditative practice on a passage of scripture together)
Pastor Steve Bill returns to continue his series on the Bible. In this sermon, he looks at the tools we can draw on to ensure we receive the messages God wants us to get from the Bible. He looks at reading in the Great Tradition, reading with thoughtfulness, reading in light of our lived experience, and reading in community.
This message was originally delivered on March 2, 2025.
In this message delivered by guest speaker Scott Wiebe, we look at how we can use a Jesus lens to "read backwards" and see how the whole Bible can have meaning to us as Christians. Scott looks at the conquest of Jericho, the plague on the firstborn, Noah, and Abraham as examples of how this approach can help us read the Bible.
This message was originally delivered on February 23, 2025.
Pastor Steve carries on the Bible series by asking how are we to discern the Holy Spirit's leading us into all truth when we read the Bible. There are tools, or even "lenses," that we should implement. This week, we explored how reading with the "Great Tradition" and reading with our own traditions is an essential part of this process.
The series on the Bible continues as Pastor Steve explores some of the pre-hermeneutical (interpretational) "veils" that hold us back from discovering what the Spirit has to say to us in the pages of scripture. Follow along as Pastor Steve names and describes two such veils - the "hermeneutic of suspicion" and the "hermeneutic of inaction."
The series on the Bible continues as we wade into the waters of biblical authority. Pastor Steve asks how we might consider maintaining a healthy understanding of biblical authority in light of the reality that "The Bible says it; I believe it; that settles it" is not the reality of how we come to the text. Listen in as Steve suggests a way forward that honours scripture by ultimately submitting to our final authority: Jesus the Word of God.
In this message from guest speaker Scott Baker, we look at how God can speak to us through parts of the Bible that we find weird.
The online gospel synopsis Scott was referencing can be found here.
You can see a few of the paintings that were included here and here.
This message was originally delivered January 19, 2025.
Does the fact that the Holy Spirit breathed into the text of scripture necessarily mean the Bible must be inerrant? Do we need inerrancy in order to claim the Bible is trustworthy? This is a complicated topic and Pastor Steve dives in deep! Put your thinking caps on for this one :)
Christians are people of the book. We are meant to use the Bible to guide us in becoming more like Jesus and restoring all things. But the Bible is a dangerous book. It has been used in the past to support evil things. In this sermon, Pastor Steve Bill starts a series on how we should relate to this ancient, human, and divine collection of writings.This sermon was originally delivered on January 5, 2025.
Pastor Steve takes a look back at the year that was at Grassroots via a slideshow (you can view the slideshow here: https://youtu.be/PTLMN3tkDlQ and shows how God has been faithful to our community.... yet again before talking about what's in store for 2025 and giving a charge to the community out of Philippians 2.
Pastor Steve explores the form of love revealed in the circumstances of Jesus' birth. It is a love of incredible vulnerability which, it is suggested, is exactly how God wishes to reveal himself first and foremost. The implications for what this means for his followers is to follow into this same way of loving others - particularly those deemed most difficult to love.
As we continue the journey toward Bethlehem, Pastor Steve shares >one< way that joy might become a more sustained reality in the life of the Christian through looking at the theme of joy in the New Testament and two traits that are often associated with it: 1. beleagueredness and 2. hope of deliverance.
The second week of Advent offers the gift of peace - but it's not the peace the world offers. At least, it's not the WAY of peace the world offers. Immanuel, God with Us, offers an everlasting peace through his presence and through forgiveness. Rather than using the tactics used by Caesar to attain peace--intimidation, violence, domination, fear, etc.--we're asked to follow in the way of Jesus in order to be agents of peace to a tumultuous world.
Pastor Steve opens the 1st Sunday of Advent by exploring how Christians are able to hold the reality of the world's despair while simultaneously putting our hope in a God who promises restoration. Both are realities and the Christian is asked, against all odds, to uphold hope because of the faithfulness and trustworthiness of the God who makes the promise in the first place.
Pastor Steve facilitates a conversation with 3 Grassrooters (Matt Denis, Robin Peace and Bill Ulrich), discussing some practical, real-world experience and perspective on the topic of sharing faith. This is a rich and, at times, vulnerable discussion you won't want to miss.
Many of us cringe when we think about evangelism. That's because many of our experiences with evangelism have been full of cringe. That sucks because you'd think the greatest hope we have and the source of our joy would be something we'd share freely and generously. But what if it doesn't have to be cringe? What if evangelism was as simple as our story? In a post-church, post-truth, cynical world, our story's intersection with the gospel may just be the most effective and authentic tool we could use to share our faith.
Pastor Steve ends the series on rediscovering the gospel using a "tool" called "The Gospel in Chairs" in which 2 versions of the gospel are presented - a legal gospel and a restorative gospel. This presentation was developed by Orthodox priest Anthony Carbo and made popular by pastor/theologian Brad Jersak among others. You can check out Brad's version of the Gospel in Chairs here: The Gospel in Chairs with Brad Jersak
Scott Wiebe shares an honest and vulnerable take on why he's still a committed follower of Jesus and why the life of the church is so valuable to him.
We all believe that Jesus died for our sins but exactly HOW that works is the stuff of theology. Pastor Steve explores the main atonement theories that have emerged over the past two millennia that have sought to understand the mechanics of the cross, ending with a particular strong challenge of what it means to follow Jesus in light of the cross.
Sin is not good news. It leads to hurt and wounding and ultimately to death. But we can be free from sin through Jesus, and that is good news. In the 5th message in this series on rediscovering the gospel, Pastor Steve looks at how sin fits into the redemptive story of Jesus.
This message was originally delivered on October 20, 2024.
In the 4th message in this series on rediscovering the gospel, Pastor Steve shares a "course" of the dinner party that speaks to our longing for meaning and purpose, suggesting that the gospel is ultimately good because it invites us to find our vocation in joining God in his work of restoration and reconciling of all things.
Jesus is working to restore and reconcile all creation, including humanity. That's good news! In this sermon, Pastor Steve looks at what this means for Christians and the Church.
Want to read the full "Weight of Glory" sermon by C.S. Lewis, where the closing quote of this week's sermon comes from? Click here!
This sermon was originally delivered October 6, 2024.
Pastor Steve continues the series on rediscovering the good news of great joy for all people by focusing on how Jesus reveals God perfectly, once and for all putting to rest any doubt of the goodness, the merciful, compassionate, gracious and generous God that the serpent first tried to instill in the Garden. .
When Jesus was born, the angel announced that this was "good news that will cause great joy for all people." We call that good news the gospel. But what exactly is that good news? How can we set aside those distorted versions of the gospel we may have heard growing up?
Join Pastor Steve Bill as he outlines the beginning of a sermon series which will lead us to discover the truth about the gospel: that the good news is the person Jesus.
To see an image of the "bridge" metaphor very close to the one Pastor Steve refers to you can click here.
This sermon was originally delivered on September 22, 2024.
Pastor Steve shares from Psalm 115, reflecting on the nations that turn to lifeless idols and the warning that those do so become like the idols themselves (lifeless). He explores a few examples of idols in our lives and the tendency for a form of 'death' to occur in our worship of them, where worship here means to ascribe worth. Or, in John Mark Comer's terms, to become an apprentice of.
Pastor Steve kicks off the fall with a firehose of information taking place at Grassroots Church this fall. Listen in for info about Roots & Shoots, a new children's choir, youth group, home groups, a new church library and a location for where we'll be meeting in October!
In the final message of the summer series, Pastor Steve dives into what many scholars have deemed the most important of Jesus' parables - the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15. This story is often understood as being centred on the wayward younger son but the Eastern Orthodox Church calls this the Parable of the Loving Father - or even the "Love Sick" Father. Listen in as we explore the Good News of a God that is far more loving, far more compassionate and far more gracious than we could possibly imagine.
Pastor Steve tackles Jesus' parable of the Wheat and the Weeds in Matthew 13, with insights from a sermon delivered by Tim Mackie (of Bible Project). Listen in as he delves into the complicated nature of humans - that none of us are ALL good nor ALL evil and that the role of the Church, in this already-but-not-yet age is not to do the word of weeding but simply to produce wheat.
This was a special Sunday! Brad Woods visited our congregation and gave a presentation on story telling and listening that fit in perfectly with our ongoing series on Jesus' parables.
This message was originally delivered on August 18, 2024.
Guest speaker Robin Peace looks at this parable from Matthew 20: 1 - 6. This parable shows how the generosity of God does not come the way we expect it to come. It shows how, in the Kingdom of God, grace is more important than our perception of what is "fair".
This message was originally delivered on August 4, 2024.
Pastor Steve shares some thoughts on what is at the heart of Jesus' teaching on the Rich Fool. It is more than simply whether we should be saving our money or giving it all away. Rather, the heart of the matter is the heart. What posture do we have toward our possessions, our wealth, our need for security? Do we trust God or is our trust in our own ability and accomplishments? When it is the latter, this is what leads to greed, or this insatiable desire for more because it's never enough. This seems to be the thing Jesus cared most about reforming in us.
This week, special guest Scott Wiebe reflects on the Parable of the Mustard Seed and the Kingdom of God, with insights from the world of forestry and plants!
Guest Speaker Richard Clark looks at the parable of the lost sheep. In a conversational message, he looks on how this story can lead us to acceptance, humility, repentance, and joy.
Our parables "Summer School" series is designed to involve a bit more back-and-forth than a standard sermon. Unfortunately, that doesn't already translate well to a podcast. We have edited this down into a coherent message, but it is unfortunately missing most of the profound insights from the congregation.
This message was originally delivered July 7, 2024.
Why did Jesus do so much of His teaching using parables? What is a parable anyway? How should we read them?
Join Pastor Steve Bill as he looks at all of this and more in the first official sermon in our summer series on parables.
This message was originally given on June 30, 2024.
Grassroots is going to summer school! Through July and August, we'll be looking through the parables of Jesus to discover what they have to say to us as Jesus followers in the 21st century. As a prelude, Pastor Steve shares about a posture we should strive to have in all of our interactions with each another: learning to be QUICK to listen and SLOW to speak.
Andy Stanley's message "How Winning is Costing You Relationships" is what Pastor Steve drew inspiration from in this message.
Guest speaker Scott Baker takes time to look at what it means to Christians that Jesus worked as a carpenter. He looks at what that might have been like for Jesus, and what it means for how we view our own relationship with work, and how we should treat people who work with us. It's a little bit of a Father's Day message.
Scriptures this message: Mark 6:1-3, Matthew13:55-57; Matthew 20:1-7; Luke 3:21-23
This message was originally delivered on June 16, 2024.
In the final message in the series, Pastor Steve talks about how we might begin to go about taking all of the beautiful truths of the Jesus of the Centre that we've learned and move them from our head to our heart; from intellectual ascent to transformation of our being. What does it mean for Jesus to become more than just a list of concepts for us?
Continuing our series on Jesus' teachings and character, Pastor Steve looks at how Jesus as a non-violent peacemaker. In a world saturated with violence, Jesus calls us to bring peace. Pastor Steve also examines why the modern church often avoids this aspect of Jesus' life and teachings.
This message was originally delivered on June 2, 2024.
In this message, Pastor Steve looks at how Jesus stands with the "least of these", who are people who recognize their profound need for Jesus. As Christians, we are to model ourselves after Jesus and care for the poor, the sick, and the oppressed. We also need to make sure that, like the "least of these", we never lose sight of our need to have Jesus move in our lives. Finally, we seek to be radically inclusive like Jesus and be on everyone's side.
Pastor Steve references this article by Michael Pahl on a Jesus-centered response to the conflict in Gaza.
If you'd like to listen to "Poke You in the Eyes" by the band Humans on the Floor you can follow this link.
This message was originally delivered on May 26, 2024. There was no podcast last week because our church spent Sunday picking up litter around Thunder Bay.
Pastor Steve looks at the unconditional and profound love that Jesus reveals. God loves the whole world, that love looks like Jesus laying down his life on the cross, and there is nothing we need to do to earn that love.
Pastor Steve references this podcast with Father Gregory Boyle of Homeboy Industries that is worth checking out.
We kept the final song as it related so well to the message. It sounds pretty good but not quite as good as it did live.
This message was originally delivered on Mother's Day, May 12, 2024.
Pastor Steve resumes the series on revealing the Jesus of the Centre by looking at the means in which the work of Jesus is done on earth - How does Jesus do what he does? In other words, what does Jesus' power look like? We find out that Jesus is never coercive and that the form of power Jesus uses looks entirely unlike what we know to be power. This is a power that works "with" us... not "over" us.
David Fitch's new book, "Reconciling with Power" helped inform Pastor Steve's thoughts on this topic.
In this special presentation, Lifewater Canada president Lynda Gehrels speaks to the Grassroots congregation. Lifewater Canada is a charity based out of Thunder Bay that provides drinking water to communities in Africa and Haiti. It is regularly recognized as one of the most effective charities in Canada. Grassroots Church is proud to support Lifewater Canada.
You can find out more about Lifewater on their website www.lifewater.ca.
This message was originally delivered April 28, 2024.
Pastor Steve resumes the series on Revealing the Jesus of the Centre by exploring one of Jesus' most distinctive teachings: Enemy Love. Why does Jesus seem to care more about grace and forgiveness than he does about tit-for-tat sense of justice? And what does this mean for followers of Jesus? Listen and find out!
Using the baptism of Jesus and the following 40 days in the desert in which Jesus was tempted by Satan, Vincent shares on the need to find our identity in God's love, resting in that truth rather than having to "hustle" in order to find approval from those around us.
Grassroots Church joined Jesus Collective in 2023 with a goal of making Jesus the centre of everything. But what does that even look like? Exactly who is the Jesus of the centre? In this first message of our new series, Pastor Steve demonstrates how talk of being "Jesus centred" is futile if we don't have a clear understanding of exactly who that Jesus is. He establishes 3 assumptions that we need to hold in our pursuit of discovering the Jesus of the centre:
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Proceed with much grace and humility
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Hold the "whaddabouts" in tension
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Recognize our biases and move on.
Tune in to listen to more as we begin this journey together!
In this Easter Sunday sermon, Pastor Steve Bill looks at what it means to live our lives knowing that Christ is risen, and that resurrection is part of the plan for all of us.
This message was originally delivered March 31, 2024.
In a special Palm Sunday sermon, Pastor Steve Bill preaches on how Jesus demonstrates an alternative to the violent, conquest-focused type of power that dominates our world.
Scripture readings are Matthew 22:1 - 11 and Philippians 2:8.
You can view the Brian Zahnd tweet about muscular Jesus here.
This message was originally delivered March 24, 2024.
We had a few technical issues this week which we tried to edit around, but some remnants of them may still remain. Everything should be better next week!
Pastor Steve Bill explores fasting in the tenth and final installment of our series on Spiritual Disciplines. He explores how fasting can be a practice that allows us to bring our "fleshly" desires into better balance.
For additional resources on spiritual disciplines, go to www.practicingtheway.org.
This message was originally delivered on March 17, 2024.
To explore journaling as a spiritual discipline, we hear from two guest speakers this week. First, Carol Freeman shares about her remarkable 40-year practice of keeping a daily journal. Following that, Matt Denis shares some practical tips on how to use journaling to promote spiritual transformation.
This message was originally delivered on March 10, 2024.
In the 8th installment of our series on spiritual disciplines, Pastor Steve Bill shares about Soul Friendships. He explores how we can model ourselves after Jesus' friendship structure to cultivate relationships that lead to true spiritual transformation.
This message was originally delivered March 3, 2024.
In this message, Pastor Steve Bill looks at why Jesus asks us in Matthew 6 to do good works in secret, and how we can live that out in our lives today. This message continues our ongoing series on Spiritual Disciplines.
Steve references the activity "Coldest Night of the Year" a few times during this message, including a slideshow video of photos from this year's activity. You can find out more about this Canada-wide event here, and more about Grace Place here. If you're reading this before March 31, 2024, you can still donate to this year's Coldest Night of the Year fundraiser. Of course, you can always donate to Grace Place.
At the end of the sermon, you'll hear a song from our worship team. It doesn't sound as amazing as it did in the room, but I thought enough of the beauty came through on the recording that I would include it.
This sermon was originally given on February 25, 2024.
Angela Wiebe shares on the theme of Silence and Solitude. She shares some of the reasons behind the practice and shares some practical tips from her experience. Enjoy this sixth installment of Grassroots' Spiritual Disciplines series!
You can find the John Mark Comer podcast that Angela referenced right here.
In the 5th installment of our series on spiritual disciplines, Pastor Steve Bill uses Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan to explore the concept of service. Steve looks at the concept of compassion fatigue, what we need to be ready to sacrifice to make service a habit, and some of the benefits of living a life in service to others.
You can find one of the positive news sources Steve referred to here: https://www.instagram.com/globalpositivenews/.
Paul Wolfe shares on the theme of submission as a spiritual discipline and, unlike most sermons on the topic of submission, this one is not "icky." Have a listen!
In this 3rd installment in the spiritual disciplines series, Pastor Steve discusses the discipline of scripture reading by addressing some of the hang ups many of us have when reading the Bible. Using a sermon from John Mark Comer, Steve shows how neither a liberal nor a conservative ideology properly encapsulates the Bible and that for disciples of Jesus, the primary objective of scripture reading is NOT to read the text but to be read by the text and to align with the heart of Jesus.
Check out www.practicingtheway.org for more info on the spiritual disciplines that Steve mentioned in the message.
Students share stories of addiction and recovery through the ministry of Adult & Teen Challenge here in Thunder Bay. Listen and be encouraged, challenged and inspired through testimonials of experiencing God's transformative grace.
Learn more about Adult & Teen Challenge and consider becoming a monthly donor here: https://www.teenchallenge.tc
Pastor Steve provides a brief review and update on the Renewed Rhythms series and will continue this series, focusing on scripture reading, the following Sunday.
Message delivered on January 21, 2024.
In our second sermon on spiritual disciplines, guest speaker Scott Baker looks at prayer from the perspective of someone who has always struggled with the practice.
Read about the prayer of Examen here.
Find out more about the prayer Labyrinth at St. Paul's Anglican Church in Thunder Bay here.
Find out about Take our Moments and our Days, the Anabaptist Prayer Book, here. (Includes links to download the app version.)
This message was originally delivered January 14, 2024.
To kick off the new year, Grassroots Church is beginning a series on Spiritual Disciplines called "Renewed Rhythms". In this first installment, Pastor Steve Bill provides an overview of Spiritual Disciplines and their role in the Christian life. He then looks at the first discipline: Sabbath.
Several times in this sermon Pastor Steve references a little paper journal that was distributed at the service. If you were not able to attend on Sunday, these will be available to pick up in the weeks to follow or can be downloaded here.
This sermon was originally delivered on January 7, 2024.
On this New Year's Eve Sunday morning service, Pastor Steve Bill reflects on how we have seen God's faithfulness to Grassroots Church over the past year. He also reflects on how we can recognize God's faithfulness through God's presence, even in times when our circumstances are difficult.
The service closes with a few short testimonials from congregation members.
This service was originally recorded on December 31, 2023. Happy New Year!
We conclude our Advent series looking at the theme of Love. Pastor Steve explores how Jesus defines love both at the manger and the cross.
This service was originally delivered December 24, 2023. We've left in a few of the musical pieces and children's readings.
Merry Christmas!
We continue the Advent series, looking at the theme of joy this week. The Good News of Great Joy spoken to the shepherds in the field did not bring about the end of oppression or living in fear for the people of God. So... what was so good about it?
Pastor Steve explores how joy in the New Testament comes from unexpected moments - in the midst of darkness and pain - not in the easygoing life, despite our world's pursuit of this. Like the audacious hope and the tumultuous path of peace, this unexpected source of joy is only possible because of Immanuel.
The 2023 Advent series continues with a message on Peace. Pastor Steve Bill leads the congregation in a collective struggle to understand how we should live out the peace of Christ in a world that seems so dominated by violence.
The Jesus Collective Podcast that Steve Bill referenced can be found here.
You can find the text of the Peace Prayer of St. Francis here.
In the spirit of the season, we have included portions of the advent children's lesson delivered before the sermon. The traditional sermon starts at 5:19.
The 2023 Advent series begins with an exploration of the radical reorienting of reality expressed through Isaiah's prophetic oracles. It may be a form of naive hope that Jesus followers are to practice but if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, we can begin to see this hope actualized in our lives.
In this 3rd and final message in the series asking why we bother going to church, Pastor Steve brings it home by challenging the church to carry out good deeds/works that speak to reconciliation in our spheres of influence.
In this sermon, Pastor Steve Bill looks at the concept of allelon ("one another") and how coming together as a church allows us to support one another in becoming more like Jesus.
Pastor Steve referenced the book Shantung Compound - The Story Of Men And Women Under Pressure by Langdon Gilkey.
You can access the 5+ hour Spotify playlist of Grassroots music here.
This message was originally delivered on November 19, 2023.
Pastor Steve begins this series on why we church by looking at reasons we don't church and asking if being a Jesus follower actually requires going to church.
Vincent shares a message on what it looks like to follow Jesus through a Jesus Centred paradigm. Drawing from Jesus' command that anyone who wants to follow him, "must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me."
In Part 4, Pastor Steve closes ends the Galatians series by tying together the bookends of 1:4 "The Present Evil Age" defined by shame and exclusion with 6:15 "New Creation" defined by a type of community that transcends lines of division to be united in Christ. The last ~15 minutes of the message is a conversation with the congregation about boundaries we have created or have been on the receiving end of as individuals and as a community.
In Part 3, Pastor Steve looks at how a church that resists judgement and embraces diversity can become a rich and caring Christ-centred community.
Scriptures referenced include Galatians 2:20-21; Galatians 3:26-29, and Galatians 4:7.
The Relevant Magazine article on Kat Von D can be found here.
For more reading see Mark Baker's book Freedom for Religiosity and Judgmentalism: Studies in Paul's Letter to the Galatians. Get info here.
Get more information on Sarah Clarkson's book This Beautiful Truth here.
Here is the quote from Connie Nicholson that Pastor Steve encouraged the congregation to take a picture of:
“If someone tells me that they’re going to treat me as a man and ignore my femininity, is that supposed to be a compliment? How much more powerful (and empowering) is it to say, “I see your femininity, I don’t want you to act like a man. I see your race, your social status, I see you.” The power of being “in-Christ” is not that our differences disappear, but that our identity and value is not in these AND that since our identity does not rest on these traits, we do not use our distinction as a means to oppress or belittle others. A Christ-centric community has the commonality of Jesus – He is the common denominator. It is a powerful statement when polar opposites hang out together because they are a testament to their shared Christ-denominator which launches them into relating to one another “in Christ” as a family instead of through our lenses of distinction.”
In Part 2, Pastor Steve explores the situation at Galatia more closely by looking at the distorted concept of grace that was being taught to Galatia. A form of grace that had prerequisites to being "in." If we're going to move past a bounded/fuzzy-set model for how to do church, we begin with an inward look at our own tendencies to build religion built on a false gospel that implies Jesus is not enough.
Jesus clearly calls for the church to be unified - and we are clearly falling short of that ideal. In part 1 of this series, Pastor Steve Bill starts to look at the book of Galatians and what we can learn from Paul's letter to that community.
Scriptures in this sermon include Galatians 2: 11-14; Acts 10; and John 17: 21
For further exploration see Mark Baker's book Freedom for Religiosity and Judgmentalism: Studies in Paul's Letter to the Galatians. Get info here.
The Thanksgiving Liturgy was taken from Shane Clairborne's Common Prayer: A Liturgy from Ordinary Radicals. See more here.
Guest speaker Amy Baker takes a look at the Great Banquet described in Luke 14 and what the church needs to do to bring about this vision of the Kingdom of God.
This message was originally delivered October 1, 2023.
Pastor Steve Bill continues his recap of the Jesus Collective, this time focusing on the last 4 Markers of the New Reformation.
Scriptures used in this sermon include Romans 12:14, 21; Acts 1:5-6; John 17:21-23.
This sermon was originally recorded on September 24, 2023.
For more information on Grassroots Church, visit our newly refreshed website at grassroots.church.
Pastor Steve Bill begins his recap of the Jesus Collective and the 5 markers of the new reformation. This sermon was originally recorded on September 17, 2023.
For more information on Grassroots Church, visit our newly refreshed website at grassroots.church.
In his first official sermon as Grassroots Church's full-time pastor, Steve Bill preaches on how new situations can lead to doubt. When that happens, we can rely on each other to provide the perspective on our situation that we're unable to see. This sermon was originally delivered on September 10, 2023.
At Grassroots, we believe in protecting the vulnerable, and that evil can be overcome through the power of suffering love. That is why we were so happy to have some members of Bikers Against Child Abuse come speak to our congregation about the work they do in Thunder Bay. This presentation was originally delivered July 9, 2023.
Pastor Steve Bill summarizes the last two sermons before our small group discussion times. He goes over the essentials from his last two sermons based around the marker: "The church is defined by our shared center, not by the lines we draw."
Grassroots Church is changing format for the summer starting next week. We're not sure what that means for the podcast yet - stay subscribed to this feed for the latest!
Pastor Steve Bill expands further on the last of the Jesus Collective's Markers of a New Reformation: "The church is defined by our shared centre, not by the lines we draw." Listen for practical and spiritual ways to live in Christian unity. This message was originally delivered at Grassroots Church on June 25, 2023.
We are on the last of the Jesus Collective's Markers of a New Reformation: "The church is defined by our shared centre, not by the lines we draw." Pastor Steve Bill shares his thoughts on this marker in the first of a two-part sermon. This was originally delivered at Grassroots Church on June 18, 2023.
In this short homily, John Peace expands on the marker "The Holy Spirit empowers us to partner in God’s work of reconciling all things." This message was originally delivered on June 11, 2023.
Listen as Robin Peace explores the marker "The Holy Spirit empowers us to partner in God’s work of reconciling all things." This message was originally delivered on June 4, 2023.
In this short homily, Amy Baker shares her perspective on the marker "To be saved includes belonging to a community under Jesus called to live the life of the future now." This message was originally shared on May 28, 2023.
"To be saved includes belonging to a community under Jesus called to live the life of the future now." In this sermon, Vincent Ng explores how we are to function as a unified body to bring about the Kingdom of God on Earth. Originally delivered on May 21, 2023.
"God always looks like Jesus, and all scripture is properly read through him." In this homily, Pastor Steve Bill provides a brief overview of this statement ahead of a period of small group discussion.
Pastor Steve reiterates the 3rd marker of a New Reformation: Evil is Overcome through the Power of Suffering Love, through summarizing the Jesus Collective Sermon on this topic before the community breaks into small group discussions.
In this sermon, Scott Baker looks at one of the Markers of a New Reformation: "Evil is overcome by the power of suffering love." Starting with the love Jesus showed on the cross, Scott explores some ways we can follow that example in response to evil. The is part of the series introducing the Jesus Collective and the 5 Markers of the New Reformation.
Scott Baker and Steve Bill begin a 6 part series introducing the Jesus Collective and the "5 Markers of a New Reformation." These markers help provide language for the Grassroots Community to speak about our faith and theology.
Pastor Mills shares some observations on his recent trip to Fort Severn where he officiated a wedding and also provided some thoughts on Communion and why we partake in this tradition.
We impact and influence our children spiritually when we talk about the love of Jesus for them and for us.
After a day of teaching, Jesus uses a few small fish and loaves of bread to feed a huge crowd. A day later, Jesus is confronted by the curious and tells them, "I am the Bread of Life". What does that mean?
Steve Mills provides a short homily on John 1:1-18, followed by an overview by Scott Wiebe and rationale for a revised approach to Sunday mornings at Grassroots. The message concludes with a sample "convo" about today's passage between Scott and Steve Bill.
Pastor Mills brings a reminder for all of us to take inventory of the spiritual gifts we've been given for the sake of the Kingdom.
Pastor Mills teaches from Psalms 42-43 on the hardships and challenges that life presents - even for followers of Jesus.
Pastor Mills shares on the worth of each of us to the Body, dispelling two fallacies many of us hold when considering our role in the Body: "They don't need me!" and "We don't need you."
A quick synopsis of Church these days reveals consumerism, fatigue and apathy are 3 of the main struggles many of us, understandably, are facing. Steve looks at an interaction between John the Baptist and the religious leaders for insights on how we can begin to move out of this.
As Grassroots continues in a season of big decisions, the need for unity is greater than ever. Listen as we explore what Paul means when he instructs us to have "the same mindset as Christ Jesus" Phil. 2:5
Jesus' teachings about children disrupted the worldview and orientation of his followers. They are just as disruptive today as we navigate life's challenges and cope with the world around us. His teachings about children also disrupt our self-centred patterns which marginalize children and call us to centre them in our spaces and in our hearts.
This week we jump into a three-part series on sin, baptism, and the formation of love. We are trying to get a good sense of what it feels like when God is working on purifying our love, cleaning us, tending to us. How does God shape our love, and how can we work with Him and not against Him? Pastor Keith opens up Jesus's baptism scene as a scriptural hot spot for teaching on the formation of love and challenges us to think of our trials and situations as our ongoing baptism.
Josh explores and uncovers that “faith” in John’s Gospel really means to pursue an active and dynamic trust in Jesus, especially when life hurts. By rediscovering faith in this way, we are able to lean into God and find peace when we come face-to-face with our own vulnerability.
NOTE: this recording is based on the Facebook Live audio so is not high quality.
Steve shares with us what it means to have a God who enters into the human condition, experiencing the upsets of life's disappointments, frustrations and despair through the Gospel of Matthew's account of Jesus' first few years of life. Matthew shows us how in spite of this, God is able to accomplish his redemptive purposes.
Rich shares his story about learning to understand God's grace, how little he deserves it, and how he's let his unearned privilege get in the way of him following Jesus well.
In our fourth of five sermons on relationship and the letter to the Phillipians, we explore Jesus-shaped conflict. If Christians are called to perpetual acts of reconciliation, what can we learn from the cross about keeping hearts soft when it's easy to be hardened by strife?
In this third of five sermons in Paul's letter to the Philippians, we are continuing to connect Jesus's love with our everyday relationships. Jesus's humility shows us how being vulnerable in relationships is the key to real connection.
In this second of five sermons on relationships, we turn to Philippians 1:12-30 and Paul's teaching on Christian suffering. We look specifically at the suffering related to loneliness and ask how as Christians we can bear our loneliness humbly and as servants.
In this first of five sermons on the practicalities of love in relationships, we open to Philippians and introduce ourselves to Paul, Timothy, Epaphroditus, and the first Christian community in Philippi. All along we are looking for how Paul took Jesus's vision of love and applied it for his first followers, asking "Now what?" to Jesus's teaching on self-denial, cross-bearing, and self-humbling on a day-to-day basis.
In this final sermon of four on Jesus's vision of love, we look at the entangling of un-forgiveness and self-righteousness. Peter asks: how many times should I forgive? And Jesus opens up a view on love and reconciliation that would change everything.
As we continue to rescue the word "love" and put it into a Christian framework, this third sermon takes us into Jesus' teaching about lowliness, humility and being willing to be a servant of all. Love, in Jesus' view, is purified from any pattern of self-exaltation.
In this second of four sermons exploring the nature of love, we look at the middle phase of Jesus' ministry, his hard teachings, and his call to discipleship: self-denial, cross-bearing, and keeping our eyes fixed on him. This vision of love is so different than our culture's, and though self-denial is never self-loathing, we must do the work to see that Jesus' love has no room for patterns of self-preservation. Jesus does all he can to show us that the only way to life, to ongoing resurrection, is through the way of daily self-less giving.
Love is a powerful word we throw around daringly. We tend to think it describes a feeling or sensation but in the Christian life, love is the heartbeat of a life of sacrifice and a lifelong training of our will. This sermon opens up a season of reflection at Grassroots on Christian love. We begin simply by looking and listening to the love of the Master as He moves away from patterns of self-protection, self exaltation and self-righteousness. By looking more closely at the story of the feeding of the 5,000 in the Gospel of Matthew, we see the extent Jesus was willing to go to tell a broken world that God is love.
Our Christian life works only if we are pursuing Jesus and tending to the transformation of our hearts. Opening up the Parable of the Sower for Jesus' teaching on the human heart, this stand alone sermon invites us to think about our role in keeping our hearts open to God's abundant, extravagant grace.
All followers of Jesus are called to a lifelong consuming pursuit of knowing Jesus our Lord. This stand alone message takes a look at Paul's passionate pursuit of knowing Jesus, which Paul speaks about in Philippians 2-3, how holding on to the Word of Life shapes us into bright disciples.
Bonita Ledua of Northwind Family Ministries provides an update on the work of her ministry and shares a timely message on hope, gleaning a powerful lesson from the story of Moses and the Israelites at the river Marah, where they stopped to drink water but found they could not because it was bitter.
Visiting Pastor Ken Funk shares some insights on the simple truths that the unnamed centurion in Matthew 8 understood and that can serve as helpful reminders in our own faith journeys - regardless of how far along we've come.
This week Pastor Keith opens up Romans 12 and the call for us to love as Jesus loved. To do this, Paul says to outdo one another showing honour to people who who have given us no reason not to like them. We show honour to people who are not like us. We show honour to those who do not like us. And we show honour to those who we really, really do not like.
Christians often put too much focus on forgiveness in "our" gospel, while simultaneously not putting enough focus on forgiveness in "our" gospel. Distinguishing self-focused, individualistic forgiveness models from Jesus' relational/transactional model can be challenging, but doing so is essential in order to express and live out authentic, biblical reconciliation.
This week Steven continues teaching on the constructs of God - presenting the Christian worldview's response to the challenge of comprehending the incomprehensible: Jesus. In John 14 Jesus tells us that if we've seen Him, we've seen the Father. Thus, we can determine a constructive construct of God through what the gospels reveal to us about Jesus.
We all have an image of God in our head - and none of us get it right. It's a reality we can't escape when trying to use finite language and ideas to describe the infinite. However, there are a few particularly bad constructs that yield destructive results.
As Christians, we have a history of idolizing rightness at the expense of actually following Jesus and the mission he laid out for us.
Phil shares an encouragement for us not to hide behind our doubts and misconceptions. Rather than stay in the comfort of our fishing boat, we can claim the hope that Jesus gave us - and be willing to share it.
This week, we read again the resurrection story and see how most of Jesus’s disciples lost hope in Jesus after he died. Alone among the disciples, only Mary Magdalene decided to face her pain, and she found a basis for hope stronger than death. In this second instalment on exploring God’s goodness, we explore the resurrecting power of grief and its pathway to healing from life’s sufferings.
In the first of our two sermons on God’s goodness, we hear the story of Jesus’s last week in Jerusalem. Riding in on a donkey, Jesus faces down the question of God’s goodness once and for all. In fulfillment of many Psalms, we see Jesus understanding his own final confrontation with death as David’s unstoppable Son rescuing us from a life lost in questioning God’s goodness.
Ryan shares part 1 of a two part series on shifting the paradigm from trivial to timeless through focusing on the relationship rather than the task.
27 sermons on prayer, Psalms, and the presence of God later, we now say Amen! Psalm 33 will help us see the big picture, with its praise for creator God, reminder of the humility we need as humans, invitation to open our hearts to God’s presence, and instruction to desire God above all things. We’ll finish off with the big list of practical to-do’s and a final invitation to pray together with our fellow believers.
In our final look at Jesus’s prayer as our basic pattern, we finish this part of our exploration of prayer with the healing of sin. Jesus tell us to ask God for forgiveness of our sins, just as we extend forgiveness to others. As a basic prayer of love, confession invites us to fear God properly AND feel the utmost safety in his Presence. Check out Psalm 32. How does David show us the way here? We should be troubled by our sins but not expose ourselves the withering of our souls when we try and hide our sins from God and others. Let’s prep for one final look at prayer before Pastor Keith brings it all up in next week’s final sermon on prayer, the psalms, and the presence of God.
As we near the end of our prayer series, we come now to prayers for needs. Jesus’s prayer leads us from adoration to Kingdom praying, and then into our basic physical, emotional, and community requests. David’s Psalms give us these kinds of prayers: “May God arise”, and “God sets the lonely in families”, and “praise God who daily bears our burdens.” Check out Psalm 68 and its invitation for us to order our thoughts around specific needs, our needs, other people’s needs, and the nourishing presence of Christ, our daily bread of life.
“Let Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” As we continue to learn the building-blocks of praying, we turn our attention to prayers of abandonment. Check out Psalm 141 and its prayers of devotion: teach me, set a guard, keep watch. What might it look like for us to learn how to pray “Your will be done.” The LORD’s prayer teaches us to abandon ourselves to God rather than feeling abandoned by him.
This week, we begin the final leg of our journey into the Psalms, the presence of God, and the life of prayer. Taking a cue from David’s shameless dancing, we explore prayers of praise. Check out Jesus’s prayer and how it starts with praise “Our Father, in Heaven, Holy is Your Name.” Jesus collects up all of the praises of the Psalms ––of God’s actions and characteristics (his name)––and teaches us how to adore God in a costly way that is more than worth it. Dive into Psalm 145 and see how David’s praise prepares our way to the start of our Lord’s prayer.
Before we return back to training in the active phase of prayer, to Jesus’s template of praying, we remind ourselves again of how important it is to expect and aim for making contact with God in prayer. We are not simply asking God for things, we are not simply pouring our hearts out, though we do those things. We are seeking the God who we believe is searching us.
“Those who look on God are radiant,” says David in his Psalm 34. After we prepare and concentrate, prayer in the school of David is incomplete without us spending time in repose looking at God, making contact with him in our spiritual senses. It’s in this phase of praying where activity ceases and as one writer describes it, we “allow the Holy Spirit to act in the secret depth of our souls.”
Pastor Keith continues exploring King David's school of prayer. With Psalm 5 and its mixture of lament and honesty, we see how David wanted more than anything to bow down toward God's holy temple. If we want to pray like David, we will come to God in sincerity and create the atmosphere of prayer, embedded in the middle of our life and its conflicts.
As we kick off our second phase of our prayer series, we enroll ourselves in David's school of prayer. Everything about David leads to God: he notices God, he loves God, and he is never more alive than when he is encountering him. David's style of praying leads him to make contact with God, and that is how we should aim our prayer lives, if we want to develop in David's school of prayer.
In our yearly look forward, Pastor Keith opens Isaiah 11 once again and talks through Grassroots' vision and our desire to anticipate God's new creation now on earth as it is in heaven. Keith focuses on the branch of David, delighting in the fear of the Lord with a spirit of knowledge. Biblical knowledge is an encounter, not just information, and so we look to the cross to see just how dependent Jesus lived on God and God's presence in his life.
In our social media, self-image, control-focussed culture we struggle to discern God's call to examine ourselves in light of His mercy, grace, justice, and purposes. Through the messages of the OT prophets, the NT writings of Paul, and the words and life of Jesus, we can break free from patterns of control and consumerism and resolve to live out the love of Jesus in all areas of our lives.
This week, in our continued exploration of the Nativity story, we meet Simeon and Anna––two elderly Israelites who devoted their lives to prayer and waiting. They waited for the long-anticipated return of God. They waited for Israel to be free again to worship and rule with goodness over all the earth. We learn just how strong the Psalms were to inspire hope over hundreds of years of sorrow and suffering, as Pastor Keith offers us more advice on how to prepare to make Dec 24 and 25 holy days.
This week we delve deeper into Luke's Nativity story and see just how Psalm-saturated Zechariah's prayer actually is. With a look into Psalm 72, we see Solomon's prayer, hundreds of years before Jesus, for an heir who would free people to worship God with purity of heart. Solomon prayed that Jesus would help make people whole and poised and marked by peace. Finishing with a focus on Zechariah's hope for his people lost in the shadow of death, Pastor Keith invites us to delve into the Psalms and sow them into the soil of our hearts.
Kicking off our Advent series on the prayers of the nativity, we follow Mary, Jesus's mother, to the country estate of her elder cousin Elizabeth. Here she composes here nativity psalm, fashioned after Psalm 103 and other Jewish prayers. We find ourselves challenged again to enter into Christmastime prepared and our hearts filled with praises and psalms.
Finishing off a season of sermons on praying, we take a look at Psalm 139 and its teaching on God's nearness to us. Delving into the Psalms, we find that prayer matters: scriptures tell us, Jesus thinks so, and experience suggests it. Prayer is not something we evolve out of; it is something we mature into and is a significant tool in our mission to help undo death.
In the first of two parts in our next section on prayer, Pastor Keith talks about God's closeness to us, and how pain in our lives causes us slowly to shift God further away from us, in our perspectives. This shift causes us to ask if prayer really makes a difference, if after all, are we not too small to matter, and if praying really changes anything other than our perspectives.
Ryan Whatley shares his perspective on wrestling with unanswered prayer, the process of healing and moving toward God in the midst of our pain.
We know what's needed to pray regularly so why don't we? One of the reasons is because our lives don't reflect need for prayer. The pattern of scripture suggests that when we live in pursuit of the things God loves and despise the things he despises, the disorientation that ensues will force us into intimacy with the Father.
Using Psalm 118, Pastor Keith explores being hard pressed and how most everybody resorts to prayer when desperate. He explores how as we encounter some of the great obstacles to prayer, our default mode is often self-reliance, rather than prayer.
As we finish off our mini-series on the Psalms and praying with others, Pastor Keith turn to Psalm 45 and discusses the centrepiece of any marriage: prayer. Keith explores how praying with a spouse may be more intimate than sex.
Pastor Keith continues our mini-series on Praying in Community, focusing specifically on praying with children and providing practical advise on how to pray with kids from the Psalms. He looks at the role of the family in the life of prayer, Why God wants us to tell of Him to generations to come and asks what does this mean for our family prayers?
This week we begin a small sermon series on praying in community and why communal prayer is so important in developing a prayer life. Pastor Keith looks at how praying with family and friends can guide us into the heart of God even when we cannot get there on our own.
This week we open up Psalms 136 and 137 to see the ranges of emotions expressed by the Psalmists and why simple praying opens us up to the heart of God like nothing else. God doesn’t want our pious words without heart. In this sermon we move deeper into the simply human praying that resets us in dependence upon God’s presence, guides us into our feelings, humanity, and desires, and teaches us to live with all of these in losses of life, in joy, trusting that our times are in God’s hands. Turning to Psalm 22 and Jesus’s choice of Psalm 22 for his cross Psalm, we finish our first look in the Psalms, God’s presence, and Christian praying by taking a final look at praying simply and praying when God seems absent. Expressing our full range of emotions when God is silent helps feed us in a life full of loss . Deep, authentic prayer fuels us in our lives with hope and helps us to live and encourage our alternative Christian worldview.
Turning to Psalm 22 and Jesus' choice of Psalm 22 for his cross Psalm, we tap into a second powerful theme of the Psalms: God's silence. Although we must come to God with all of our childish needs, we cannot enter into the heart of God with our entitlements and demands.
As we continue our series on Christian praying, we tap into one of the most powerful themes in the Psalms: being poor and need. Entering deeper into Psalm 23 and 24 we see how God will not allow us to approach him arrogantly. Pride shuts down the pathway to the heart of God. Exploring simple prayer, authentic prayer, and need prayer, we happily leave behind any forms of religious prayer based on arrogance.
In our second-to-last sermon in this series on the voice of creation, we take a look at Jesus’s response to human pride and the anxious lifestyles borne of self-sufficiency. In his great teaching in Matthew 6, Jesus reminds us to open our eyes and ears to creation and remember from their testimony that we are dependent, needy, and provided for God. In this simple but challenging call to seek God’s Kingdom first, we see just how important relating with God’s community of creation is for the health of our faith.
As we continue our summer series on the voice of creation, we turn to Job’s encounter with the created world. In Chapters 38-42, we watch as Job is transformed by opening his eyes to the creatures as they really are, not as Job and his friends have imagined them. They have a dignity that is completely unrelated to their domination of animals. As Job opens his mind and heart to the world around him, we watch him turn from despair to hope and from anxious patriarch to a warm father.
Carolyn Whatley shares this week's message continuing the series on hearing the Voice of Creation. Insights are shared from the perspective of seeing the creation stories of Genesis as a birth story from a loving Father.
This week, we continue to explore scripture’s view of nature. Exploring Paul’s teaching in Romans 8, Pastor Keith continues to challenge us to wake up--and open up-- to the voice of creation. When we do, we learn that the future hope of bodily resurrection for humanity is the future hope of all species. All species await freedom from death and decay. Non-human nature groans, eagerly awaiting new creation and plays a surprising role in God’s long story––as the people of God learn to wake up from prideful patterns of domination.
This week, Pastor Keith launches a series on scripture’s view of creation. Opening up Psalm 19, we learn that there are two voices (Torah and creation) testifying to God’s character and drawing us into the wider community of worship. The sun, the Psalmist––and later Jesus––tells us teaches us that God is strong, he is wise, he is joyful, he is abundantly merciful, he loves his enemies and blesses them despite their evil. Therefore, while Christians should not worship creation, we also should not dominate it. We are to care for it. What’s more, if we are going to be deeply Christian people, we must come to revere the creation. See in it something sacred. And somehow to decrease our senses of pride-fulness and domineering tendencies.
In this final of four sermons on worship Pastor Jenn Swift speaks about the worshipping community. This is when worship moves completely out of I and into We. Like a massive rock concert, it doesn't matter whether I join in or not, but that doesn't make you insignificant. While God may bless us individually by being part of the body, corporate worship leads us to be forgetful of ourselves and reminds us that we are part of a much bigger community historically, globally, and eternally. Corporate worship is where God makes a change in US, BECAUSE we are gathered and turned towards Him.
In this third of four sermons on worship Pastor Jenn Swift encourages us to take our private worship of God public. We turn our affections to God in as we share love; we turn our hearts to God despite disappointments. And we learn to focus on Him and not constantly demand that He focus on us. With a story about singing a creation hymn loudly at a tourist waterfall destination, Pastor Jenn suggest that having a private life with God without a public life is like having a secret boyfriend or a friend you are ashamed of. We cannot simply take our current lives and squeeze Jesus in; if we want worship to be transformative, we must rebuild our life around God. If we do, then public worship will be as natural as going out in public with our closest friends and family.
In this second of four sermons on worship, Pastor Jenn Swift discusses private worship and how a worshipping life without the private sphere is like only going on dates with God every once in a while; or worse, like showing up to the same party every week as God and that's it. That's be a pretty shallow relationship. Our common life in worship, on Sunday mornings for example, will be determined the quality of our private lives of worship. Opening our whole hearts to God, these are the qualities that we want to see growing in our private lives of worship: honesty, humility, reverence, sacrifice, sincerity, vulnerability, transformative, focused on God.
Pastor Jenn Swift introduces a four-part series on worship––private, public, and corporate. Jumping off with Isaiah 29:13 "These people honour me with their lips but their hearts are far from me", we explore how to turn our hearts and affections to God as relational beings, in all our dimensions. Worship starts with the Almighty, and not us, and this leads us to ask "how do You, God, want me to honour you today with my life?" And though we learn through practice what of the three spaces we are most comfortably worshipping God in, we learn to relate with God when nobody else is looking, when others may be peering in, and as a corporate group.
In this final conclusion to our year with Jesus, we take one more look at devotion to Jesus. His final living apostle, John, abandoned to exile, writes the book of Revelation based on a series of visions with his Lord. Pastor Keith briefly shares the fate of each of the disciples, looking once more at Jesus’s call to self-sacrificial love.
The first of a two part series concluding our year with Jesus. We are left with one compelling invitation: devotion to Jesus. Paul becomes one of the first to realize just how deep the this goes. Starting with Jesus' own claim that he is the bridegroom, Pastor Keith provides three stories from church history of people who have embraced devotion to Jesus as a spiritual marriage.
When Jesus ascends into Heaven, his Spirit returns (disguised, unseen, powerful) and has been hard at work for more than 2,000 years ever since. As Jesus's promised eternal presence, the Holy Spirit comes in the form of a descending flame. And then all heaven breaks loose. Pastor Keith explores the connection between the Spirit and obedience.
Before he ascends to heaven, after spending time in Jerusalem with his disciples, Jesus takes one final journey to his home region of Galilee. In the context of Jesus' famous conversation with Peter in which he asks him to lead his sheep, Pastor Keith assesses what it looks like when church is seen as a product rather than a calling, begging the question each of us must answer: to what church are you called to belong to?
After he was raised from the dead, after the women encountered the angelic message, Jesus appeared first to the women, then to two disciples who were leaving town dejected, and then Peter. Then Jesus appeared to the rest of the 11 disciples and then to many more of his followers. This week, Pastor Keith focuses on his appearance to the 11 disciples together, behind closed doors.
It is Sunday. Two days after Jesus died. It’s early. The sun is coming up. The women, as they get to the empty tomb get the biggest shock of their life: an angel appears and gives them a mission. Then Jesus himself, resurrected appears to them.
Pastor Keith focuses on the women disciples visiting the empty tomb at sunrise on the day after the Sabbath. He considers how if God's mission is to undo death, the resurrection should shape our passion for this mission.
This week, on Palm Sunday, Pastor Keith remembers Jesus as King and follows him to the mount of selflessness. Bound by those he would have wanted to please and set free, he bears up under their mockery. Pitted against a killer, Jesus is condemned. Unable to free ourselves for selfless living, we watch as Jesus dies for us. The question is: how do we handle that?
In Part Four of our series on Jesus’s teachings, Pastor Keith talks about the connections between cares, riches, and pleasures of life and unforgiveness. If life is a series of endless products, when our relationships fail us, we feel free to discard them as well. Exploring Jesus’s parable of the unmerciful servant, forgiveness, boundaries, and reconciliation in the Christian life are discussed.
In Part Three of our series on Jesus’s teachings, we will take some more time with Mark 10.32-45. Stressing Jesus’s call to his disciples to reflect his selfless love, we will explore how the cares, riches, and pleasures of life lead us to believe that life is about us getting served. Pastor Keith reads a few sayings from John of the Cross, a Christian master on selflessness and offers up some ideas about how to live of life of service, simplicity, and mission.
Are you stretched thin? Over-committed? Can’t really find time to be a disciple? In the second of five sermons on Jesus’s teachings, Pastor Keith continues on with the themes of devotion to God in an age choked by the cares, riches, and pleasures of life. As we read about the time where Jesus’s disciples James and John, sons of Zebedee, were seeking to be the greatest and best, we consider our own life’s pursuits. In what ways to we want to be the best, or the greatest, and how does the pursuit of this choke us? Try to listen to your patterns of discontent and trace back to where you might be trying to have the best or the greatest, when maybe good is good enough.
(Note: beginning of this message is cut off. Sorry :()
In this first message of the 5th part of the Following Jesus series, Pastor Keith looks at the Parable of the Sower. The idolatry, market, consumerism and self-help is collectively a $1 trillion industry trying to "choke" us. Keith looks at what it takes to be freed from these vices and to experience the deep, rich soil that produces growth and maturity.
As we enter 2018, our community is in need of hope - where better to turn than considering the restoration of all things, when everything that is out of sorts will be made right again. Steven looks at why the afterlife has traditionally not been a source of hope for many Christians and how the renewal of all things has the ability to transform our hope.
On our road to the manger in Bethlehem, we make one final stop, to listen to John the Baptist’s parents, Elizabeth and Zechariah, one final time. Pastor Keith looks at this story to see what we can learn about joy and worship as well as God's faithfulness.
This week Pastor Keith continues his sermon series on Jesus’s birth and the God-bearing life. As we journey through advent, with shepherds, peasants, and kings, we follow this family of Judean priests whose faith in God helped save the world. Keith takes a look at the Magnificat and discerns lessons for our lives as we enter the Christmas season.
This week, Pastor Keith welcomes friend and pastor Justin Simmons to teach as we enter the season of Advent. This ancient tradition of the church allows us to reorient our lives to God and His ways. Last year, Grassroots followed the Magi and the Christmas story in Matthew. This year, we turn our sight to Luke’s account. John’s life was about preparing the way for Jesus, the righteous King. Justin considers what it might look like for us to reorient our lives in such a way as to bring people to the Father.
This week, Pastor Keith finishes off our focus on Jesus' healing ministry and the healing ministry he gives to us. Keith continues to look at John the Baptist's final days and talk about the role of faith in our healing ministries.
Pastor Keith looks at the life of John the Baptist. As a Jewish prophet, John preached a baptism for the forgiveness of sins and died for challenging King Herod’s willful disobedience to God. Through John's example, Keith explores the relationship between healing and obedience - and the role of doubt in our lives.
Pastor Keith continues the series on Jesus, Crowds & Healing by taking a look at the paralytic man in Mark 2 as well as the woman who pours the alabaster oil on Jesus' feet in Luke 7.
Please note: There were technical difficulties in recording this message so the message cuts out sporadically.
Pastor Keith begins Part 3 of our year-long series on Jesus with a focus on Jesus’s ministry of healing. He begins by following the connections Jesus made regularly between forgiving of sins and healing. Jesus' healing ministry demonstrates the nature of his Kingship; dead are raised, lepers cleansed, demons cast out, humans freed for wholeness, community restored.
In part three of our Annual Family Meeting on finance, Pastor Keith looks at Jesus and his admiration for the widow with copper coins. As he discusses this episode in Jesus’s life, forecasts for us the Grassroots Financial Plan for 2018.
Pastor Keith gives Week 2 of the annual family meeting on finances. He goes through how our community has done this year so far with our pledges, where our money has been concentrated, and how we’ve built for God’s Kingdom. Keith reminds us that how we use our money has everything to do with how we worship God. He looks at one of the Jesus’s parable of the unjust steward in Luke 16.1-13.
Pastor Keith begins his three week series on Jesus and money by looking at Jesus' teaching on money in Luke 12. In his ministry, we observe Jesus intentionally choosing a life of poverty, perhaps to make some sort of point, and having little regard for currency in paper or coin. He also warns us that money wants our devotion.
Pastor Keith continues to help us get oriented to Jesus, to him as he was, in his first-century context. So far, we've read about Jesus, the boy in Nazareth, in love with the Passover, His God, the Jewish scriptures. We've seen him amaze wise scholars as a 12 year old and infuriate his townspeople as an adult with with same penetrating love for the Old Testament. We've seen him stake a platform on the healing of the oppressors as a way to freedom. We've seen him riding in as Israel's king at his final earthly passover. This week, Pastor Keith explores a little more of this world. He talks about the Roman empire and that Jesus's claim to kingship stood in conflict with Caesar's claim to be the Son of God. And we see Jesus acting as if he is in charge.
The real Jesus, the one who came as King, disturbs us a little. To know Him is to know the Palestinian Jew who lived 2,000 years ago. And to know Him is to befriend Truth, Grace, the greatest Treasure, his suffering, the power of resurrection, and the Great Shepherd. To know Him is also to understand His unexpected view of God. Pastor Keith explains why the crowd in Luke 4 were so delighted with Jesus when he read from the scroll in Isaiah yet turned so bitterly toward him a moment later.
Pastor Keith emerges into Jesus's life by surveying some biographical information about him and talking about intimacy with him. Keith looks at the implications on our lives as we seek to understand Jesus's family, personality, destiny, spirituality, and childhood experiences.
Pastor Keith introduces his year long series on Following Jesus with a special Fall Kick Off at Grassroots. Jesus is portrayed in culture in all sorts of ways - guru, warrior, hippy, stoic, etc. But Jesus was more than all of these things - the scriptures reveal Jesus as King. This is why the Pharisees were so disturbed by Jesus and ultimately why his own people rejected him. Jesus’s claim to Lordship should disturb us and if it doesn't, we should consider if we've been listening to who Jesus says about himself.
Pastor Keith closes the series on the Church and the Kingdom by considering how one of the key distinctives that set the early church apart was the practice of meeting in each others' homes. Keith takes a look at what he envisions small groups to look like for Grassroots, starting this fall.
Note: this message was cut off at the beginning! First 10 minutes is missing :(
This Sunday, Pastor Keith turns our attention to the first two activities of the church, of these main four: devoting ourselves to the Apostles’ teachings, prayer, breaking bread in one another’s homes, and meeting as many needs as possible.
Pastor Keith focuses in on his teaching about unity in the church and honouring one another. What do you think Paul's point is in 11.27 to eat the bread and drink the cup worthily? Why does Paul want people to take the communion together? What experiences of disunity have you seen in your church experience? Where have you seen radical unity and honour in church? Take a moment to journal through this: where is God calling you to forgive people for dishonouring and creating divisions? Where is God calling you to help increase unity and honour in the church?
Pastor Keith explores how preaching and healing are the two main tasks of the church by looking specifically at Paul’s metaphor of the body and how each play a role in this work as the body of Christ. Where do you see our church working together as a body? Where does it have room to grow in unity? What are your gifts, and where are you plugging in as we seek to heal the people of Thunder Bay and proclaim to them that Jesus is Lord?
There are a lot of legitimate reasons to be disillusioned with the Church - and ignoring this or denying it is just not intellectually honest. Christians have historically not done a very good job of handling this responsibility handed us by Jesus. However, the church is still worth fighting for and, in fact, there are some excellent reasons to continue to be inspired by the church, work within the church and to love the church. Steven explores 4 of these reasons that have kept him in love with the church.
Pastor Keith takes a look back at the ups and downs of our first year with the Jagger family leading our community.
Pastor Keith continues his series about Moses and love by discussing forms of perfect love and how we can practice that in our lives.
This week, Pastor Keith begins the final part - Part Five - of the Moses series. Turning our attention to Love, we will follow Moses to his final sermon where he declares Israel's great commandment, "Love the LORD with all your heart, soul, and might." Read Deuteronomy 6:1-9 and think about all Israel has been through. What might it take to love the rescuer God?What might it take to love the jealous God? What might it take to love the God who guides us through deserts? Come up with a few words to describe what it means to love this God.