Engage Newark: Recent Episodes
Engage Newark
David was a man after God’s own heart, despite all his weaknesses and sins. He was a person whose heart was repentant, faithful and loving…exhibiting character qualities of God. Can you imagine if your heart was transformed to be after God’s own heart as well?
Pastor Kevin Koske delivers an inspiring message to help us become aware through the story of King David that we are made worthy by the acts of God.
Pastor Kevin Koske sets the stage for this new series to help us know our place in the story of God interacting with humanity.
Where does your diversity fit in the overall picture of unity? You puzzle piece is important, we need your piece to make the picture whole!
Moving through difficult circumstances brings about the possibility for hope because we have seen things work out in the past which gives us optimism for the future. Pastor Mariah Miskimen brings a message of challenge and hope.
Jesus came to take down the walls that divide people and keep people out from being part of the faith…but what walls and barriers have you created?
The fruit of unity looks a lot like the fruit of the Spirit! Rev Kevin Koske brings today’s message on bring fruitful in unity.
Moldy and harmony work together to make the spirit soar…our melody is unity in diversity, but love is the perfect harmony to make our spirit’s soar.
This is our first Sunday in our new home with our new friends working to merge together as one body. Here we examine Paul’s words to encourage us to use our gifts as for the common good.
This is our last message as we say goodbye to our first home at 31 West. We are so thankful for our first six years together in our home and now we move away to our new location in another part of town having made our mark in downtown Newark and now moving on to...
Jesus dared to go to places where he was not welcome, like a party for tax collectors. He risked being ridiculed by the party attenders AND the establishment…and yet he went at the expense of his own reputation. Are you willing to connect to the person with that is the least likely candidate to be...
Welcoming our neighbors means allowing them to be themselves when they are in our presence. The challenge from scripture is for us to welcome others as Jesus welcomed us – “as we are.”
Peace is more than just the absence of conflict…our passage from Ephesians 2 teaches us that peace actually comes in the person of Jesus Christ. We are meant to be unified together, saying goodbye to the old person and hello to the new person that Jesus is creating in you.
We need to remember who we were (and say goodbye to it) before we can move forward and say hello to who we are becoming. The past is lovely and nostalgic but we also must remember that it also has it’s moments of struggle and scars.
Sometimes the things we ask God for in prayer actually happen…but what about when they don’t? Why doesn’t prayer work every time? Perhaps it’s our expectations that need to change to align with what prayer is and what prayer actually does.
Natural disasters, sickness, violence, starvation…all bad things that happen to people, even good people. Why do bad things happen to good people? Jesus gives us some understanding on this topic and our friend Sean Lennon gives us some reasonable understanding to this complex topic.
The Bible is many things but it is also not many things. Listen in as our friend Tim Walk gives us a challenge to see the Bible as the Bible reveals itself.
Heaven may be more real than hell when it comes right down to it. But is heaven how it’s portrayed in popular culture and contemporary church teaching? We can say resoundingly: No. The Bible is clear on some things about heaven and unclear about other things.
This is one of the more troubling questions that people have about the Christian faith? If this is true then hell must be a lot bigger than heaven…would a loving God create a system in which hell is bigger than heaven?
Is God real is one of the fundamental questions of humanity, but how can we reasonably think that God exists outside of evidence provided in the Bible? In this message, Pastor Dave Warner gives five standard apologetic reason why it’s conceivable to believe in God plus 1 reason he believes is the best for him.
Everyone has some questions from time to time..wondering if what we are hearing is too good to be true. Thomas struggled with believing the Good News of his friends saying that Jesus was actually alive…but his doubts gave rise to clarity and ultimately to belief upon his experience of the resurrection.
When Jesus stood before Pilate, Pilate gave the religious leaders a choice: choose the way of violence and power personified by Barabbas or choose peace and surrender personified by Jesus. We still have the same choice today and many religious leaders still choose political power and control rather than Jesus. The Gospel calls for us...
We often confuse the love of power with the power of love. Jesus stood between two political powers that pulled him in the direction of power and yet he refused to take on political power to instead show the power of sacrificial love.
Following Jesus’ arrest, Peter followed at a distance until he got to the courtyard fire pit. There, he denied Jesus 3 times and didn’t even realize what he had done until a rooster woke him up. Following Jesus from a distance generally makes denying him easier, but Jesus always provides a way back, for Peter...
We often want to be the hero of the story, we see ourselves as the one who does the right thing, that does the noble thing. In the tragic story of Jesus being betrayed by Judas we would like to think that we are the ones who are always betrayed, we are the ones who...
At his final meal with he disciples, Jesus displayed patience and understanding, eating with even the person who was about to betray him. Jesus eats with everyone…who we exclude from our table says more about us than it does them. Join Sean Lennon as he challenges us to invite all to the table.
Jesus came out of the wilderness after 40 days of fasting and praying and everything was going great! He was preaching and teaching and the people loved him! That is, until he went to his hometown and his home synagogue and read the scriptures and explained the meaning…and then everyone wanted to drive him out!...
Rahab was the least likely candidate to be dealing in international affairs, hiding espionage agents, saving an entire nation and being the only able to save her family in an upcoming battle. And yet, God chose her to be the hero of the story and to redeem her story for all of history.
Our society values leadership but fails to consider the value of being a good follower. What does it take to become a good follower of Jesus? We can learn from Joshua chapter to find out!
The Book of Joshua is full of forward movement as the Hebrew people discover and claim the Promised Land. In the first 9 verse of Joshua we see 4 clear barriers that the Hebrews will have in claiming their promise along with the command for Joshua to “be strong and courageous.” You have promises as...
Your transformation isn’t just for you! You are meant to share God’s good work in you with other people!
In order to hear guidance from God through prayer, we need to put ourselves in the proper position – God instructions God’s people to humble themselves, seek his face, pray and turn from our wicked ways and then God will forgive us, hear us and heal us.
It’s not enough to take an inventory of the harms you’ve done to others, we need to take a step further and ask WHY we harm people the way we do. We need to take an inventory of what triggers us.
Having the willingness to make our relationships right – the people we have wronged and harmed – to make it right with them is a step towards fulfilling our role as faithful disciples of Jesus.
Pastor Reggie Byrd talks with us about praying to God to remove our defects of character to bring us into alignment with what God wants us to be and to do.
Making a close examination of one’s self regarding their personal past and their own responses to the things that have happened to them are vital in the process of recovery and discipleship. We can see WHY we have made the choices we have made and hopefully not make the same negative choices again.
Making a decision is not the same as doing something about the decision. Jesus didn’t call us to make decisions, Jesus called us to follow Him…we must actually put ourselves in a position to follow Him!
Looking into the Hebrew Scripture in the Book of Daniel we find an emperor who hit rock bottom until he believed in God and his sanity was restored.
Before we can experience the wholeness found in Jesus we must first admit to our brokenness apart from Jesus.
At first glance, this seems okay to say – of course Christians should love people and abhor sin – but what if this phrase force people to see people as sinners rather than as neighbors?
In an effort to explain why bad things have happened, some people will claim that they didn’t have enough faith as if they had the power over a situation based on a certain level of optimism or hope. This is one of the things Christians need to stop saying immediately. Jesus is the author and...
We like to use this phrase to encourage people when they are going through a difficult time, but it’s based on a passage of Scripture that has been misused and misinterpreted. Listen as Pastor Reggie Byrd dives deep on this phrase Christians should stop saying immediately.
Well-meaning Christians trying to comfort people in mourning have used this phrase that causes harm to the person they are speaking to reveals their own theological misunderstandings. Listen in to help clarify what the Bible says about Angels and what happens to humans when we die.
We want to be able to understand and explain everything…even the unexplainable. So as a short cut, we say, “Everything happens for a reason.” Unfortunately that phrase often blames God for our difficult circumstances and presumes that God caused bad things to happen to us or others for some reason that we have to sort...
We have to stop assuming the authority that God has given each of us a special revelation that goes unfiltered through the community. We believe that God can (and does) speak to people but that are certain parameters for how God does it and how God communicates to people and all of it can be...
This phrase is damaging because it fails to consider that no-one reads the Bible in the same way, nor do they understand it’s meaning in the same way. Furthermore, the Bible should be the beginning of conversations, not the end.
As Jesus made his way toward Jerusalem, he did kingdom work and taught kingdom values along the way. In his final teaching before entering the city, he teaches that his kingdom is not of this world and that he will be gone for a while and then coming back. While he is gone we are...
As Jesus headed to his ultimate destination of Jerusalem, he was interrupted by 10 men who had leprosy. Of course Jesus healed them, but only one turned back to give thanks and he was a Samaritan, one of the most hated people groups of their time and place. Join Keynan Williams as he gives a...
The smallest things can wreck us or protect us. Jesus encourages his followers to have faith, even just the size of a mustard seed to grow and blossom and bloom to be something greater, to be our protection when we face our Jerusalem.
Even in the most serene of moments, when Jesus was transfigured and joined by Moses and Elijah, and his three apostolic witnesses wanted to build houses and stay on the mount, Jesus was ready to go down the mountain and face his most difficult circumstance yet – arrest, trial and execution in Jerusalem. Mountaintop experiences...
In our final installment of the We Believe series we are looking at the idea of resurrection of our bodies which turns them from perishable to imperishable which is meant to live forever!
Of all the statements in the Apostles Creed, this is the one we probably like the most…we like the idea of God forgiving our sins, but we may not want to hear is that we are compelled to forgive the sins of those who have harmed us. In this message we are exploring the idea...
This phrase of the Apostle’s creed sounds confusing because it seems like it must have something to do with bread, juice and dead people! But that isn’t the case at all! In this message we look at how the communion of saints transcends time and that those who are believers in Jesus are all connected...
Continuing our series on the Apostle’s Creed we look at the peculiar phrase, “the holy catholic church” to uncover the fullness of it’s meaning in our life and in the life of the local church.
The Holy Spirit is the Being of God that resides within the hearts of every believer. In this message we see the role of the Holy Spirit active in our lives.
Jesus is the Father’s plan for relationship with all humanity. Join Tim Walk as he gives us the humanity and the deity in the person of Jesus Christ.
The opening statement simply states that we believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. But what does that mean for our lives? This message is to help us know the impact of believing in God as Father.
In the 2nd halves of Matthew 24 and Matthew 25 we find Jesus’ words on his second coming…but the end result for our preparation is the same: endure to the end by loving God and loving others.
Matthew 24 is full of dark and gloomy words that Jesus gives to warn his disciples about the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and His own 2nd Coming. But, in the midst of it, he provides Hope for the believers and encouragement for them to enduring to the end through loving God and loving others.
This Advent, while we celebrate the First Advent of Jesus, we are Preparing the Way for the 2nd Advent. This first week is an introduction, a foundation on the important words found in the New Testament about the 2nd Coming and the primary theological systems that inform our understanding about Jesus’ 2nd Coming. Above all,...
Jesus gives us an example of how people should live in the kingdom while in social situations. In Luke 14 Jesus is at a dinner party, talking about dinner parties. As we head into the Thanksgiving celebration season, this is a good reminder of how we can make people, our families and friends feel most...
This final excuse of Moses was the real reason Moses tried to decline God’s direction to free the Hebrew slaves: I don’t want to? We tend to not give the real reason for not doing God’s will, we invent lots of other excuses, but the real reason is that we don’t want to.
Of all of Moses’ five excuses, this is the one that was probably a legitimate reason for why he could not be expected to convince a million people that they should not be slaves and why he could not speak to the most powerful man in the world, Pharaoh. Why would God choose someone with...
Moses gave 5 excuses for why he could not go and release the Hebrews from bondage in Egypt, one of them was that people might doubt him. Sometimes doubt can motivate someone to do better and be better but sometimes it becomes a crutch to not do what we are called to do.
Jesus has placed in the heart of every person a dream, a kingdom vocation that helps them fulfill the purpose that they are designed to fulfill. Ben Hardman brings a message of inspiration and challenge to help us fulfill our kingdom dream.
Moses had five excuses for why God should not call him to go rescue the Hebrews from Egypt. His second excuse was “I don’t know enough” which was framed by him asking, “What will I tell them if they ask who sent me?” Moses was limiting himself by what he didn’t know. Sometimes we have...
Moses gave God five excuses as to why he could not and should not go deliver the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. Reggie Byrd takes us through the first excuse where Moses asks, “Who am I?” revealing his predilection towards feeling Imposter Syndrome. But God has a response to Moses and tells him that He...
Moses spent 80 years discovering who he was but it wasn’t until an encounter with a burning bush that he finally (and begrudgingly) came into his own being. Moses’ excuses are the same excuses we use today, but often we don’t say them out loud, we just hear them internally, as lies that keep us...
Everything we do must come from a heart of love, not from guilt or compulsion…especially when it comes to how we deal with our finances. Giving is simply part of being a fully engaged disciple of Jesus and we do it from a heart of love.