Remember all those old bible stories that we heard as children? Zacchaeus, The Prodigal Son, The Fiery Furnace, and others? In our mind's eye, they may seem more like cartoon characters rather than real people. In this series we'll be looking at some of these "cartoonish" stories, but taking away all the "cartoon." These stories have a lot to say to us about hope, struggle, and the amazing things that God does in the lives of real people.
Read MoreWe take the scriptures too seriously to take them at face value.
A new version of a popular series from 2015.
Read MoreDo you realize the impact Forefront has made on this city?
TOGETHER IN THIS is a series dedicated to telling the stories of life-change made through our community.
Read MoreWe are celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but if it takes not place in me, what avails it? Everything lies in this, that it should take place in me.
Read MoreThere is an enduring resonance to the book of Job. In this story, it’s not just that the explanations themselves aren’t helpful, it’s that the very idea of trying to explain suffering is pointless. That’s why you struggle with the story- the good that comes Job’s way at the end can’t begin to make up for the loss he’s endured. He’ll never be the same again. He may be grateful and he may enjoy his life again and he may have another family and he may find love again but he will carry the scars with him for the rest of his life. Why has this story endured? Because this is how life is. No matter how much good comes your way after you’ve suffered, no matter how much you make peace with your past, you still walk with a limp. Suffering has no explanation and no matter how much we heal and move on, it shapes us in innumerable ways.
Read MoreThe Beatitudes offer us a more spacious world, a world where we do not have to explain everything, fix everything, or control anything beyond ourselves, a world where we can allow a Larger Mystery to work itself out through us and in us. These things are done to us more than anything we can do. The Beatitudes are about changing “me,” not changing other people. Wonderfully, it is not about being right anymore. We live, of course, in the tension between two worlds: the world where we need to prove that we are right and the world of daily right relationship with ourselves and others. One demands dominative power and concern with changing other people; the other is a self-renewing call to right relationship, and is primarily about changing ourselves.
Read MoreIf anything in life is a constant, it is the constant of change. In this series, we’ll look at the bizarre entrance of The Messiah into our world, and how he is still, even today inviting us into changes of the heart and mind, shaping our lives into stories of hope.
Read MoreWho we are, what we do, and who we want to become is deeply rooted in our faith in Christ. He is at the center of everything we believe. The values of our church community are drawn out of the life Jesus embodied and our desire to imitate Him. In this series, we will highlight each of our values and learn how to allow Jesus' prayer for it to be "on earth as it is in heaven" a greater reality.
Read More“Christians are usually sincere and well-intentioned people until you get to any real issues of ego, control power, money, pleasure, and security. Then they tend to be pretty much like everybody else. We often given a bogus version of the Gospel, some fast-food religion, without any deep transformation of the self; and the result has been the spiritual disaster of "Christian" countries that tend to be as consumer-oriented, proud, warlike, racist, class conscious, and addictive as everybody else-and often more so, I'm afraid.”
-Richard Rohr
Read MoreRemember all those old bible stories that we heard as children? Jonah, Samson, David & Goliath, and others? In our mind's eye, they may seem more like cartoon characters rather than real people. In this series we'll be looking at some of these "cartoonish" stories, but taking away all the "cartoon." These stories have a lot to say to us about hope, struggle, and the amazing things that God does in the lives of real people.
Read MoreWe all have a story to tell. Here are the stories of two of our pastors and how they got to where they are now in their walk with God.
Read MoreWhen we were children, we played a game called “telephone” where we would sit in a circle with friends, whisper a message to the person on our right, who would then whisper the message they heard to the person on their right, and so on and so forth. By the time the message worked its way around the circle it was nowhere near the message it was at the beginning.This is also how the message of scripture gets distorted as it passes through the channels of tradition and history. In this series, we will reexamine some of the commonly misinterpreted messages of scripture, which allows us to wrestle with the author’s intended meaning.
Read MoreWe're better together than we are on our own.
Read MoreCelebration Generosity is an annual event that aims to further our vision of seeing lives, neighborhoods, and our city renewed through Jesus Christ. It supports that vision in two primary ways:
1) It cultivates holistic generosity in our church community.
2) It supports organizations in our city committed to renewal.
In 2015 we supported Nomi Network, Defy Ventures, and Orchard Group/Restoration Church with over $80,000.
Read MoreThe Story of Ruth in the Old Testament, at face value may seem like an odd story to be studying through during the Lenten season. But if we think about what Lent really is, this season of doing without, the book of Ruth syncs up with it beautifully. Lent is a season where we lose something to find something. The Story of Ruth could be summed up the same. The major characters in this story lose it all, and by the end, they find something even greater, something that they didn’t even know that they were looking for at the beginning.
Read MoreAs people of faith we are trained to believe that God speaks to us in wholly private places of seclusion. This is just one facet of God’s guidance in human life, where in reality, God’s voice is trying to reach us through myriad channels- our friends, our families, our faith communities, our intellect, by observing the vastness of creation, and studying the life of Christ. God is using every avenue available to man to get his message across. In this series we will look at some of these surprising places where God is always speaking, though we may be unaware of it.
Read MoreAdvent has the odd potential to be filled with artificial energy, charity, faith, and wonder. As we cross the threshold of the holiday season may we take root in a quiet (but active) genuineness that moves us into something deeper than superficial “holiday buzz.”
Read MoreThroughout church history there are certain tenets that ever seem to be items of focus. Each generation expounds, practices, and passes on. What are the purposes of these recurring traits? More importantly, do they have any “stake” in our lives today or have these aging markers reached their time? In this series, we’ll look at what it means to reclaim these rhythms through the discipline of thankfulness.
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