Rev. Venida will be preaches a Lenten message on what it truly means to be lost and found. Drawing from Jesus’ parable in Luke 15, she invites us to rethink the categories we’ve inherited, notice the voices we may have overlooked, and remember the God who keeps seeking us with relentless, healing love.

Preaching Bootcamper Damaris examines the supposed binaries of Rest and Growth by looking at a parable Jesus tells in Luke 13 about a vineyard owner. This owner, frustrated with the lack of fruit on the tree, demands the tree be cut down, and the gardener pleads for one more year to steward the tree, so it can bear fruit. It just needs time, right? Well, what if time isn't enough? What does it look like for those of us constantly exhausted to instead start to look at our rest AS our growth?

A “Dumpling” Falls from the Sky—Why not?

It is 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Peter is praying and gets a vision of a sheet full of animals, clean and unclear, dropping from the sky. Almost like a dumpling, but unwrapped. This vision leads to a cascade of events that end up transforming a Jewish sect of the followers of Jesus into a universal community where anyone, Jew or Gentile, can participate. In this sermon, Kai explains how experiences of visions like this dumpling and witnessing the Holy Spirit in the lives of Gentiles leads the Jewish followers of Jesus to reinterpret the rules of their covenant AND their scriptures to include those who had been deemed unclean.

Founding Pastor, Jonathan Williams begins our Lenten series, Everything In Between, Meeting God in the Midst of Extremes taking a fresh look at the Good Samaritan: “A lot of people believe that love is action. I believe that it is the reordering of power. And by reordering our power for the sake of others is one of the most loving things we can do.”