From Your Pastor

We explore the difference between traditions or beliefs and faith. If you set aside one, do you lose the other? Let's hope not. 

We explore how fear sidelines our faith journey and ways to breath our way through it.  *Also includes a bonus guided breathing meditation at the end.* 

We explore how the call to repent is a call to deconstruct. And God's got our back while we do it. 

We explore a great framework for talking about who Jesus is and what Jesus reveals about God. 

Your new identity, affection, and responsibility in Christ.

We've gotten bogged down in our tradition with predestination. Perhaps we got it a bit wrong.

What is at the heart of leadership (despite the denomination).

Get caught up with us in the paradoxical nature of God!

We explore the Reformer's commitment to that Latin phrase: the church reformed and always reforming. 

Glory. Glory. Glory in our midst. 

You will know it is God (or Jesus) by the good fruit. 

Only if there are angels in your head, will you ever possibly see one. -Mary Oliver

What do we do with a passage or sermon that seems to lack good news?

We ask questions of discernment about how we spend our time--so that rest can actually happen!

Why does Jesus have to tell his disciples to rest twice? Turns out the real world is good at interrupting.

This is the first sermon for Ormewood Church as we switched to weekly worship in October of 2017. We started with a five Sunday sermon series on Sabbath and Rest. Revisit what (unfortunately) still needs to be said: rest is not weakness, a mistake, or a misstep. It's built into our DNA as images of God. 

This is the first Sunday of three where we'll look at the blessing of rest. This week we particularly look at its healing nature as we grapple with grief on All Saints Sunday. 

With some help from Anne Lamott, Rev. Jenelle takes the leap from perfection to mercy as the prerequisite for church. 

No man is an island. Even Jesus. 

We get some help from Julia Cameron's book The Artist's Way in this episode!

God gives us a new way of seeing. 

Our imaginations help us bridge the gap between the difficult and the everyday. 

We explore the power of stories and their ability to "teach" us through indirectness, surprise, and everyday life. 

Join Job in being in awe of God's creativity. 

When the weight of impossibility is too heavy, throw it off. 

Sacred spaces matter, so get creative with them!

This sermon introduces the summer series on Imagination and Spirituality. We explore the grand creative endeavor that is Genesis 1 and reflect on how this imaginative telling of the beginning of the world helped exiled people stay afloat. 

Power can be used for good or bad. We celebrate its transformative nature on this the church's birthday!

The body is a handy metaphor for valuing all the parts of Jesus' community. Even the butt.

In Eastertide we're exploring the unexpected places we encounter Jesus. Looks like Jesus prefers the messy people and a good party to the Pharisees' ways of perfection. 

No one wants to hear it, but God works best through change. 

God is in the surprise business. Is that a good thing?

God's care of us is not limited to Psalm 46's command to "Be still." Isaiah offers us a much more participatory way to sit at God's table of comfort. 

As we witness the violence in Ukraine this week, we also explore the change we can enact through practices of hope thanks to our Psalm 27 writer.

Join us for Week 1 of our Lent series, in partnership with Sanctified Arts, "Full to the Brim." We will look at how the wilderness asks Jesus what kind of "Jesus" he is going to be, just as it demands the same thoughtfulness from us. 

We wrap up the discipleship series with the signature move for all disciples: love. 

Today we talk about the insidious nature of perfectionism and the freedom and transformation in making mistakes. 

We explore what it means to "inhale" before you "exhale" through the story of the sisters Mary and Martha. 

This week we explore how discipleship is all about community. We can't do this road alone. Also, Troop Beverly Hills is the key to understanding our Mark passage today. 

This week we repair some of the damage done to the word evangelism. 

Being a disciple is sometimes pretty rough. Also, there's a bit of Encanto in this podcast--definitely take some time (before or after this podcast) to watch this beautiful new animated movie. 

If we are Disciples of Christ, it's probably a good idea to get to know him. So, we visit the Gospel of Mark and start from the very beginning: Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah. 

Join us as we begin our series on discipleship as we unpack some of the shame of being a "learner" and prepare ourselves to be transformed in Christ. 

Join us for our Christmas Eve message. Also, apologies for the sound of a soccer ball at the end. Truly God's grace was made for virtual learning in a pandemic. 

Like Ted Lasso says, sometimes you just have to believe. 

"You better be lightning Jesus!" This sermon features a poem by Andrea Gibson from her collection You Better Be Lightning.

It's hard to wait. This week we talk about our different postures of waiting--some good, some not so much. We also introduce our church's Advent practice for 2021. 

Today's sermon is a short one that explores the Lord's Prayer from the Gospel of Matthew and then sends us out to try the many pathways of prayer. 

What is prayer and how do we do it all day long without ceasing? 

Today we examine what it means to be selfless like Christ without pretending you don't exist. 

By belonging to each other, do we sacrifice our "self"?

Today we examine what breaks down belonging. You also get a glimpse at the end of the sermon into our weekly post-sermon "small group" time at Ormewood Church. 

Today we explore that admirable church in Acts chapter 2, and we ponder what made their belonging so grand!

In this episode we explore how our belonging in the world is made of creative stuff and creative relationships, but most of all it is created and defended by God.

This is the first episode in our Belonging series at Ormewood Church. The story at the beginning of the sermon is from Vivek Murthy's amazing book Together. We highly recommend reading the book or listening to his interview with Brene' Brown on her podcast Unlocking Us. 

In this episode we follow the movements of baptism: going under the water and rising again. We consider what that means theologically as we wrestle with Paul's letter to the Roman church. 

This week we look at Jesus' baptism, and why he would need to be baptized in the first place. Turns out it is all about participating in relationships rightly. 

This week we take a look at how the metaphor of water is sprinkled throughout the Bible as a way to articulate something profound about the invisible ways of God. 

We get a little help from our Celtic Christian friends as we explore how the invisible breaks through to the visible. The John O'Donohue references are from his delightful book "Anam Cara."