by Stacey Hilliard | Feb 12, 2023 | Sermons
The rallying cry of the Protestant Reformation was “Sola Scriptura!” “The Bible alone!” John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, believed Scripture was critically important; but he wouldn’t go so far as to ignore other factors when working out the life and order of the church. As it turns out, that’s a very biblical thing to do. Take a look at how the first followers of Jesus solved a major conflict. It can help us with the conflicts of today.
Technical difficulties prevented us from recording Pastor Anne’s sermon
when she preached it on February 12, 2023, but you can read it here:
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by Stacey Hilliard | Feb 5, 2023 | Sermons
We often joke about church being all about the food. But there’s a way in which that’s true. This Sunday we celebrate Holy Communion. That celebration was a full meal for the house churches Paul and others established early on.
Last week we talked about the problems surrounding where the meat for that meal came from. But that wasn’t the only source of conflict around that community feast. The church in Corinth wrote Paul for advice about the other problem, too, and Paul’s words of censure have made quite a few modern Christians afraid to take Communion
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by Stacey Hilliard | Jan 29, 2023 | Sermons
Paul spends a lot of ink in a number of his letters trying to help the churches he started navigate inevitable conflicts with grace. The conflict this sermon addresses was over food. While the particulars don’t apply to us now, Paul’s solution most certainly does. Read or hear Paul’s advice on living with diversity both gracefully and faithfully.
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by Stacey Hilliard | Jan 22, 2023 | Sermons
As the followers of Jesus began to expand their message beyond Israel’s borders, Gentiles heard the message and wanted to follow Jesus, too! Since the followers of Jesus to that point were all Jews, and they weren’t even sure themselves what it really meant to follow Jesus’ final command to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,” many conflicts about Gentile participation and interaction ensued. These questions and conflicts over responding to Gentile followers of Jesus is another broad piece of context that underlies much of what we find in the book of Acts and the letters of the New Testament.
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by Stacey Hilliard | Jan 15, 2023 | Sermons
This sermon takes us back into Bible study mode. Having focused on the first century during Advent and Christmas, we’re going to stay there for one more week to take a look at letter-writing in that time. Specifically, we’ll look at Paul and his first letter to the Corinthians, how “Chloe’s people” spilled the beans on church infighting, and what Paul means in 1 Corinthians 1:17 when he talks about the “power of the Cross.”
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by Stacey Hilliard | Jan 8, 2023 | Sermons
On the liturgical calendar, this is the Sunday we remember Jesus’ baptism. That always comes very close to Epiphany, since Jesus’ baptism is one of the three events that Epiphany celebrates. This Sunday we’ll put all that together with the words of the prophet Isaiah in the first nine verses of chapter 42 and see what we can make of it all.
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