I grew up in an era where we didn't wear helmets for everything that was even a little bit dangerous, therefore, we had the chance to play games on the playground that mattered. One of those games was entitled "Red Rover." Red Rover is a game where you link arms with other people and there's other people across from you with linked arms as well, and you say, "Red rover, red rover, send Ryan right over." When your name's called, you have to run and try your best to break through the human chain t...
Aug 20, 2018•47 min•Ep. 111
We're going to wrestle with some very easy words from Jesus today --- DO. NOT. JUDGE. Or you too will be judged. It's Jesus's teaching on the Sermon on the Mount and I joked last week about wanting an easy sermon. . . .one easy message from the Sermon on the Mount. . .and I think this is it. Here's why. Because when we talk about being judgmental, all of us have somebody in our mind who should be here today, but none of us think it's us. Judgmentalism is always a problem for somebody else, but v...
Aug 13, 2018•46 min•Ep. 110
That was good worship, wasn't it? But it stirred this question in me. We're singing "This is My Father's World," right? We see the sunrise, that he spoke into existence, that shouts for joy as it dances it's way across the sky. This is my Father's world, and yet, I don't know about you, but there's time when I open my news app and think, "God, this is a weird world for you to own." Sometimes You're way, way, way distant. Sure, the mountains praise and declare your glory, but where are you when. ...
Aug 06, 2018•48 min•Ep. 109
I want to say thank you to your pastor; we've been friends for eight months. You have an excellent, top shelf, amazing, Bronco-rooting pastor in Pastor Ryan and his family. I want to say thanks to Ryan and the whole staff for their hospitality and ministering to me as I come to minister the Word today. I have been friends with Larry Boatright for 20 years. We actually traveled for a year in a praise and worship band together. On the screen is my family. This is my wife of fifteen years, Jennifer...
Jul 30, 2018•41 min•Ep. 108
How many of us, in this room, would admit that we've done something embarrassing that we wish no one would ever see? Wow! When we do something embarrassing and then later on we think about it, we still kind of feel it, right? It's crazy because the world that we live in now everybody has a cell phone and they can take video of this stuff, so when you do something stupid, it gets recorded for posterity. Or security footage, as a possible example. I did something kind of embarrassing recently, and...
Jul 23, 2018•43 min•Ep. 107
We are exploring the Sermon on the Mount this summer as a community. We are sort of in the middle of Jesus's teaching, it's in the gospel of Matthew. Matthew, one of Jesus's disciples, records a collection of Jesus's teachings in one place. It's probably the most famous sermon given EVER! If you have your Bible, you can open to Matthew 5. Over the last few weeks, we've explored some really light, fun subjects like adultery, lust, divorce, remarriage, being people who are honest. Jesus decided to...
Jul 17, 2018•49 min•Ep. 106
We’re continuing our series in the Sermon on the Mount. I’ve spent a lot of time in fear, trepidation, and prayer over these last two messages. Last week we talked about lust and adultery, and that was really easy, so we decided to build on that and now we’re going to talk about divorce, remarriage, and oaths. Did you come to hear from the Lord today? I hope you did, because as much as I’ve wrestled with this passage, I feel like there’s freedom that Jesus wants to bring. As Isaiah (50:4) said, ...
Jul 10, 2018•45 min•Ep. 105
If you have your Bible, turn to Matthew 5. We're continuing our series of the Sermon on the Mount. We are about six messages in. Let me give two disclaimers as we begin this morning. Number One -- You got a service guide when you came in and it has an outline to follow along with the message. You can make a big 'X' on said outline and flip it over. There are three days between when I made that outline and today and God's done some different things in my heart and soul in that amount of time, so ...
Jul 02, 2018•47 min•Ep. 104
It's my privilege to talk about a passage of Scripture today that isn't very pleasant, but, hopefully, we'll be able to join together and realize we're not alone as we go to this passage. This is part of the Sermon on the Mount series that Ryan started a few weeks ago. When Ryan talked to me about it, I was excited to take a sermon; then I took a look at the passage I'm going to be dealing with: You have heard that it was said to those of old, "You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be l...
Jun 25, 2018•52 min•Ep. 103
Take a deep breath and identify that unbelievable smell wafting into the worship center today. BACON! If you're a student of the Scriptures, you may be thinking to yourself, "Should we be eating bacon?" Doesn't the Bible talk about bacon?! Leviticus 11:1-3, 7 --- The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, "Say to the Israelites: 'Of all the animals that live on land, these are the ones you may eat: You may eat any animal that has a divided hoof and that chews the cud. There are some that only chew the cu...
Jun 18, 2018•47 min•Ep. 102
We're in week 2 of a series we're doing on the Sermon on the Mount. If you have your Bible, open to Matthew 5. This is a picture of a man by the name of Michael Carroll. Michael Carroll, at the age of 19, won $14.4 million in the lottery. He was a garbage man at the time, just happened to play, and happened to win. Over the next decade of his life, from 2002 to 2012, he bought mansions, he bought cars, he bought drugs, he bought a number of different things. In the course of those ten years, he ...
Jun 11, 2018•41 min•Ep. 101
We are starting a new series that we'll be in all summer, where we're going to be exploring one of the most impactful, significant, beautiful messages ever given. It's called the Sermon on the Mount, and you can open your Bibles to Matthew 5, where you'll find it. Over the last few weeks, throughout our nation, we've been in a season that we affectionately refer to as graduation season. In graduations, you have a few pieces of pageantry, right, where it signifies that a person is moving from one...
Jun 04, 2018•47 min•Ep. 100
If you haven't been with us, let me catch you up on where we've been the last six weeks. We started by talking about our mission as a church, which is to help people live in the way of Jesus with the heart of Jesus. We started exploring these values that we want to shape us over the coming months and years that we have together. The value of presence of God---that we'd be people who pursue the presence of God, who experience the presence of God, who soak in the presence of God. That we would be ...
May 30, 2018•45 min•Ep. 99
If you're new with us, we're in a seven-week series called "Ethos." We're looking at the values, dreams, and hopes we have together as a community of faith, as we seek to live in the way of Jesus with the heart of Jesus. This week we're talking about renewal, next week we're going to be talking about roots, the last in our series. A few weeks back, my wife took our two boys to a mother-son event, so I got the chance to take my daughter out for a little daddy-daughter date. We went out to dinner ...
May 21, 2018•44 min•Ep. 98
I want to invite you to close your eyes and to pretend the year is 200. You live around the Mediterranean; you've decided to follow the way of Jesus. Against the advice of most of the people in your life, you've joined this sort of rogue, rag-tag band of the Jesus way followers. It's Sunday morning and before you go to work, you head to church. You get your family ready, you walk through the dusty streets, and you enter into the "sanctuary," which happens to be an apartment building. You sit aro...
May 14, 2018•43 min•Ep. 97
We're continuing our series called "Ethos." Ethos is a word that means the aspirations, the dreams, the hopes, the values of a community of people. Over the last few weeks, we've been exploring who we are as a church, as a community of faith. When you walked in today, you got the 'subtle' message that the reason we exist is to help people live in the way of Jesus with the heart of Jesus. {I believe it's ten feet tall on our wall.} We want to be all about Jesus and inviting people to Jesus and ca...
May 07, 2018•42 min•Ep. 96
Apr 30, 2018•38 min•Ep. 95
How many of you like scary movies? I love scary movies; I grew up watching scary movies. My wife and I, on date night, many, many times have gone to the theater to see a scary movie. I don't know, it's something really interesting. One of the most well-known scary movies of all time is a movie that came out in 1973 with a little actress named Linda Blair. The name of the film is called "The Exorcist." The film cost $8 million to make, but since 1973, it's made over $1.2 billion, through box offi...
Apr 23, 2018•46 min•Ep. 94
Ethos is the series we're in. We started last week, and we're going to be talking more about who God has created us and shaped us to be uniquely, some of our values, and our mission. Last week, we said the reason that we're here, the reason that we gather on a Sunday morning, is to help people live in the way of Jesus with the heart of Jesus. We want to help people become apprentices, or learners, or disciples of what it looks like to live more and more in the way of Jesus of Nazareth. Today we'...
Apr 16, 2018•43 min•Ep. 93
Over the next few weeks, we're going to be talking about what type of community "that brand new world" starts to give birth to. What type of community it starts to form. We're calling this series "Ethos." Ethos is a Greek word that means values, the character of something. It also means things that we believe and things that we dream about, things that we hope for, things that we plead with God for. Over the next eight weeks, we're going to take a step back and go, God, who are you shaping us to...
Apr 10, 2018•59 min•Ep. 92
Sometimes when we gather for Easter, we sing songs about life and resurrection, and it can feel a little bit like we're telling an incomplete story. We all know that, in the end, it's coming, SOMEDAY, but TODAY there's some stings, aren't there? Life is awe inspiring, and it can be awful. Life is painful, and it's powerful. Life can be holy in one moment and harrowing in the next. That's the life that we live, isn't it? We have these moments of bliss and then we have the reality of brokenness. I...
Apr 03, 2018•38 min•Ep. 91
We are in a series that we've entitled "4 Days that Changed the World." That's not some sort of spiritual hyperbole, this is the most talked about week, most written about week, most debated week, in the history of the cosmos. On Palm Sunday, when Jesus entered into the streets of Jerusalem, you start a clock ticking from there. One week. It's about .06% of Jesus's life and it's roughly 33% of the gospel narratives. Do you think they thought this was important? Just a little bit. Two weeks ago w...
Mar 26, 2018•46 min•Ep. 90
As a youth pastor, I can remember telling my students a fictitious story about a father and a son. The father was a draw-bridge operator. His son was with him at work, down climbing around in the gears, having a good time. A train was coming. The drawbridge was up. The father had to decide: Am I going to crush my son, kill my son, and save everybody on the train? Or, am I going to let my son live and everybody on the train die? It's a very emotional story and one that stirs the human heart. The ...
Mar 19, 2018•39 min•Ep. 89
From the moment Jesus arrives in Jerusalem, riding on a donkey, at what we refer to as the Triumphal Entry or Palm Sunday, to the time he rises from the grave is about .06% of his life. Not a lot of time. But if you read through the gospels, that one week encompasses 33% of the gospel narrative. It's one-third of the story that the gospel writers tell. If you put it all together, this one changed the world. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John felt compelled to tell us about it. From a lot of different...
Mar 16, 2018•48 min•Ep. 88
" We are starting a new series today that we are calling "4 Days That Changed the World." Sometimes a walk has a way of changing things. I did a wedding yesterday --- those doors in the back of the worship center opened, and a bride walked down the aisle to be received by her groom. Anecdotally, it was a 'Cook' marrying a 'Hunter.' By the end of the wedding, it was two had become one. Some walks change everything. March 21, 1965: Martin Luther King, Jr., and a number of his civil rights workers ...
Mar 07, 2018•48 min•Ep. 87
Good morning. We are on the last Sunday of an eight-week series, where we've been studying the letters that Jesus writes, through the Apostle John, to the churches in the book of Revelation (chapters 2 and 3). This final letter is written to the church at Laodicea. Open your Bible to Revelation 3:14. As we've done in each letter, we've given the church that Jesus is writing to a title. I've tried to summarize who they are, their ethos, their DNA as a church. This letter I'm entitling as the lett...
Feb 27, 2018•47 min•Ep. 86
" William Cimillo, on March 28, 1947, woke up and went to work like he did every other day. He was a bus driver in New York City. This day was a little bit different. William started out on his normal route, and instead of making his first stop in New York City, he just kept driving. He went to New Jersey and had a sandwich in a café for lunch, then he just kept driving more. Driving and driving. Eventually he got to Washington, D.C., in his RTD bus. He got out, took a look at the White House an...
Feb 20, 2018•44 min•Ep. 85
" The words from God to this nation were "keep going." But they were words that were built on a story. They weren't just said in a vacuum. See, this nation of roughly 2,000 people found themselves in a valley, and they heard those words from God, but BEFORE that, they'd seen the hand of God. It was God who'd led them out of 400 years of slavery into freedom, but he led them to this place where they were on this peninsula. Water surrounding them on three sides. Miraculously, the Red Sea parted an...
Feb 13, 2018•44 min•Ep. 84
"Do we have any foodies in the house? I've changed, dramatically, the way that I've been eating the last couple of months, but for some reason I've become addicted to watching travel food shows, where people go to other countries and eat what I can't eat right now. My favorite new show is called "Somebody Feed Phil," about a guy named Phil Rosenthal, the creator of "Everybody Loves Raymond." He travels around and experiences the cuisine from all of these different cities from around the world. W...
Feb 06, 2018•44 min•Ep. 83
" Over the Christmas and New Year holiday, my family and I had the chance to get away and we went up to a cabin in the mighty metropolis of Hot Sulfur Springs. My whole family was there and we had a great time. We had planned this pancake breakfast for New Year's Day. There was no shortage of texts messages back and forth about the kind of pancakes we were going to eat. Oatmeal pancakes. Banana pancakes. We got up on New Year's Day with sleep in our eyes and deprivation in our souls because we h...
Feb 02, 2018•44 min•Ep. 82
