Church

I'm excited to be sharing with you a new feature that are adding to our weekend teaching at Mountainview. It's a weekly sermon follow-up that includes additional thoughts and ideas about how to put the sermon into action. It's written by Vanessa Maruska, one of our members. I know that you will find it helpful! Love Where You Live 1 CORINTHIANS 9:19-23 How does our society view us as “Christians”? It seems most cultures across geographies and generations have perceived followers of Christ as backward, subversive and now most prevalently as hypocritical prosecutors. That’s quite the wrong position for us in God’s courtroom, when we’ve been called out to serve as love-filled witnesses. How would any recipient of our message trust what we say if they have no point of reference on that truth being equally lived out in our own lives? To put it in today’s vernacular, ‘don’t talk…

When Jesus commanded us to love our neighbors he didn’t give us the right to pick which neighborhood. As the parable of the Good Samaritan indicates, we are to treat all people with love and respect – even those we disagree with politically or whose lifestyles offend us. We will never win people to Jesus if they believe we don’t like them.Watch more videos at the Mountainview YouTube channel. Need a Speaker or Presenter? Interested in having me speak for your church, conference, or organization? Follow this link to learn more. Looking for a Speaking Coach? The most successful people are not always the smartest people. But they have one thing in common: they communicate well. I'd love to help you become a better communicator. Click here.

Believe it or not, I sing the theme song to Mr. Rogers to open our series, "Love Where You Live."Watch more videos at the Mountainview YouTube channel. Need a Speaker or Presenter? Interested in having me speak for your church, conference, or organization? Follow this link to learn more. Looking for a Speaking Coach? The most successful people are not always the smartest people. But they have one thing in common: they communicate well. I'd love to help you become a better communicator. Click here.

The second greatest commandment calls us to love our neighbors as ourselves – which means we must know them in order to love them. To reach an increasingly secular and hostile culture, Christians must learn to think and act missionally. Traditional methods of attracting people “back to church” will no longer work in a culture where an increasingly number of people have never been to church in the first place. The series will use the example of Paul as a model for engaging a secular culture.Watch more videos at the Mountainview YouTube channel. Need a Speaker or Presenter? Interested in having me speak for your church, conference, or organization? Follow this link to learn more. Looking for a Speaking Coach? The most successful people are not always the smartest people. But they have one thing in common: they communicate well. I'd love to help you become a better communicator. Click…

Our family has a few traditions at Christmas. We let the girls open a gift on Christmas Eve. Hannah and the girls attend as many Christmas Eve services as humanly possible! We watch classic Christmas movies together. We even have stockings for our two cats (although I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that!). All told, those aren’t bad traditions. I imagine we could have worse ones … like listening to David Hasselhoff or Roseanne Barr sing Christmas songs. If you've ever seen “Fiddler on the Roof" then you probably remember the main song … tradition, tradition. Few people held more fiercely to their traditions than first century Jews. For 2,000 years, Jews had a tradition that told them to never bow down and worship any human being as God. Theologically that was idolatry and blasphemy. We gather today to celebrate Christmas – the birth of Jesus. But we celebrate more…