Making a turn toward Holy Week and Resurrection Sunday, we entered the story of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem and subsequent arrest. Now is the time to lay down our swords, whether we have swung them in anger and fear, or have suffered wounds self-inflicted, and choose instead to follow our Savior in trust toward the Cross.

In this season of newness, we continue to examine various dimensions of our shared faith and practice with fresh sight. This Sunday, Pastor Mike jumped back into our recent conversation about our rhythms and relationship to scripture. Engaging with the Bible is always an invitation to humility, and as we look to Jesus’ encounter with a certain young man we consider the things (tangible or not) that we cannot seem to release, including our own assumptions and certainties.

In this faithful season of newness, we continue to be examine various dimensions of our shared faith and practice with fresh sight. Last Sunday, our sister Stacie Kopczynski vulnerably invited us into her own winding story with the church, including the places of deep disillusionment and skepticism. She asks an important question that many are wrestling with themselves: how do we faithfully move forward when we feel “over” so much of what the Church has become, yet so much within us remains drawn to the heart of Christ and a longing to see it lived out in the places to which we have been called?

Part of our ongoing invitation in this faithful season of newness continues to be examining the dimensions of our shared faith and practice with fresh sight. This Sunday, we examined our often fraught relationship with the Bible, and began to consider a path toward a renewed engagement with the written word which points us toward the Living Word. If scripture has ever been used to harm you or someone you love, we honor and grieve with you in that pain, and long to be a safe harbor along the journey of healing.

As we gathered together in worship for the first time in 2024, we revisited Jesus’ Parable of the Wineskins, and the ways it invites us to reconsider our assumptions about the form of the Church. How might God be calling us to embrace unfamiliar paths in which the life of Christ would resound anew in our lives and in the place we have been uniquely rooted?

As we shared in our first Christmas celebration as a church family, Pastor Mike offered a word of hope from the nativity story; a reminder that God isn’t waiting for us at some unknown destination, but has drawn near to us right where we are.

On this first Sunday of Advent, our inaugural journey through the liturgical calendar as a community, Pastor Mike invites us into this season of preparation and patient waiting, as we anticipate celebrating the remembrance of God’s incarnation in Jesus’ birth. How might this season disrupt and shape our time of celebration? May these weeks not be defined by spending and stress, but by an encounter with the true and living God, who joins us in fellowship to model a path of sacrificial love.

The liturgy and teaching from our gathering on November 22nd. Pastor Mike asks us to consider what it looks like to voyage together, as a seedling community attempting to follow in the way of Jesus, within the particularities of the space and time we inhabit? The voice of the Shepherd will lead the way. In the beloved community of Christ, all of you belong, and all of YOU belongs.

The liturgy and teaching from our gathering on October 22nd. As a newly established community, part of declaring the Lordship of Christ is identifying and discarding the idolatrous versions of Jesus that have wrongly been allowed to take root in our homes and communities. Our journey, directed by the Holy Spirit, always beckons us from the supposed seat of power to the margins, from judgment to mercy, from fear to love.

The liturgy and teaching from our gathering on October 1st. Before you were anything, you were already beloved. As we continue moving toward the vision that God is giving us for this new community, we need not be afraid of the unknown, because our Savior knows the way even when all we can see is darkness.

The liturgy and teaching from our gathering on September 10th. As we together make a step of faith into this journey, Pastor Mike invites us all to prayerfully discern the particular ways that we are called into to the shared work ahead.

If you were unable to join us for our first Sunday liturgy on August 20, we would love for to you give a listen to hear a bit more about the genesis of Vessel and our guiding ethos as we continue gathering together in this season of new rooting.