Proverbs

The book of Proverbs is a collection of wisdom one-liners, with the goal of repetitively hammering on foundational truths for how to live a well-lived life. We’ll spend the last two months of the summer diving into selected proverbs that teach us how to live winsomely and wisely with God, with others, at work, at home, and throughout everyday life.

STUDY GUIDES & KIDTOWN HOMELINKS

To help facilitate LifeGroup discussion we'll be posting resources for each week of the series. Homelinks are a tool used to connect parents and their children by helping them review what's being taught on Sundays, we'll be posting one for each week of the series. 

Week 1: Invitation to Wisdom (Study Guide) (Homelink)

Week 2: The Wisdom of Steadfast Love (Study Guide) (Homelink)

Week 3: Wisdom and Sloth (Study Guide) (Homelink)

Week 4: Wisdom and Community (Study Guide) (Homelink)

Week 5: Wisdom and Decision Making (Study Guide) (Homelink)

Week 6: Wisdom and Words (Study Guide) (Homelink)

Week 7: Wisdom and Pride (Study Guide) (Leader Guide) (Homelink)

Week 8: Wisdom and Sex (Study Guide) (Homelink)

Week 9: Wisdom and Wealth (Study Guide) (Homelink)

Week 10: Laugh at the Days to Come (Study Guide) (Homelink)

Home

Starting on April 23, all three of our churches will start a series called Home. Home is a six week series looking at God’s intentions for using our homes and families as tools for the advancement of His Kingdom. Our goal is to help our church family understand how God repurposes our homes, families, and relationships to help reconcile people back to himself. Join us for our new sermon series, "Home".

STUDY GUIDES & KIDTOWN HOMELINKS

To help facilitate LifeGroup discussion we'll be posting resources for each week of the series. Homelinks are a tool used to connect parents and their children by helping them review what's being taught on Sundays, we'll be posting one for each week of the series. 

Week 1: Theology of Home (Study Guide) (Homelink)

Week 2: Togetherness (Study Guide) (Homelink)

Week 3: The Home in the Hands of a Loving God  (Study Guide) (Homelink)

Week 4: Dads, Moms, Arrows in the Quiver (Study Guide) (Homelink)

Week 5: Brought Up in the Instruction of the Lord (Study Guide) (Homelink)

Week 6: Make Columbia Home (Study Guide) (Homelink)

Crisis of Faith

Have you ever found yourself doubting Jesus? Do you end up wrestling with tough questions that leave you confused about what you believe? Starting on March 5, all three of our churches will take 6 weeks to look at pivotal moments where people were faced with the same types of questions after interacting with Jesus. Our goal is to help people address the issues that consciously and subconsciously keep them from following Jesus. If you've ever experienced moments like this, you're not alone. Join us for our new sermon series, "Crisis of Faith."

Study Guides & Kidtown Homelinks

To help facilitate LifeGroup discussion we'll be posting resources for each week of the series. Homelinks are a tool used to connect parents and their children by helping them review what's being taught on Sundays, we'll be posting one for each week of the series. 

Week 1: Isn't Faith Irrational? (Study Guide) (Homelink)

Week 2: Why Isn't My Life Turning Out How I Hoped? (Study Guide) (Homelink)

Week 3: How Could God Love Someone Like Me? (Study Guide) (Homelink)

Week 4: What's It Gonna Cost Me? (Study Guide) (Homelink)

Week 5: Why Did God Let This Happen? (Study Guide) (Homelink)

Week 6: I'm A Good Person, Why Do I Need To Be Saved? (Study Guide) (Homelink)

Stand-Alone | Obedient Suffering

Sermon by Brandon Clements on February 26, 2017.

Precious In His Sight

We are a society where race often has a profound effect on life experiences, life opportunities, and social relationships. Segregation ended a long time ago, but even to this day practical separation between black Americans and white Americans often still exists. Somehow we often end up living in different neighborhoods, attending different schools, watching different TV shows, listening to different music and even joining different churches. Racial separation, tension, and misunderstanding have anything but vanished, as many recent controversial events prove.

The truth is, the current racial issues in America didn’t come out of nowhere. There is a history. A story. However, the hope that God’s people walk in regarding the potential of racial reconciliation didn’t come out of nowhere either. 

If we are going to have any shot at being a faithful church in our context, we have to know the story of God and the story of America. When we are equipped with both of these stories and an identity that goes deeper than skin color, Gods people have much to offer in the face of long-standing racial issues.

To help our LifeGroups grow in our understanding of American history and God's story, we decided to write a book for this series. Inside of the book you will find a chapter to go along with each week of the series, corresponding study guides and black pages for taking notes. To get the most out of this series we encourage you to read each chapter, take notes and discuss it with the members of your LifeGroup. We won't be having bulletins for this series so please remember to bring your book each week to the Gatherings. 

Stand-Alone | Grace for Good Works

Sermon by Adam Gibson on January 8, 2017.

|giv| 2016

One of our goals is to be a growingly generous people. So every year we take 3-4 weeks around the holidays to press into generosity; to think on God’s generosity to us and to talk about how we can grow in walking in the kind of generous love He shows to us every day. We like to call it our |giv| series.

This year we have three parts to our |giv| project, you can find out what they are here. 

Study Guides:

Week 1: Generous Hearts (View Study Guide)
Week 2: Generous Rewards (View Study Guide)
Week 3: Generous Contentment (View Study Guide)

Sermons:

Exiles: A Study of 1 Peter

"Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood: May grace and peace be multiplied to you."

- 1 Peter 1:1-2

All three of our churches will take 14 weeks this fall to rally our family of churches to become the beautiful, God-glorifying, counter-cultural family that God desires His church to be. Peter uses the concept of living as exiles to help Christians connect and understand how to seek God’s kingdom and His mission no matter what level of hostility we find in the surrounding culture. Peter also helpfully hits on timely and practical issues like marriage, politics, community and suffering all within the context of living life as a regular exile.

STUDY GUIDES & LEADER GUIDES

To help facilitate LifeGroup discussion we'll be posting study guides for each week of the series. You can find each week's study guide here: 

Stand-Alone | Fountains & Cisterns

Sermon by Adam Gibson on July 31, 2016.

Stand-Alone | Created for Good Works

Stand-Alone Sermon:

Sermon by Antony Frederick on July 24, 2016. Ant Frederick serves as one of the pastors of our Two Notch Church, you can find information about Midtown Two Notch here.

Stand-Alone | Ordinary ≠ Insignificant

Stand-Alone Sermon:

Sermon by Michael Bailey on July 17, 2016. Michael Bailey serves as one of the pastors of our Lexington Church, you can find their series Ordinary ≠ Insignificant here.

Anthology: Learning to Love the Stories of God

There may be no form of communication more powerful than stories. From our infancy to our dying days, we listen to, learn from, are shocked by, memorize, laugh at, retell, cry from and connect to each other with stories.

So it should be no surprise to us, that the Bible loves to use stories to help us know the God who invented the art of story. Throughout this series, we will be looking at many of the individual stories that tell important moments in the overarching story of the Old Testament. In the individual stories and the bigger picture, we will see God's incredible faithfulness to move His people and all of human history toward the centerpiece of the entire story; Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. 

So we invite you to join with us for our new series, Anthology: Learning to Love the Stories of God.

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To help with the series we've created two pages for you to check out. The first is a breakdown of the different Old Testament sections we will be studying and the second is a resource page for LifeGroups.

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Sermons:

Luke

Most everyone has an opinion on Jesus. Maybe you think he’s God in the flesh. Maybe you think he’s a helpful spiritual mentor. Maybe you think he was sort of crazy. A rebel, a pithy teacher, a homeboy. Or maybe you’re not sure he ever actually existed. Whatever the case, everyone has some sort of answer to the question. The important thing is to ask “is my version of Jesus the real one?” Answering that question is perhaps the most important thing you’ll ever do. Because all of life hangs on the answer.

Study Guide

To accompany our Luke series, we've created study binders that include space for sermon notes, personal study questions, and LifeGroup discussion guides. The study guide pages are available on their respective sermon pages available below:

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Sermons:

Theology of Sex

There’s no shortage of oversimplified narratives about gender, sexuality, and marriage. These days it seems that everyone’s opinion is the right one and if you don’t share that opinion, you’re the enemy. But what is actually true? What do we do when confronted with difficult questions and even more difficult situations? How do we love our neighbor without compromising what is true? For something as complex as gender and sexuality, we need something far bigger. Far richer. Far more nuanced. We need a theology of sex.

This series spends seven weeks unpacking God’s design for gender and sexuality in an effort to understand ourselves, love our neighbor, and live out our mission.

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Sermons:

New Year, New Building

Christmas Gathering 2015

On December 20 our entire family of churches gathered for one city-wide Christmas Gathering.

|giv| 2015

Every year we use Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday momentum to rally our church to the gospel origins of Christian generosity and incarnational ministry. Because Jesus gave himself, we give ourselves in response. This series will take 3 weeks to orient our church family around the idea of church planting in Lexington and Knoxville. Find out more about our efforts to plant these churches here.

What's Killing Me

At the beginning of each year, our culture focuses all its effort on bettering itself. Losing weight, eating better, and making better choices are on most people's mind as they seek to establish a better year than the one before. Often, the things that most interfere with our joy are internal. Things like anger, lust, and anxiety constantly seek to entrap us, ensnare us and make a ruin of our life and vitality.

This series takes a look at common hang-ups and frustrations that most people deal with, and discover together how the good news of Jesus frees us from them.

E-BOOK

To accompany this series, we've created an interactive e-book. The e-book contains inventories to help you work through the series on a practical level.

Sermons:

|giv| 2014

Every year around the holidays, we participate in something we like to call |giv|. We spend time talking about what God did in |giv|ing us Jesus, and then spend time |giv|ing in return. Through the years, we’ve looked for needs in our city and our world, and then partnered together to help meet those needs. Through the years, we’ve done things like…

• |giv|ing shoes to people without them
• |giv|ing money to plant churches in India
• |giv|ing hoodies to people in the cold in Columbia
• |giv|ing Christmas presents to kids in the Yucatan peninsula
• |giv|ing safe houses to children rescued out of sex slavery
• |giv|ing to plant a church in inner-city Columbia.

Because He gave, we |giv|. It’s that simple.

(Part of the Luke series)

Sermons:

#Ferguson, Race & the Gospel