Resurrection City Church - St. Paul Minnesota

Rebuilding Around Jesus | Getting Excited About the Church

The church is the place where God’s people gather, and they have done so from the very start. In this sermon, Pastor Joel unpacks the foundation of the church in the story of Jesus talking about the rock the church is built on in Matthew 16. What can we learn as essentials about the church from this short story? How does it inform us on how the church has misstepped and also gotten it right since then? This is one of Pastor Joel’s passion projects, so we hope you’ll join us in hearing him share his vision for the church!

Rebuilding Around Jesus | Taking Scripture Seriously

Jesus took Scripture very serious. It gave shape to his ministry, it informed his mindset of how he viewed the world, and he thought it gave him reason to die on a cross, trusting he would be raised again. If we take Jesus seriously, we have to take Scripture seriously as well. The byproduct of this is it gives us a firm foundation from which to ask hard questions about Scripture and not worry about things shattering around us. 

But what does it look like to take Scripture serious? The church definitely has taken Scripture serious in the past, but has it done that in the right way? In this sermon, Pastor Joel gives some insight into how to treat Scripture seriously like Jesus.

Rebuilding Around Jesus | Rethinking Sin

The church and the world around it largely approach “sin” the same way: create barriers and legislate it away so it doesn’t make us impure. This is precisely the thing Jesus encountered in his own time as well, and he was not about to tolerate it. In this sermon, 

Pastor Joel challenges us to think in a fresh way about how we approach sin in the church and outside of it and in a way that builds up on what Jesus teaches us. Jesus calls us to simply “repent & believe” and avoid being deluded into thinking the problem in the world is something for other people to deal with and not us.

Rebuilding Around Jesus | What Does Creation Tell Us About God?

Who is God and who has he made humans to be? When we come to the topic of creation, this is the question the Bible is trying to answer. We can come to this topic with lots of other questions, however.  How long did it take? Did we evolve or not?  And more.

There isn’t anything wrong with questions like these, but it’s important to understand the Bible isn’t trying to be a science or history textbook. Instead, it’s about the revelation of God, which ultimately happens in Jesus. In this sermon, Pastor Julie explains how we can start where God and the Bible start and then work through other questions from there, while holding fast to what we learn in Genesis. When we start where the Bible starts, then it begins to have relevance for how we live.

Rebuilding Around Jesus | Why Do Christians Think Jesus is God?

The word ’Trinity’ and a whole lot of other language Christians used to describe God as including Jesus and the Holy Spirit in it isn’t in the Bible. So why do Christians think Jesus is God? Is this just a later development that didn’t reflect what Jesus thought about himself? 

In this sermon, Pastor Joel unpacks what Jesus and his first audience said about what he was doing in the context of Israel’s expectation of what God himself would do, and how the mystery of that is good news for us today as we ask hard questions of God and rebuild faith around the shepherd who comes in power to gather his flock.

Rebuilding Around Jesus | Rethinking Jesus’ Death & Resurrection

Jesus, a man understood as a great prophet, had his ministry end in death, with the claim that he rose again. This story is so familiar to many of us that we can miss some of the most important elements of it according to the gospels.

How do we understand his death in its first century setting rather than in the way we have often grown up hearing about it? How does it connect to him being a prophet? And how does Jesus’ death & resurrection provide us a firm ground to stand on even when we feel like the faith we’ve received needs to be looked at to figure out what is from man and what is from God? In this sermon, Pastor Joel has you covered on all of these questions and more!

Rebuilding Around Jesus | Jesus the Prophet

"Deconstruction" is something a lot of evangelicals find themselves doing at the moment. The term can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but it basically refers to the practice of reexamining long held beliefs. While it can seem like something new in the church, the practice of asking ourselves if what we've received from tradition is actually from God is a healthy one and something that has produced much fruit in the history of the church. 

In this series, we will be deconstructing and then rebuilding around Jesus, starting from scratch. How was he understood from the people who first encountered him? That's where we start in this sermon, as Pastor Joel looks at Jesus as a prophet, a big part of his ministry that is often overlooked.  What we find is that the prophet Jesus doesn't just let us deconstruct him, however. Instead, he deconstructs and then reconstructs us. 

Philippians | Contentment & Christ

The apostle Paul speaks of his contentedness in every season, whether in challenging times or peaceful ones. What does he mean? How does he find this? And what is the difference between contentedness and happiness? Pastor Joel shares all this in the final message in our summer Philippians sermon.

Vision | In St. Paul as it is in Heaven

As we enter a new season this fall, we are taking a Sunday to focus in on what we want to keep in the front of our minds, guiding our heads, hearts, and hands as a church and as people. In this sermon, Pastors Julie and Joel talk about what it means for us to live the Lord's Prayer, specifically In St. Paul as it is in Heaven. Join us as we plot a course for this season as God has called us!

Philippians | Habits That Form Us

Habits and rhythms have a massive impact on our mental state, our well-being, our happiness, and most importantly, our worship. For Christians, this last one is vitally important to be aware of.

However, often we're not aware of how our habits affect our worship, and our worship and connection to his Spirit suffer. In this sermon, Pastor Julie lists what Paul says are the patterns of living we ought to have to connect us more to God and worship him with all of our hearts.