Joel Wlld | Apr. 7 2024 It’s easy for us to overlook the ascension of Jesus back to Heaven. In fact, it is often the event of Jesus’ life that gets the least amount of focus. We hear Jesus’ words, “It is to your advantage that I go away” and are left dumfounded and confused. Wouldn’t it have been better if He stayed here on this earth and lived amo…

Kyle Kauffman | Mar. 31 2024 Most historians agree that a man named Jesus lived in the first century and died by crucifixion at the hands of the Roman Empire. Yet many believe this was the end of the story of Jesus. What if this really was the end of story? What if Jesus remained in the grave and he was never truly raised back to life like the gosp…

Kyle Kauffman | Mar. 24 2024 How can someone who has done something wrong be made right again? How can our wrongs be atoned for? We can be prone to both minimize our own sinfulness and presume that we deserve forgiveness for whatever sins we have committed. The sacrifices in the Bible consistently make clear that our sin is a far bigger deal then w…

Kyle Kauffman | Mar. 17 2024 Relationships can be very fragile. They can easily be fractured and broken in all sorts of ways. And when a relationship is fractured, we often look for a way for the relationship to be fixed/restored. We were created to enjoy a relationship with God. But that relationship has been fractured because of sin. And yet we f…

Joel Wood | Mar. 10 2024 It’s easy to trust God when the seas of our life are calm. When things are going the way we want them to, circumstances are good, and there’s no really big trials we are facing, trust in God seems to come naturally. But when suffering, temptation, and trials start to blow and rage against us, it can be hard to continue to t…

Kyle Kauffman | Mar. 3 2024 One of the things that we notice as we read Hebrews is that it is not only full of descriptions of how Jesus is Better, but it is also interspersed with serious warnings about turning away from Jesus. While these warnings are contained throughout the book, perhaps nowhere is the warning and what’s at stake clearer then i…

Kyle Kauffman | Feb. 25 2024 In Hebrews 4:14-5:10 we see Jesus described as a Perfect Priest. While the original readers of Hebrews would have understood their need for a priest, the idea of a priest likely seems foreign to us today. And yet we still look to people to play the role of a priest in our lives. We look to others who will listen to us, …

Kyle Kauffman | Feb. 18 2024 Israel had some great leaders throughout their history, including especially Moses and Joshua. And yet the author of Hebrews wanted both them and us to see how much of a better leader Jesus is. We often choose what leaders we will trust and follow based on who they are, what they’ve done, and the promises/hope they offe…

Kyle Kauffman | Feb. 11 2024 We were made to worship. It’s impossible for us not to worship. Whatever we give our mind’s attention to and our heart’s affection to is what we worship. And there are all sorts of things in this life that compete for our attention and our affection. We can easily end up worshipping the wrong things. So many of thing th…

Joel Wood | Feb. 4 2024 When presented with different options, we all want to choose what is better. In many ways our lives are one long exercise in trying to choose what is better. Whether it’s what we do with our time, with our money, or with our energy, we are always trying to figure out what is better so that we might give our lives to what pur…

Kyle Kauffman | Jan. 28 2024 It’s easy for the church as a whole and us as individuals to drift in the direction of an inward focus. There are so many needs within the church that we can spend all of our time simply focused on meeting them. But God has given us a mission, and that mission requires us moving out. Moving outward with a welcoming mind…

Kyle Kauffman | Jan 21 2024 The tendency in our modern world is to either see children as a burden (keeping us from our dreams) or to see children as an idol (having our dreams wrapped up in them). Children can be seen as an inconvenience or distraction getting in the way of what really matters. God shows his value for children in the fact that He …

Kyle Kauffman | Jan. 14 2024 It is so easy for us to view our homes as our own private refuges and fortresses. They can quickly become the places where we seek to escape the burdens of other people. What would it instead look like if we saw our homes as welcome centers: places where we could invite others in so that we could get to know them and en…

Kyle Kauffman | Jan. 7 2024 The church is meant to be a community that looks and feels different then the world outside of it. The church is meant to be a place where people feel known and seen, loved and valued. We are called to put on display in our culture what we believe in our doctrine. Therefore, if we truly believe God is a welcoming God the…

Brandon Fisher | Dec. 31 2023 Welcome is a metaphor for the gospel. Hospitality is central to God’s Heart. The Bible is a story of a God who displays his glory and grace by pursuing the people who have spurned Him in order to welcome them back into His family. This is perhaps displayed nowhere more clearly than in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. W…

Kyle Kauffman | Dec 24. 2023 Christmas is often a season of great joy. There are all sorts of reasons we make look forward to Christmas, be excited about Christmas, or be happy at Christmas. Yet so much joy at Christmas (and in all of life) is surfacy, shallow, and hollow. This doesn’t mean that it’s bad, it just means that the joy can so easily be…

Kyle Kauffman | Dec. 17 2023 In our lives the temptation to seek comfort in this world and apart from Gid is great. Our lives can so easily become all about finding and keeping comfort. We end up trying to avoid all that is uncomfortable even when we know God is calling us to give up our comfort. Christmas can so easily just become another season w…

Kyle Kauffman | Dec 10 2023 We all have a tendency to put ourselves first. We our prone to prioritize our own desires, interests, honor, and recognition. We seek to look out for ourselves more than we do for others. We seek to climb the ladder and get ahead of others. We look for ways that we can serve ourselves (or that others can serve us) rather…

Joel Wood | Dec 3 2023 When it comes to knowing the truth, it is inevitable that we will disagree with others and find ourselves in situations where we feel like we need to speak up about what we believe is true. This may be with fellow Christians where we disagree on some truth or it may be in conversations with those who don’t know Christ where w…

Kyle Kauffman | Nov 26 2023 Our ability to know and live according to the truth will be greatly affected by the information we take in. Who and what do we listen to the most, watch the most, read the most, etc? We are people who are inevitably shaped by what we give our attention to. Lots of voices (perhaps more than ever before) clamor for our att…

Kyle Kauffman | Nov 19 2023 In a world that is full of voices, how do we determine what is true and what isn’t true? In an age where everyone has their own sources, experts, scientists and theories to back something up how do we discern what’s really true and what’s false? How do we determine what is fake news and what’s real news? How do we live w…

Kyle Kauffman | Nov 12 2023 Who gets the final say in what is true in your life? Who do you look to tell you what is true? Who are the authorities you submit to? Authority and truth are inevitably connected because we will look to some authority to determine what is true. But we are prone to have a skepticism and cynicism towards authority. As sinf…

Kyle Kauffman | Nov. 5 2023 What is truth? It’s a question that’s as old as time. And it’s a question that’s as important as life itself. We ask this question because we want to know what is true and what is false. But even more importantly we ask this question because we want to know if truth really exists and if so, how we can come to know the tr…

Joel Wood | Oct. 29 2023 One of the storylines we can find traced throughout the Bible is that there is a cosmic, unseen, spiritual war that is happening throughout history. It is not simply a war of good vs. evil or of two equally competing powers. Rather it is a war between God and Satan. It is a war that Satan started when he attempted to take G…

Kyle Kauffman | Oct 22 2023 Our relationships with other people can simultaneously be one of the greatest gifts we experience in this life and one of the greatest challenges we face in this life. This is especially true in our closest of relationships with the people that we live with, work with, and see every day. The gospel is the good news of ho…

Kyle Kauffman | Oct 15 2023 One of God’s resounding commands that travels across the pages of the Bible and across time and history for his people is this: “Be holy for I am holy.” We find in Ephesians that one of the very purposes why God chose to save us and why and why Jesus died on the cross for us is to make us holy. It’s really easy for us to…

Kyle Kauffman | Oct 8 2023 We often spend so much time thinking about what the gospel means for our past and what it means for our future that we can miss that the gospel is also good news for our present. There tends to be a gap in our gospel where we sometimes struggle to know or understand what difference it should make for the present. In Ephes…

Keith Rohrer | Oct 1 2023 Keystone Mission Summit

Kyle Kauffman | Sept 24 2023 If we want to grow and change in some area of our lives, we likely come up with a plan of how we will try to grow in that area. We come up with a strategy, set goals, and hope to see change. God’s goal for all Christians is that that we grow into maturity in Christ. And God’s plan and strategy for how he will accomplish…

Brandon Fisher | Sept 17 2023 Our view of the church is so often small and inadequate. We have misconceptions of the church or we misunderstand the true nature of the church. Sometimes we think church is just place we go listen to some music and hear a sermon. Sometimes we see all the flaws of the church and are left wondering if being a part of a …

Joel Wood | Sept 10 2023 The church is designed to be full of people that are different. The church is not meant to be built on the ground that we look the same, talk the same, vote the same, enjoy the same hobbies, have the same culture, or even speak the same language. Rather the church is meant to be built on the ground that we are all united to…

Kyle Kauffman | Sept. 3 2023 Although every single Christian has a unique and individual story to their life, we also have an identical and collective story to our lives. The details of how we came to faith in Christ may be different, but the true story that lies behind every one of our conversions is the exact same. As we understand our collective…

Kyle Kauffman | Aug. 27 2023 In the longest sentence of the Bible, we find some of the most incredible truths of the Bible! We see what God has done and will do for us and why he has and will do it. And as we see this, we discover more of who we are in Christ and what God has done in saving us. We discover that the church is ultimately not a group …

Kyle Kauffman | Aug. 20 2023 This week will begin our series on Ephesians by orienting ourselves to the people and time this book was originally written to and by understanding the main message of the book. We will look at some of the relevant Biblical and cultural background on Ephesus and the church in Ephesus in order to understand who Paul was …

Kyle Kauffman | August 13 2023 How does fearing God overcome our fear of failing at something in this life? We are often terrified to step out and try something new or to step up and lead something because we are scared of failing and not living up to expectations. We are often scared to let either ourselves or others down. Deep down many people te…

Joel Wood | August 6 2023 How does fearing God overcome the fear we all tend to have when it comes to suffering and dying? We know that we will suffer at times in this life and that we will all die. But the fear of these things happening in the future can keep us paralyzed in the present. A proper fear of God frees us from fearing what may lie in t…

Joel Wood | July 30 2023 How does fearing God overcome the pervasive fear of man in our lives? Whether it’s wanting to please people, fearing rejection and criticism, or just being concerned with what other people think about us, fear of man tends to run deep. A proper fear of God can enable us to overcome our fear of man and obey God even when it …

Kyle Kauffman | July 23 2023 There are so many things in this life that are uncertain. It’s easy for our minds to dwell on the uncertainty and try to play out all the ‘what ifs.’ When we do that, we often imagine the worst and anxiously worry about the bad things that could happen to us and to our loved ones. We grasp for ways to control the outcom…

Kyle Kauffman | July 16 2023 We rarely speak of fearing God today and even when we do, we can still end up easily misunderstanding what it means to fear God. Though we all know what it feels like to fear something the idea of fearing God often remains unclear and fuzzy to us. We wonder if we should still fear God today. And if so, what should that …

Kyle Kauffman | July 9 2023 There are all sorts of things we may fear in this life. Sometimes fear can be a minor phobia and at other times it can be a crippling panic. Fears can be obvious and very clear. But fears can also remain hidden and be hard to identify. Fear in and of itself is not a bad thing. There are certain things we are right to be …

Joel Wood | July 2 2023 All nations, cultures, and peoples are meant to worship God. Yet in the Tower of Babel we find the exact opposite. The peoples band together to build a tower that will magnify humans and their efforts rather than God. God responds by coming down to disperse the peoples and confuse their languages. Yet even in God’s judgment …

Kyle Kauffman | June 25 2023 God makes and keeps promises. That reality alone should amaze us. But here’s the even more amazing part: God makes and keeps promises to sinners. God shows us that a relationship with him is not built, earned, or enabled by our obedience and efforts. Rather the gift of his presence and blessing in our life is rooted in …

Kyle Kauffman | June 18 2023 God judges sin. This can leave us surprised and shocked. It’s hard for us to read stories like the flood in Genesis without walking away surprised by how seriously God takes sin. Yet if we want to recognize how great God’s mercy is in saving us, we must also come to grips with how great our sin is and the judgment we ri…

Kyle Kauffman | June 11 2023 We often skip over or cruise past the genealogy lists in the Bible. They have unfamiliar names that are hard to pronounce and seem overly repetitive. We might wonder, “Why in the world is this even in the Bible?” Even these lists have something important to teach us, especially this first list in the Bible. They point u…

Joel Wood | June 4, 2023 Sometimes things go from bad to worse. That’s the story of Genesis 4. We see how quickly sin spreads and multiplies and creates more pain and hurt in this world. This story shows us how powerful sin is in our lives and in this world. It corrupts, infects, multiplies, and leaves a path of destruction in its wake. This story …

Kyle Kauffman | May 28th 2023 As one author says, Genesis 3 tells us of the “Second saddest day in history.” This chapter tells us the story of where things went wrong, not just in the initial story of the first humans, but in each of our own stories over and over again. In this story we find the entrance of sin into the world. We find an answer to…

Kyle Kauffman | May 21 2023 Marriage is an incredible gift from God. We see marriage as a institution and relationship designed by God for our good and his glory. Yet there are all sorts of ways that marriage can become twisted and distorted. We can attempt to define marriage on our own terms according to our own desires. We can make marriage all a…

Kyle Kauffman | May 14 2023 God gave people specific commands from the start “to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it.” And then he puts Adam and Eve in the garden to “Work it and Keep it” God intends for us to be people who cultivate the earth in order to make it better, and who use our gifts and abilities to work as an act of…

Kyle Kauffman | May 7 2023 Part of what it means to be human is have a body. God designed us not simply to be spirits but to have flesh and blood. Our bodies are an integral part of who we are and how God intends us to live. In the 21st century we have a tendency to either overemphasize or deemphasize our bodies. Sometimes we overemphasize our bodi…

Ben Armstrong | Apr. 30 2023 One of the most foundational and important parts of each of our stories is that we are made in God’s image. Every single human being who has ever existed is made stamped with God’s image and made to reflect God’s image. This is the foundation and reason for why every single human being regardless of how they look, how t…