Listen to past teachings from Missio Dei.
The Missio Dei
Missio Dei means the mission of God. That phrase is our name (obviously right…) but it also represents our deep conviction that God is, actively, on mission in our city already. God is present in our place, moving ahead of and before us. Our job as Christians and a local church is to join God’s work, to be present to God’s presence so that we can participate in what the Spirit is already doing. The question is, how do we discern the movement of God and join in on what God is doing?
Make Good Choices
In the early church, apostles and leaders wrote to communities to help them make good choices. On the one hand, their words can feel overbearing and restrictive, but on the other hand, they can feel a lot like love. Love that cares about where you get your information. Love cares about conflict and how you treat people you disagree you. Love that concerns itself with respect other peoples choices. Love that inquires about about your body. Again and again, when we turn to letters like 1 Corinthians, we walk away with wisdom that speaks across centuries to help us make good choices.
How to Read the Bible
The Bible is a wonderful, beautiful, and (if we're being honest) confusing book. It contains some of the greatest stories, moral advice, and life giving wisdom while at the very same time it can be complicated, startling, and hard to understand. What do we do with this wonderfully strange book? How do we read it? How do we engage with it in ways that lead us into a deeper relationship with Jesus?
Peacemaker
What does peace have to do with the gospel? Peace is central to the mission and work of Jesus. He really is The Prince of Peace and we really believe swords will be turned into plow shares, lions will lie down with lambs, and that our God died for enemies. So what is peace? What does it mean for us? And how do we become “peacemakers?”
Lost & Found
Is the gospel good news for us today? For many, it seems like our faith has little to offer the world around us. Our gospel has become too small--it looks nothing like the Jesus who embodies good news in the flesh. The good news about is good news is that it looks and sounds like Jesus.
Philippians
Throughout the season of Lent, we will be exploring Paul’s letter to the Philippians. This short letter, written while Paul was in prison, is a beautiful invitation to participate in the story, life, and people of Jesus. The story of Jesus is transformative and as we encounter Him, we cannot help become a people who love more like Him.
Heart
In our series Heart, we explored spiritual practices that help us curate hearts of God-shaped love. These are practices that begin internally, creating space to listen and pay attention to ourselves and God, practices that help us rid ourselves of idols/unhealthy coping mechanisms, and practices that move us toward humble participation in community. These practices are ancient and have been helping Christians for 2,000 years practice humility and open themselves up to receiving and extending love.
Shepherd
Advent is a season of presence in which we celebrate and remember the way in which God entered the world to be present with us. Our Good Shepherd came to earth to lead us towards green pastures. He entered into hostility and laid a table before us. Our God moved into the neighborhood to pursue us in love and faithfulness.
Party Crasher
Throughout our series, Party Crasher, we’re going to explore the 10 parties in the Gospel Luke. Sometimes Jesus is hosting, other times he’s attending and yet in each of them, Jesus is crashing expectations, cultural norms, and religion to show us what the gospel looks like.
I am Not
In our series, I am not, we will be looking at common identity stories. Then we will counter those false, small, or reduced stories with the good news of God’s story. We are not our hustle, our production, or our image. We are not how responsible we are nor are we our mistakes. We are image bearers, created in goodness and named loved. Nothing, not anything, can change that.
Ruth
The book of Ruth is often read like a love story but Ruth is no rom-com. Instead it’s a story of real suffering and genuine courage as characters experience famine, death, and poverty. In this short Old Testament book we read the story of real people who are trying to trust God in their everyday. It isn’t easy. It isn’t pretty. It isn’t a rom-com with a meet-cute, but a story of hard fought faithfulness and hope.
Breathe
What does it mean for us to live in the way of the Spirit? How do we join the Spirit’s work? How do we listen to the Spirit? How do we discern the voice of the Spirit and differentiate between Spirit and other voices? Throughout our series we’ll develop some frameworks and practices that can help us listen, discern, and participate in the work and life of the Spirit together.
Eastertide 2023
After the resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples and friends in order to help them understand why the resurrection was such good news. Each of these appearances are different, graciously and intimately personal. And yet, at the same time, they share a common thread as Jesus invites each person to experience new–resurrection–life in him.
At One
Atonement means “at one” and is the Biblical and theological word used to describe what Jesus’s death accomplished. The Bible is full of different atonement images (lamb of God, ransomed, kinsmen redeemer) which has often led to debate about which image is the most central in understand atonement. In our series we will look at different images and stories that point us towards atonement, to show how they all contribute to a bigger and better story than we even knew to hope for
Sermon on the Mount
The Sermon on the Mount includes some of Jesus’ most famous sayings like “salt and light” and “love your enemies.” But even though we are “familiar” with the sayings we often neglect, and sometimes even reject, the teachings. In this sermon, Jesus is telling us what it means to be his followers. As we study this sermon we will see, again, how wild and beautiful the way of Jesus truly is.
Songs of the Servant
In our series, Songs of the Servant, we are looking at the servants songs in the book of Isaiah (42, 49, 50, 52). These songs were originally written about Israel and their role in the world. Each song is a beautiful call to justice, righteousness, and transformation and they still speak to powerfully to our own hopes today. Israel was unable to fulfill the hopes of these songs. But, Jesus’ is the ultimate fulfillment of Israel’s story, the servant who gives us a new song of new hope and life.
The Missio Dei
We believe God is on a mission to restore, reconcile, and renew all things. God has been on mission since the beginning and is actively working around, before, and in us. We, the Church, are invited to join God’s renewing work. In this series, we are exploring God’s mission and the way it shapes our vision and identity as a local community.
Prodigal
What kind of story is the gospel? Is it a story about a hero, who leaves their home to overcome evil and rescue the world? Is it a love story full of grand gestures and lovable characters? The gospel is a story but how we tell that story matters to how we see God, ourselves, and others. In Prodigal, we’re focusing on the kind of gospel story Jesus told.
All OF IT Gift
The book of Galatians is possibly the Apostle Paul's very first letter, written to a group of churches in what is now modern day Turkey. Paul is writing because Gospel has become contested, what it is and what it does is under debate. The causes for division are different, but the experience in Galatians is one we're all familiar with. It can be painful, confusing, and downright frustrating. But, like it was for the Galatians, these moments are also an opportunity to reflect, to ask good question, and and recenter ourselves on the good news that is the very object of our faith.
The Forgotten God
In Acts 2, Pentecost, the Spirit descends on the disciples and fills them with power. In the preceding chapters we read amazing stories of Spirit empowered life but we also see the Spirit disrupting life for the disciples and calling them into something new.
With the Grain of the Universe
Following Easter, we enter a season known as “Eastertide” in which we continue to celebrate and witness the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection changes everything and invites us to live in a resurrected reality that is radically at odds with old reality/order of sin and death. As Christians, we’ve been formed into a community and called to “witness” to the resurrection of Jesus. Our lives, words, practices are to point towards the work and way of Jesus.
Brother, Sister
In our series, Brother, Sister we’re looking at the close encounters Jesus had with men and women in the New Testament. As we look these stories we’re invited to know and experience Jesus anew. As a guide throughout this series, we’ve created provided journal. We hope you will find it a useful tool as you draw closer to Jesus during this series and the season of Lent.
Spark
Christian life is a gift. In and through Jesus we’ve been given new life, new purpose, new hope, and most centrally a new source of love. But, just because the gift has been given doesn’t mean we always receive, enjoy, or experience the fullness of the gift. Meaning, our love can grow stale and our hearts stagnant. Like in any relationship, love diminishes or grows in proportion to it’s experience. When that happens, when our love grows stale we sometimes need a little spark to reignite the fire and curate love.
Mercy
Listen to our series “Mercy”.
Letters to the church
The New Testament is full of letters written to real churches and throughout this series we will explore portions of those letters. At the same ,time we’re going to enter into those letters, treat them as words for us (because they are) and even try responding to the words of the Bible with some correspondence of our own.
Kingdom Come
Revelation is a weird book and has been used to justify some strange and painful ideas. At the same time, Revelation is a beautiful story of hope in which Jesus establishes his kingdom, defeats evil, and renews all things. But Revelation isn’t a book about some distant future, instead it’s written to call us, the Church, out of false allegiance and into active participation with Jesus’ coming kingdom.
Eastertide
Easter is one day a year where we celebrate the resurrection. But, we are a people of resurrection and we live in the reality of Easter everyday of the year. During this series, we are exploring how we can live as resurrection people, how we can celebrate and witness to Jesus’ Easter accomplishment in every part of our lives.
Images of God
The way we picture God shapes the whole of our Christian life. If we imagine God as angry, uninterested, or weak we will approach God in kind. What do we do with these images? And, most importantly, how do we see God clearly?
Strange Joy
There is a kind of conventional wisdom we all learn in our world. Conventional wisdom is good and helpful and helps guide us through normal life. Conventional wisdom says; if you work hard, act with kindness, and show up on time you’ll do well at work. Conventional wisdom says, if you save money, invest wisely, and cut spending you’ll retire strong. Conventional wisdom says, a+b=c.
Midmorning
Joining with thousands of years of Church tradition, Missio will engage the season of Advent as a time of preparation, examination, and hopeful expectation for the coming of Jesus - preparing our hearts and minds by going through different prayers of expectation from the book of Luke.
The missio dei
The book of Acts begins with Pentecost (the outpouring of the Spirit). From that point on, in a radical way, the Church is called and empowered to join God’s work in, though, and around them. This is the great fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy in which all peoples--men, women, and children of all places--are filled with God’s Spirit.
MOuntains made of clay
With Covid-19 we have entered into the unknown but Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth gives us a way to see our current moment. 2 Corinthians helps us understand our life through the lens of the cross and resurrection. And as we see through the lens of the cross and resurrection, we gain a new way of engaging the world around us. We learn to live into the strange paradox of the gospel: power in weakness, triumph in tragedy, strength in vulnerability.
A New Lent
We are currently in the season of Lent, but in a very real way, a way that is unique for many of us, we are in an actual season of Lent. A wilderness time, where life as we know it has been upended by the new realities of the wild. Like Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness or Israel’s 40 years before that, we have entered into an unknown space where our previous rhythms, practices, and expectations are no longer helpful for navigating life.
We see ghosts
For three years Jesus had been preparing his disciples for the moment of his return following the resurrection but when it finally happened, they couldn’t comprehend it. For the disciples it was easier to believe Jesus was a ghost than to believe he was alive in the flesh. This same feeling is always a struggle for followers of Jesus. In order to comprehend, we reduce, we see ghosts instead of a living, resurrected King. As he did for the disciples, Jesus is inviting us to “touch and see” that he has “flesh and bones.” He is inviting us to see and to experience the reality of Jesus’ work, words, and promises.
Joel
Joel is an often overlooked prophet, but within this tiny book is a big message about the movement of God in, through, and for his people
Gravity
This year for Advent we will be walking through the Psalms of Ascent. The Psalms of Ascent were prayers the people of Israel would say and sing, together, as they marched upwards towards the temple in Jerusalem, seeking God and asking him to meet them; to be present.
Practicing the way
In this series, we will be exploring the fruit of the Spirit, not simply as values or virtues but as a way of participating, keeping in step with, the Spirit’s work in us and the world. Each fruit will be partnered with a passage and a historic Church practice. These practices are not absolutist, but they are traditional ways the people of Jesus have embodied their belief together (aka Faith).
mark
After Pentecost, we enter “Ordinary” season. This doesn’t mean we are in a boring season but a time to ask questions about our day-to-day lives in light of who Jesus is. What better way to enter this season than with the gospel of Mark, where we hear again who Jesus is and what it means to be his people.
Good trouble
We are a people of the resurrection, but what does it mean to live that reality out in our everyday? We don't have all the answers but we can guarantee it'll get us into a little trouble, and that's a good thing.
holy words
Most of us don’t have tools to worship and pray through the fullness of human life. The Psalms of Lament give us freedom and tools to live in all the complexity of human life. Like the Psalms of Lament, the season of Lent challenges our sentimentality by drawing us into the temptation, suffering, and death of Jesus––and in turn our own. And like the Psalms of Lament, the season of Lent shows that even the hard of our lives are Holy Words and that God, in Jesus, literally entered into it with us, to be present––body to body.