Christ Church Evangelical Covenant

Abraham: The Call to Go (Pastor Cheryl Lavornia)

As we continue our year-long focus on the whole story of scripture, Pastor Cheryl helps us shift our focus from the creation to Abraham. Genesis recounts the call that God gave to Abraham, and highlights the blessings attached to it - God would establish Abraham's family as people who would be "set apart" to bring God's blessing to the whole world. Pastor Cheryl helps us see the promises that gave to Abraham, and invites us to consider what a life of faith would look like today. Will we respond to God with the same faith that Abraham did?

The Adventure of Being Human (Lyle Mook)

Last week, Pastor Cheryl looked at the very beginnings of the story of scripture to try to begin to see how the whole story points us to Jesus. Today, Lyle Mook draws our focus into the tension between the identity we have as bearers of God's image (imago Dei) and the brokenness we come to realize in ourselves when we allow our "disordered loves" (a reference to Augustine's writings) to shape us. And so, the question is: how do we reconcile the two within ourselves? Or, perhaps more appropriately, how do we allow God to do the work of reconciliation within us?

Creation: The Prologue and the Plot (Pastor Cheryl Lavornia)

Today, we kick off our year-long walk through the entire story of scripture! Pastor Cheryl starts us at the very beginning of the Bible, where we find the familiar stories of Creation, Eden, Babel, Noah, and the generations in between. As Pastor Cheryl highlights vignettes from within the first eleven chapters of Genesis, she calls us to consider what they reveal to us about God's plans and purposes, and our understanding of the part we play within them.

Spiritual Family (Pastor Cheryl Lavornia)

In today’s sermon, Pastor Cheryl invites us to reimagine our approach to the ways we do through church through “The Moonshot Rule,” a term coined after John F. Kennedy urged people to aim to accomplish things that seem “out of the real of possibility.” The church in Acts started to reach for these kinds of things as they met together, shared what they had, and gave to those who had need. What could it look like for Christ Church, today, to embrace the big dreams of our even-bigger God for our church and our community? It might take some re-imagining!

Living Into Who We Are Becoming (Pastor Cheryl Lavornia)

God is always at work in us, helping us to become more like him, and helping us to more fully reflect his character through our lives. That sounds exciting! But, once we realize that "becoming more like him" requires us to forgive like he forgives, it can be challenging to find the ways to live up to the invitation. In the closing sermon from our Hook Line & Sinker series, Pastor Cheryl helps us understand the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation, and what God calls us to for each.

Revenge Mode (Pastor Cheryl Lavornia)

In week 5 of our Hook, Line, and Sinker sermon series, Pastor Cheryl invites us to consider our response when we fall for the bait of offense. When we are wronged, we all-too-easily understand the desire to take matters into our own hands. But, God has a different plan for us in Romans 12, that we might "conquer evil by doing good."

The Rock of Offense (Pastor Cheryl Lavornia)

Being "offensive" in basketball is a good thing, but "being offensive" to others in real life is a whole different story. It places the one who is offended in a diffult place as they figure out how to respond. However, as Pastor Cheryl shares, there are times where Jesus himself actually offended entire groups of people! The pharisees, his family, and his disciples all quickly come to mind. And, the more that we reflect on these examples, the easier it is to find ourselves upset about what Jesus says and does, because for us to listen to him will ofen require something from us that we might not want to change.

What Am I Doing Here? (Pastor Cheryl Lavornia)

In the third sermon of our Hook, Line, and Sinker series, Pastor Cheryl focuses on Elijah. God had sent him to Israel as a prophet, but he soon discovered that being faithful to God's call would cause people to be upset with him - and even threaten him. As he ran from one particular situation, Elijah was confronted with something hidden in his own heart that was keeping him from being able to do what God was calling Him to do. If we are to avoid finding ourselves in the same position - running from the places and work that God calls us to do - we must begin to identify the parts of our hearts that are in the same condition.

How Could This Happen to Me? (Pastor Cheryl Lavornia)

"How could this happen to me?!" Isn't that often our first response when something difficult happens in our lives? Whether by someone's intentional actions that hurt us, or because of our own internal voice that convinces us, we can all recognize the sense of injustice we feel that leads us to feel offended. And it is just that sense of offense that Satan often uses to separate us from God and from each other. So, when we find ourselves offended, where do we look? What do we need to remember about God? What do we need to remember about what He sees in us? Do we believe what He says?

Hook Line and Sinker (Pastor Cheryl Lavornia)

When was the last time you found yourself offended by what another person said or did to you? If it's not fresh in your mind, you can surely remember how upset you were. And when it comes to church, many of us carry past hurts from fellow churchgoers. Pastor Cheryl begins our summer series, "Hook Line and Sinker," unpacking why this can be such an effective tool to divide us and offers insight how we can begin to move past offense.