Church Of The Open Door

This third Sunday of Advent, Kati brings us to Luke 3:7-18, the Gentile physician's account of John the Baptist as he interacts with the crowd. John has just delivered some dire warnings, and people are asking, "So what ought we do???!!" Kati finds comforting simplicity in John's answers. Soldiers, tax collectors, people in the crowd--all receive similar responses, which Kati boils down to, "Don't overthink it! Just move toward others in love." Teaching Pastor: Kati Beasley, Adult Life Associate Life Pastor | Advent 2018 | www.thedoor.org

Drew describes this Genesis story of God's covenanting with Abram as "anchoring us in the place where God has done and is doing everything that needs to be done in order for us to respond. He is always making a way for us to pursue hope and faith and love." Teaching Pastor: Drew Pederson, Governing Elder | Advent 2018 | www.thedoor.org

Peggy speaks on the God Who Comes - not just for the long-ago Christmas Birth, and then ultimately His glorious, shaking, end-times return - but the God who right now, over and over and over, moves toward us, fills us, then send us toward one another with gifts of grace, truth, healing and love. Teaching Pastor: Peggy Lang, Pastor of Prayer Ministries | Advent 2018 | www.thedoor.org

We have been fed so richly from the Word of God that Pastor David Johnson has spoken to us over the decades. It is our privilege to celebrate and honor David and Bonnie, and to do what that Hebrews passage directs: to "remember, bring to mind, rehearse, make mention of and be mindful of" David's faith-filled and Spirit-dependent words that have so consistently proclaimed to us the grace and truth of Jesus' Gospel. Teaching Pastor: David Johnson, Lead Teaching Pastor and Guest Speakers | www.thedoor.org

This is David's final message as Open Door's Lead Teaching Pastor. This Sunday will continue the flow of Deuteronomy 4, where Moses, said "Don't forget the things your eyes have seen and ears have heard...and remember." Remember that as "John was in the Spirit on the Lord's day", what he saw was Jesus, right in the middle of the church - which means He was with them right in the middle of the mess, the confusion, and the fear. So whatever else we need to see in this transition, what we need to see most is Jesus, right in the middle of it all, WITH US! Teaching Pastor: David Johnson, Lead Teaching Pastor | www.thedoor.org

Anne-Marie Finsaas takes us to the Lectionary's Old Testament passage for this Sunday, 1 Kings 17:8-16. Elijah, at God's direction, has prophetically pronounced a drought upon Israel because of Ahab and Jezebel's apostasy; then God command Elijah: "Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon (Jezebel's homeland!), and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you. What miraculous provisions and interventions might we see as we walk out the obediences of both Elijah and the widow?? Teaching Pastor: Anne-Marie Finsaas, Pastor of Formational Life | Ordinary Time | www.thedoor.org

This is our Novembering service when we gather as a community to remember those who are no longer among us and invite God into our places of loss and grief. The context for our remembering is the Communion Table, the gift from our flesh-and-blood God who struggled, like we do, with death and separation, yet surrendered in obedience and love in order to bring us back to God and make all things new. In our culture, we don’t always know how to deal with what we’ve lost. So on this Sunday we intentionally make space to remember and, again like Jesus, enter into these gardens of struggle in the company of others. Teaching Pastor: David Johnson, Lead Teaching Pastor | www.thedoor.org

David bring us back to Moses and the Israelites preparing to cross the Jordan River and enter the land God had promised them. But things like that don't always come easy; and it wasn't until they were willing to step into the deep waters of a risky obedience that God made a way for them. There are so many lessons for us in the account of God's dealings with His people! May we respond with the faith of the priests who stepped obediently into floodwaters (probably with wobbly trust!) and created dry ground for others to follow. Teaching Pastor: David Johnson, Lead Teaching Pastor | www.thedoor.org

David takes us to Deuteronomy 4:9 for a significant sermon series between now and November 25. In this passage, the children of Israel are preparing to enter the Promised Land. Moses, knowing that his own departure is imminent, urges them: Do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them. What have our eyes seen in these last 38 years? What have we experienced of the grace, truth, power and goodness of God that must not slip from our hearts? Teaching Pastor: David Johnson, Lead Teaching Pastor | www.thedoor.org

Mark 10:17-31 shows us the love Jesus had for the rich young ruler even as he was struggling with what Jesus had told him he needed to do. Teaching Pastor: Tom Johnson, Missional Life Pastor | Ordinary Time | www.thedoor.org

This is Al Schuck's last Sunday with us as a Pastor on staff here at Open Door. From here on, the scope of his pastoring broadens considerably, spanning to include Haiti, Kenya and Uganda. Al share's with us a bit of his story from transitioning from Open Door to Beyond Our Door Global, inviting us all into the bigger story of what God is doing in us and in the world. Teaching Pastor: Al Schuck, Community Life Pastor | www.thedoor.org

Chris speaks on friendship in the margins, the simple radical, countercultural incarnational practice of presence that can bring reconciliation and healing to our broken world. Chris Heuertz, Guest Speaker | www.thedoor.org

Jeff VanVonderen, Guest Speaker | www.thedoor.org

Jesus’ first question to His disciples, as they’re on the way to Caesarea Philippi, is, “What’s the word on street? What do you hear out there? Who do people say that I am?” What David sees here is that Jesus really doesn’t care what people say about who they think He is, because the penetrating question is, “Who do you say that I am?” While most of us resonate with Peter’s “You are the Christ, the son of the living God,” we sometimes forget. The extraordinary nature of who He is becomes ordinary, and the familiar things that we truly do believe become unfamiliar. We forget that He really is the Christ, the Son of the Living God; and that He really is “the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation… that all things were created by Him, through Him and for Him… and in Him all things hold together.” Teaching Pastor: David Johnson, Lead Teaching Pastor | Who Do You Say That I Am? | Ordinary Time

Jesus' stern response to the Pharisees' criticism that His followers didn't adequately follow Jewish rituals of cleansing, contending that "it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly; all these evil things come from within, and they defile a person." Jesus confronts the temple system that excluded people of poverty who couldn't afford the requisite external washings; and He confronts our own religious propensities to put on a good show while our heart grows cold and we simply go through the motions -- of marriage, job, church -- and ignore the heart that He longs to warm and cleanse. Jesus' statements like this occur throughout the Gospels and have been foundational for Open Door for years, inviting us to "get out here what's inside" and to pay attention to the interior "heart work" rather than "polish the outside of the cup and of the dish" while the inside remains "full o

At the beginning of John 6 Jesus was at the top of His game, thousands following Him wherever He went. They were already singing His praises when He added to their astonishment by providing food for them all with five loaves and two fish. But when He clarified to them what He really came to do and what He really came to offer (not physical, but spiritual bread), they did what the crowd often does; they withdrew from Him. David wants to explore with us the relationship Jesus had with the crowd. He really did care for them; He taught them about the Kingdom; He healed them; He fed them; He had compassion on them. But He never chased them, He was never enamored with them, and He never softened His message to become more attractive to them. We need to study Jesus here and learn from Him. Teaching Pastor: David Johnson, Lead Teaching Pastor | Ordinary Time | www.thedoor.org

David is preaching from John 6:51-58, with the Jewish authorities – and even those who’d followed Jesus – balking at His words, ““Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” Jesus’s odd words that invite us to take in this Living Bread, to absorb Him into ourselves and thereby come to life. Teaching Pastor: David Johnson, Lead Teaching Pastor | Ordinary Time | www.thedoor.org

Al Schuck takes us deeper into John's story of Jesus in John 6:35, 41-51. What we see in this passage is that Jesus is God, the only one who leads to life - but we get sucked into believing in so many other gods and try to fill our hunger and thirst with so many other things. But Jesus is the true Bread of Life, and it is Jesus who shows us what the Father is really like. Teaching Pastor: Al Schuck, Community Life Pastor | Ordinary Time | www.thedoor.org

Teaching Pastors: David Johnson, Senior Pastor and Al Schuck, Next Steps Pastor | Lent 2016 | www.thedoor.org

Teaching Pastor: David Johnson, Senior Pastor | Series: Lent 2016 | www.thedoor.org