A Reader's Theater rendering of St. Luke's Passion Narrative, from the treachery of Judas to the burial of Christ.By Shayne Looper

Is there any good news in the middle of this mess? You bet! The good news that has sustained the people of Jesus through many crises and continues to change the world. Read Philippians 1 and take note of every use of the word gospel, which means “good news.” Consider its context and think through how Paul was using the word.…

Covid-19 has people feeling more than a little nervous. History is full of scary times--famines, plagues, and wars--but behind history is a strong, loving God. The Apostle Paul describes our God as “him who is able.” He is able during a crisis or pandemic. He “is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine, according to his power...” Th…

By Shayne Looper

By Shayne Looper

By Shayne Looper

By Shayne Looper

By Shayne Looper

By Shayne Looper

By Shayne Looper

By Shayne Looper

By Shayne Looper

By Shayne Looper

By Kevin Looper

By Shayne Looper

By Shayne Looper

By Shayne Looper

We’ve got to learn to live backwards. That is, we need to learn to live out of our future and not just out of our past. Most people are driven by the unalterable past into an unknowable future, but Jesus’s people can be pulled into the future by the call of the knowable – though always more than comprehensible – God. People who are driven by the un…

What does it mean that Jesus is the resurrection? Real life - our real life, with all its joys and sorrows - is where we meet Jesus. It is where Martha and Mary met him - in the midst of the biggest crisis of their lives - when Jesus introduced himself as the Resurrection and the Life.By Shayne Looper

Jesus talks about the Good Shepherd by contrasting the good shepherd with bad shepherds and with contract employees who don’t know or care about the sheep. If you are a sheep, you have only a few possibilities: You have a good shepherd; you have a bad shepherd; or you have no shepherd. We have a Good Shepherd who has freed us and made us his own.…

It is wintertime and Jesus is walking in the historic Portico of Solomon on the east side of the temple courts. In an orchestrated effort, some of the Judean leaders and influencers encircle Jesus so he cannot slip away. They order him to tell them whether or not he is the Messiah. Jesus’s answer at first seems baffling. He responds: “I did tell yo…

Jesus’s church will not fail. The kingdom of God will win. “I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18 NKJV). God’s kingdom and Jesus’s church will prevail.By Shayne Looper

John 10:1-10 contains the only one of the great “I Am” statements that Jesus felt compelled to repeat: “I AM the door.” In the infinite wall that divides us from the richly satisfying life God intends for us, there is only one door and that door is Jesus.By Shayne Looper

Both Jairus and the bleeding woman were desperate for Jesus’ help. What are sometimes that you felt desperate for Jesus?By Kevin Looper

We have a rich inheritance from the Father that He has given us for the here and now. Satan has every intention of taking parts, little by little, to diminish the richness of that inheritance. Together, we'll look at the power God has provided to restore aspects of our inheritance once stolen, then with Jesus' help we'll find aid in the restoration…

Jesus divides one person from another. His cross is a sword of sorts, with Jesus himself on the hilts, thrust into the earth and dividing its inhabitants one from another. How a person responds to Jesus determines which side of the divide he will inhabit. Jesus introduces himself to us as the Light of the world. There are important ramifications he…

Jesus might be the source of a new and transformative life but if we don’t know how to approach him – to take him in – we might still starve.By Shayne Looper

“Who does this guy think he is?” That’s the question we are answering in this series. The question was put to Jesus on a number of occasions and answered in a variety of ways, each time with a self-introduction that began with the words, “I am…” In John 6, Jesus introduces himself as “the Bread of Life.” What did he mean by that and what does that …

Jesus first announced his status as Messiah the King when he wasn’t even in his own country! He was in Samaria, which would be like a U.S. Presidential candidate going to Iran or North Korea to make his announcement. And the first person he told was a woman – a Samaritan woman, at that – a persona non grata. Clearly, Jesus operates by his own, and …

A problem many people have in trying to live as a Jesus-follower is they don’t know what story they’re in. In this series, we will be introduced to a truth about Jesus from the Gospel of John, revealed in Jesus’s fascinating “I Am” statements. But first we need to discover the biblical frame for our story, which is none other than the story of Jesu…

By Kevin Looper

Read John 14:1-11 and see if you can identify what the Scottish biblical scholar William Barclay called “the most staggering thing Jesus ever said.” What Jesus said is not just staggering, it is steadying. It helps us trust God our Father and gives us confidence as we go through life’s many trials and uncertainties – and do we ever need that!…

During this series, we have repeatedly seen how good, kind, and loving God is. He’s better than we ever dreamed! But what about when things go sideways? Is he still good, kind, and loving when the thing we most fear happens? And what are we supposed to do then?By Shayne Looper

To have a cherished thing returned after a long absence is a cause for celebration. That is just what Jesus says in Luke 15, only there we discover that we are the cherished thing! God cherishes us and wants us to be with him, no matter how long ago we hit bottom. Luke 15 shows us it is never too late to come home.…

Many countries have a national coat of arms, often featuring magnificent beasts and birds, which convey courage and strength. The Australian coat of arms features two animals: The emu, a graceless bird that can’t even fly, and a kangaroo. Courage and strength are hardly the first things one thinks of when seeing these creatures, so why did Australi…

God is the Forgiver: he can forgive anyone – even me; even you. And because we are the Forgiven, we are called to forgive, just as God does. “Forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Colossians 3:13). To forgive like God does puts us in a place where remarkable things can happen in our lives.…

Our idea of God can get distorted. We can start to see him as against us, not for us; as a taker, not a giver. But God is for us, not against us (Romans 8:31-39). He is not just a giver, he is The Giver.By Shayne Looper

God made people to respond to rewards and – what a surprise! – giving out rewards is one of his favorite things to do. If you think of God as someone who is always ready to criticize, think again! In our text, Jesus reveals a very different kind of God – one who loves to hand out rewards.By Shayne Looper

Knowing God changes the way we look at the world, at ourselves, and at others. Getting to know God helps us relax. Jesus revealed to us that his Father is paying attention. He knows our needs – better than we do – and he always cares for his own.By Shayne Looper

In your opinion, which of the following statements best describes God? (1.) God is annoyed with things in general and with me in particular. (2.) God is the most joyful person anywhere, and wants me to share his joy. (3.) God has important things to think about and I am not one of them. How you answered the above question after thinking about it ma…

How often we miss what is happening around us. Because we don’t see it, we think nothing is happening, that God is on break. But Jesus helped us to see that his Father is working all around us, all the time.By Shayne Looper

By Hal Nottingham

Though I am a very imperfect father, my love and commitment to my sons is a reflection – distorted and inaccurate but real, nonetheless – of God’s love and commitment to us. He too is a father. He is the Father.By Shayne Looper

All of us start with distorted ideas of God. He’s a celestial policeman, looking to bust us for having a little fun. He’s an upscale version of the most religious person we know – all into candles and hymns and long prayers. He’s a kind of cosmic vending machine, spitting out favors … but only if our account is sufficiently funded by good deeds. Je…

In Luke 22, Jesus is meeting with the leaders of his movement, the Twelve. He has been exceptionally eager to spend this time with them. He knows that his “hour” has come, that he will soon be arrested and executed. Before that happens, he has some final things he wants to say to and do with his team. One of those things has come to be known as Hol…

In basketball, the worst kind of foul is the technical foul. A technical foul not only gives the opposing team free throws, it forfeits the next possession. At home, the worst kind of foul is hypocrisy. What can we do about hypocrisy? Almost all of us have fallen into it at one time or another. Can we ever get out of it? How?…

Ann Arbor has one of the weirdest museums on the planet: The Museum of Failed Products. The shelves and aisles look like a supermarket—except there’s only one of each item. But these items aren’t in a supermarket nowadays: they are all failures, products withdrawn from sale after a few weeks or months, because almost nobody wanted them. If the muse…

We're again thinking about winning homes – whether comprised of a single adult, a couple, or parents with a house-full of kids. We don’t want to drop the ball when it comes to making our home a Kingdom of God base of operations. What do we need to do? What do we need to guard against?By Shayne Looper

There are all kinds of homes. Homes with intact original families – mom and dad, three children, and a dog. We also have homes with mom and step-dad (or dad and step-mom), three kids and a cat. We have homes with a single parent, with grandparents, without kids, with lots of kids, and homes with one single adult. During the month of May, we will be…

We’ll be rounding out our study of the Book of James. We’ll see that the life that is “finished and whole” (James 1:4) is one where God is our center. Whatever’s going on at the periphery of our lives – whether really bad or really good, calm or wild – we can hold together because the Center holds.By Shayne Looper