We are blessed to share a multicultural church where multiple races/ethnicities and socioeconomic groups worship, fellowship, and serve together as equals before God. But until we reflect the full diversity of our city, and until we are all-in on both pursuing and modeling racial reconciliation for all our neighbors, we still have a lot of work to do. As a church positioned in the heart of urban Denver, at the edge of a gentrifying-but-historically-African-American community, we have a particular responsibility to lead the way on this issue. We must move from simply “not being racist” to being anti-racist. Many of...
God, our hearts are broken. Our souls are grieved, frustrated, angry, and afraid. We are caught in an endless cycle of violence and vengeance, and it’s difficult to hold onto hope these days. What we’ve seen in our nation over the past few days and weeks with the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, is just a microcosm of the race-based injustice we’ve observed from a safe distance for far too long. Many fear the repercussions of these deaths that are playing out all across our country, and in our city, even as we pray. Many more...
After more than a decade of dreaming, praying, and planning, and after millions of dollars have been invested in breathing new life into an iconic 100-year-old building, yesterday – April 19th, 2020 – was the big day: Grace City Church’s Grand Opening in the heart of downtown Denver! We’ve actually been meeting in our new location at Asterisk since late January, holding what church planters these days call “preview services” (which, I think, are just like regular services except that you readily acknowledge you’re still learning and working stuff out). It’s been a dream come true to faithfully proclaim the...
Text: 1 Peter 4:1-6 | Listen to Message When Jesus was faced with a choice between his own will (to save his life) vs. the Father’s will (to suffer and die for the sins of the world), he articulated his desire but then concluded, “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” Jesus armed himself with this truth: It is better to suffer in God’s will than to sin. Though this doesn’t sound like a very 21st Century thing to say, it’s a foundational principle for Christian living: “No matter what specific situation I find myself in, I’m deciding right now...
For the second time in just 35 days, our hearts are filled with a mix of grief, anger, and fear, because of an unprecedented mass shooting in our nation. On October 1st, a gunman smashed out the windows of his 32nd floor hotel room at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas and opened fire on a country music festival below. 58 people were killed and an additional 546 were injured, making this the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. On November 5th, another gunman walked into the First Baptist Church of rural Sutherland Springs, Texas and shot up the...
Father, with shattered hearts and tear-stained faces We again grieve over the deadly violence of our land. Our brokenness cannot bring back the dead, And yet…we are broken. We have turned away from you to do things our way, And we have not honored you as God. We have built our identities on shifting sand, We have chased momentary, selfish pleasures, And we have worshiped anything but our Creator. You are the Redeemer, But we have told you we will save ourselves. You are the fountain of Living Water, But we have sought freedom from you in the desert. You...
August 21, 2017 was the day a nation paused, looked up, and collectively beheld just a smidgen of a shadow of a speck of God’s glory. It took 2 hours and 38 minutes for a total solar eclipse to pass through 14 states stretching from the Pacific Coast of Oregon to the Atlantic Coast of South Carolina. In addition to the 12+ million people who live inside the path of totality, millions more traveled to witness this rare phenomenon. People in all 50 states observed at least a partial eclipse. If you didn’t realize there was going to be a...
