STUDIO

This Sunday, Pastor Eric continued the series of talks around the topic of unity. We often think unity is about changing someone else’s mind, resolving disagreement, or getting everyone on the same page, but Paul points us somewhere deeper:“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.” Philippians 2:5Unity requires more than agreeing with the idea of unity. It invites us to think like Jesus.We talked about paying attention to the stories we tell ourselves about other people, especially when we've been hurt, disappointed, misunderstood, or offended.A few ideas we explored:Unity isn't primarily about changing someone else's mind. It's allowing Christ to change the way I use mine.You cannot cultivate the Spirit of Unity without confronting the stories you tell yourself about other people.Humility reminds us, I might not have the whole story.Grace refuses to automatically assume the worst.The mind of Christ doesn't require us to deny what happened. It changes what we do with what happened.Our hope is that we continue becoming a community marked by humility, grace, forgiveness, curiosity, and the beautiful mind of Christ.For more info, you can go to our website, check us out on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube. If you would like to support STUDIO financially, you can do so here.Have a great week!

As we move into the new season, we come hungry for more of God - to commune with Him, and to step into all that He has for us. Last week we took time as a community, in prayer and fasting, to intentionally humble ourselves and seek the Lord. Before we move forward, we want to pause.To seek His heart.To get His perspective.To hear what He is saying.To surrender our will & plans and make room for His.And that's what prayer does. Prayer is how we turn our hearts toward God. In Matthew 7:7-11, Jesus gives us an incredible invitation. “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”Jesus is teaching us that God is approachable. And then He gives us this picture: If your child asks you for bread, are you going to give them a stone? If they ask for a fish, are you going to give them a snake? And Jesus says: “How much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”Prayer is not approaching a reluctant God. We're approaching a good Father. When God uses that name it comes with an invitation, it comes with great love, and access. It also requires us to know and trust who He is a good Father. For us to commune and pray it requires trust. As we approach God, we come with all that we are, all that we need, and all that He is calling us into accessing God as a Father who loves us. We bring Him what we're carrying: Our needs. Our fears. Our questions. Our hopes. Our sickness. Our relationships. Our finances. Our future. And we say, “Father, I trust You with this.”As we step into this new season we want to grow in participating in what God is inviting us into in prayer and be a responsive people. The invitation is, what if we stopped praying safe prayers and came to God full of faith, courage and prayed audacious prayers? What would we ask God for?For more info, you can go to our website, check us out on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube. If you would like to support STUDIO financially, you can do so here.Have a great week!

Last Sunday we continued our conversation around the Unity of the Spirit by asking a very practical question:What happens when the people Jesus brings to the table don’t agree with each other?Because unity would be easy if we all thought alike!In Romans 14, Paul writes to a community navigating very real disagreements about faith, food, sacred days, traditions, and how to faithfully follow Jesus. And rather than telling everyone to simply agree, Paul gives them a radically different way to see one another.A few ideas we explored:Unity of the Spirit, ask me to trust Jesus with people I disagree with.Don’t confuse different expressions of faithfulness with an absence of faithfulness.The person across from me is Christ’s servant, not mine.Jesus is capable of forming people whose convictions may be different from my own.Unity of the Spirit isn’t about making everyone at the table more like me. It’s about all of us belonging to Jesus.Imagine a table filled with people from different generations, cultures, church traditions, economic realities, political perspectives, and life experiences.And Jesus says, “You’re family.”What a beautiful invitation.What if the Church could become the place where our differences don’t have to disappear for love, belonging, humility, curiosity, and genuine relationship to flourish?That’s the kind of community we want us to keep becoming.For more info, you can go to our website, check us out on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube. If you would like to support STUDIO financially, you can do so here.Have a great week!

This past Sunday we explored something Paul writes about called the "unity of the Spirit," we learned he isn't talking about everyone thinking the same, looking the same, or sharing the same preferences.He's describing something far more remarkable and dynamic. The early church brought together people who, for centuries, would never have shared the same table. Different ethnicities. Different histories. Different traditions. Different ways of seeing the world.Yet in Christ, God wasn't simply creating a better version of those divisions.He was creating one new humanity.Here are a few ideas we explored together:Biblical unity is not the absence of difference. It is the absence of hostility in the presence of difference because Christ has made us one.Unity isn't something we create. It's a reality Christ has already established that we are called to protect and preserve.Uniformity moves people toward me. Unity moves all of us toward Christ.The movement of unity isn't getting people to become more like us. It's moving together toward the new reality Christ has already created.One of the applications that emerged from this passage is our vision of becoming a Home for Humanity. A community where people from different stories, backgrounds, perspectives, and seasons of life discover that Christ is greater than the things that have historically divided us.For more info, you can go to our website, check us out on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube. If you would like to support STUDIO financially, you can do so here.Have a great week!

This past Sunday, we continued our series on Reading the Bible by exploring one of the most common mistakes we make when reading the letters of the New Testament: We often extract a verse without understanding the conversation. When reading a letter, the invitation is different:Don't just extract the verse. Understand the conversation between the writer and the reader.We introduced a simple Letter Blueprint to help us read the New Testament letters more faithfully:Who is speaking, and who is listening?Why is this letter being written?What is the writer actually saying?What is timeless, and what is situational?How did this letter shape their lives, and how does it shape ours?Then we put that framework into practice with one of the most quoted verses in the Bible:"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." (Philippians 4:13)When we slow down and read the entire conversation instead of isolating one sentence, we discover that Paul isn't primarily talking about limitless achievement. He's writing about something even more profound: If your fundamental identity is secured somewhere circumstances can't touch, your sufficiency doesn't have to be renegotiated every time your circumstances change.One of the biggest takeaways from the morning was this:Don't ask what a sentence means until you've listened to the conversation it's part of.If you've ever wanted to move beyond reading verses in isolation and begin reading the Bible the way it was written, I think this message will be incredibly helpful.For more info, you can go to our website, check us out on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube. If you would like to support STUDIO financially, you can do so here.Have a great week!