Acts 2 describes the earliest church in startlingly concrete terms: teaching, the fellowship, bread, prayer. Pastor Adam argues that is devotion rather than attendance, and asks whether devotion to a local body is genuinely required or merely encouraged.

The last Sunday of the year lands on James 1 and its instruction to consider trials joy. Pastor Adam works it through endurance, notes how little in modern life teaches it, and sends the congregation into the new year on three words: exist, perceive, endure.

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” Pastor Adam preaches joy at the point in December when many can least manufacture it, describing hope as the long road joy travels before arriving, and refusing either to diminish pain or to let go of hope.

Some form of the word encourage appears eight times in Acts, twice as often as anywhere else. Pastor Adam builds the case on Barnabas, who vouched for Saul when the disciples were afraid of him, and argues much of the New Testament exists downstream of that.

Pilate tells Jesus he has the power to free him or crucify him, and Jesus relocates the whole question. Pastor Adam opens The Politics of Jesus by dismantling the assumption most believers hold quietly: that Jesus’ political views happen to match their own.

Jonah prays from the worst possible address. Pastor Adam reads Jonah 2 as a case study in what a person reaches for when nothing else is within reach, argues that distress is a prayer factory, and asks whether the abundant life is possible inside the fish rather than only after it.

1 Samuel 31:1-13 and the death of Saul and his… read more

1 Samuel 30, where David’s own men talk of stoning… read more

1 Samuel 28:3-20. Saul, at the end of his rope… read more