South Fellowship Church

Expedition | A Season For Praise | Psalm 103 | Week 3

 Today we're going to walk our way through Psalm 103. Before we look into this psalm and see what the Lord would teach us through it, I'm going to ask you to join your hearts together with me in prayer.  Father, a couple of moments ago, we sang about how good you are and you are so, so good to all of us.  So, Lord, today, I just ask that you would reveal that side of your character to us in the teaching.  Lord, as we continue to engage you and try to come to know you, I just pray you would pour out your mercy and your grace and your compassion on each of us.  Father, we probably all walked in here today with different things we're processing through, different issues we're struggling with, maybe even sins we're tempted to commit, so, Lord, wherever we're at, I just pray that you embrace us and love us and show us how much you care for us.  Now as we look into this psalm, Lord, we ask for your Spirit's guidance, we ask that you might enlighten our minds, we ask that you might touch our hearts, we ask that you would show us who you are and what that means for us.  We pray all this in the great and powerful name of Jesus.  Amen.
Beginning this week, we’re entering into what our society labels ‘the most wonderful time of the year’.  And for many of us, this is a great time because we get to see family and friends, and eat some great food, and read some great books, and go the movies, and sing Christmas carols, and sleep in more than normal.  But for others here, it may not be so wonderful.  The reason why it’s not so much fun is because there’s pain from family dysfunction, or there’s the increasing cost of buying all those gifts, or we have to stand in the security line at DIA with thousands of our closest friends to board a plane which might be delayed at some point due to bad weather. And while the holiday season is really good for lots of us and not so good for others of us, it’s almost always the BUSIEST time of the year for ALL of us.  Regardless of who we are or how old we are, at one point or another we’re probably going to be shopping for presents at the mall or shopping on Amazon.  At some point, we're going to be standing in line at King Soopers, or standing in line at Starbucks, or standing in line at Starbucks at King Soopers.  We're going to be attending Christmas concerts and school concerts.  We're going to be completing the semester.  We're going to be wrapping up a big project at work before the end of the year, We're going to be coming to church; we going to be sitting in traffic.  And that’s just in the first week of December...

Expedition | World's Best Boss | Psalm 2 | Week 2

Hi! I just want to tell you about myself before I get started.   I grew up in a tiny town in South Dakota, moved to Minnesota to go to Crown College, and then moved here just over three years ago to attend Denver Seminary and pursue my Masters of Divinity.  In just under a month I will finally graduate! I started working here at South just four days after moving to Colorado and I’ve had the privilege of working with our middle and high school students here for the past three years, leading worship for them. I absolutely love our students and getting to be a part of their lives. Some other important things you should know about me is that I love pizza, ultimate Frisbee, and spending time with friends. 
Another thing about me that a lot of people don’t know, is that I’m a pretty big nerd. Growing up, my family watched a lot of sci-fi movies and shows, and one of my favorites was Star Wars! Throughout this epic series, we see the story of a famous rebellion. The Rebel Alliance stood bravely against the evil Galactic Empire. They never backed down, despite the overwhelming odds stacked against them. They worked in secret for decades to overthrow the Emperor and restore democracy to the galaxy, which (spoiler alert) they finally did. The Rebels took down the Empire! Good won once again! 

Expedition | Blessed is the One... | Psalm 1 | Week 1

Glad to see you all here today.  We're going to do a short series on some Psalms, the next three weeks.  This is going to build a pathway toward our time as we prepare ourselves for Advent.  This morning, we're going to be looking at the very first of the Psalms, Psalm 1.  Before we look at the Word of God, I'm going to invite us to bow briefly in prayer.  Father, thanks so much for the privilege we have to worship you and to gather together.  Lord, today, we just want to surrender our lives to you.  Lord, you are a gracious and kind and compassionate God who loves us and is calling us into a deeper walk with you.  I pray now, as we look into your word, that you would use this time and this text to encourage and teach us.  We pray all of this in the name of Jesus.  Amen.
As many of you may know, the largest city in the U.S. is New York which has about 8 ½ million people.  But what you may not know is that there are approximately 10 million cats and 12 million dogs who also live there.  When your pet dies in New York City, you can’t just go out and bury it in the backyard since most of the city is concrete, so the city authorities passed an ordinance that they’ll come by, pick up your deceased pet, and dispose of it for $75.   Well, a few years back, a lady came up with an enterprising idea to make some money.  She advertised that she would dispose of your pet for only $35 dollars.  What she’d do is buy a $2 suitcase at the local Salvation Army thrift store.  She'd then go and pick up the dead animal and put it in the suitcase and then hop on the subway.  Now, if you’ve ever been on the subway in New York City you know it’s really, really crowded.....and theft is a huge problem.  So the lady would set down the suitcase, intentionally look away, and wait for someone to steal it, and then she’d cry out….‘Wait…stop…thief!’  The authorities finally caught on to her scheme, but what do you charge her with?  And what about the thieves? How did they react when they finally opened the stolen suitcase only to discover that it contained something they hadn’t planned on?...
 
Helping people live in the way of Jesus with the heart of Jesus.
 
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Expedition | Blessed is the One... | Psalm 1 | Week 1
Speaker: Dr. Scott Wenig
South Fellowship Church
Based in Littleton, CO 

TRANSFORMED | Transformed: Families | Matthew 5:3-12 | Week 9

{Guest Mark (Lisa) Scandrette from San Francisco.} Lisa and I work with an organization we co-founded twenty years ago called ReImagine. It's inspired by Jesus's message of the kingdom. Basically, we're very passionate about helping people integrate the teachings of Christ into everyday life. Our work started in San Francisco, but over the last few years it's taken a global turn. I spend time each year in the U.K., Australia, Bangladesh, and East Africa; I'll be headed to Scandinavia tomorrow. When I got here this weekend, I realized there's a lot in common with South Fellowship's language and some of my passions; I wrote a book called Practicing the Way of Jesus. Maybe this is what's brewing right now, this longing among God's people to say we want to not just believe in Jesus, but also walk in his way. Some of what I'm going to be sharing this morning comes from a couple of books I wrote that are available here today. Yesterday we got to spend time with moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas, and kids talking about family thriving and exploring that topic. We had an amazing time sharing hearts and doing activities and looking at God's vision on how we can be transformed in our family life. What I'm going to be sharing this morning is a little taste of the depth we explored yesterday...

TRANSFORMED | Transformed Vocation | Ephesians 2:8-10 | Week 8

 I want you all to know that in a few weeks it's my birthday.  I wanted to give you time to get presents.  And it's the big one --- 42nd!  A couple years ago, I turned 40, and as most of us do when we hit a milestone, we spend time reflecting.  I started looking at what I had accomplished, how God had used me.  A question that most of us ask at certain milestones of our lives --- Am I where I thought I'd be at this point in my life?   I wanted my forties to be an awesome decade, so I decided to attend a TED conference---TedX: Mile High.  I grabbed some friends and I was excited. The theme was "Wonder."  My hope was to be inspired and to reflect and to dream about the next decade or two about my life and dream about the next season.  
Wouldn't we like to experience "Wonder" on a regular basis?  I liked that the program had speaker profiles.  Then I started looking at the speaker list:  
Tamika Mallory - one of four organizers of the Woman’s March on DC and civil rights activist 
Dick Durrance - famous photographer/journalist - pics of Vietnam - National Geographic 
James Orsulak - owns an asteroid mining company and title is Space Entrepreneur
Doug Vakoch - Runs an organization “dedicated to transmitting intentional signals to nearby stars and fostering the sustainability of human civilization on multi-generational timescales, a project that could take centuries or millennia to succeed.”   What are you working on?? I had to ask myself, "Where were those things on the list of possible vocations when I was in high school?"  I never saw space entrepreneur or interstellar correspondent on the list or I would have been the first to sign up!

TRANSFORMED | Transformed View of God | Ephesians 3:14-21 | Week 7

The topic I'm looking at is a transformed view of God.  That's a big topic to take.  My hope is that we'll be able to come up with some kind of a working definition that may kind of stretch us a bit; we've got to be stretched when we're talking about God.  I believe very strongly, as I've been working on this sermon, that this view that we have of God influences the way we view life.  I think it's pretty important that we have a good view of God, if we're going to be stepping into life and meeting the challenges we'll face day by day.  
We're going to be looking at Ephesians 3:14-20.  For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.  I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.  And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge---that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.  Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen...
 
Helping people live in the way of Jesus with the heart of Jesus.
 
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TRANSFORMED | Transformed View of God | Ephesians 3:14-21 | Week 7
Speaker: Pastor Dan Elliott
South Fellowship Church
Based in Littleton, CO 

TRANSFORMED | Kingdom Refreshments | Romans 15:23-33 | Week 6

Toward the end of July I was approached by a gentleman in this church that I did not know well, who asked me how my family was doing. I shared with him the excitement that my wife is pregnant with our fourth, and that Jesus definitely doesn’t love me because it is another boy and I wanted a little girl. The man (whom I won’t mention by name because he’d get mad) piped in and very caringly asked, “How is your wife? I remember that you guys have had some issues with pregnancies in the past and how is this one going?” Immediately my heart was warmed, this man had remembered something from over two years ago about our family's journey. I was glad to share with him that this pregnancy is going well so far in every regard, except that it was just so hot in July, and we don’t have AC in our home so that makes my wife uncomfortable. The man nodded and we went about our days. The next day, the same man called and arranged a meeting with me at the coffee shop. I walked in and he handed me a gift card with a considerable amount of money on it and said, “Go get yourself a portable AC unit for your bedroom so you and your wife can sleep peacefully.” Needless to say, this man’s gift was and has continued to be incredibly refreshing for us. Incidentally, my wife and I also happen to be lacking a private jet to travel the world if anyone is feeling extra generous this morning...

TRANSFORMED | Transformed: Body | Romans 12:1 | Week 5

Uuugghhh! For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.  For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.  (Romans 7:18)  For I do not understand my own actions.  For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.  So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.  (Romans 7:16-17)  For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.  (Romans 7:22-23)
Here we are in a series of transformation and I've got the wonderful topic of the body.  How many of us feel the same type of angst that the Apostle Paul felt in those verses?  Just like Larry gave us this wholeness wheel {Spirit--Mind--Body--Emotion--Relationships--Vocation--Resources} at the beginning [of the series], if I were to take a look at that and talk to God about how am I doing with my body in this journey of transformation, I feel some of that angst!  It's interesting that over the last couple of weeks of preparing this message, I feel like God has turned up the volume on my hunger, and I've become real aware of that.  I have hunger!  I know that's silly, but I think that sometimes I fall asleep to my body and I don't even realize I have these kind of urges or cravings.  As God's been showing me that I have this kind of hunger, you know where I go to fulfill it?  The donut shop!  Because fall is amazing....I go get a half dozen donuts and I polish them off throughout the day.  Great!  I'm doing awesome!  At night I get the munchies.  There's a lot of stuff in my refrigerator, but I'm really in the mood for salt.  I'll polish off half the bag of chips.  I love the fall and I need a boost of caffeine and get my brain awake, so I'm going to go to Starbucks and get my Pumpkin Spice Latte and I'm going to satisfy my craving.  God's been showing me that I have these cravings, these yearnings, these urges, and it's really easy to go and satisfy them myself.  It's easy because it's accessible.  I've got food in my cupboards and refrigerator.  I've got a car and can drive to the restaurant of my choosing or the store and fill whatever that craving is.  So I'm susceptible to following the cravings my body has and trying to satisfy them myself...

TRANSFORMED | Transformational Community | Gen. 3:6-19, Matt. 12:46-50 | Week 4

Some of you may know that my wife Heidi and I used to live overseas for most of a decade.  The question we're asked the most is "What do you miss about living overseas?"  It's really easy to answer that because we miss the community.  Whenever you leave someplace you tend to idealize it, so I realize that could be part of it.  But we were, as a foreign community, several hundred in a city of several million, so you immediately had this island mentality----we kind of have to take care of one another.  We had a shared purpose.  We were involved with different works, but almost all of us were there to encourage the local population in the name of Jesus; to help them in practical ways and do other works.  There was a sense of being known and needed.  As one of the docs in the community, I would often get phone calls....What do I do with these symptoms?  Where should I go? Do I need to leave?   Probably what I like the most more is that the communities were overlapping.  If I go to work, I don't see the same people there that I see here on Sunday, and I certainly don't see them in my neighborhood; they're all very disjointed.  But there, I'd see a lot of the same people, whether I was at the clinic, or at International School, or at fellowship.  It was a sense of being known and being a part of things.  
As I thought about that I realized that it wasn't like that at the beginning.  I went overseas when I was in my early 40's, so I had roles that I played, I had some titles [here].  Then all of a sudden I found myself living in a community where I couldn't speak to most people around me, at the beginning, but even those people I could speak with didn't know who I was.  It was very unsettling.  How about you?  Have you had a similar experience?  Maybe you've recently relocated, or maybe your life circumstances have changed in such a way that you suddenly feel like you're not known.  That raises the question--Why do we get so much joy when we know we're in good community?  Is community optional?  We've all got apps---NextDoor, South app; I have this great Peak Finder app to use while hiking.  Is community like an app that you can add on and it makes life better?  Or, is there something so important and fundamental to who we are that if we're not in community, we miss out and the community we should be a part of misses out?...

TRANSFORMED | The Mind and the Heart and Fits and Starts | Romans 12:2 | Week 3

We're in a series called "Transformed" and the last few weeks have been journeying together toward biblical wholeness.   We’ve talked about how the Scriptures call us to be transformed, and that we are being transformed into the wholeness of Jesus.  I love what professor, pastor, and author Robert Mulholland says:  "The Christian journey, therefore, is an intentional and continual commitment to a lifelong process of growth toward wholeness in Christ."  We put up this slide a couple of weeks ago to show you that our lives are very complex, there's multiple parts to our lives.  Even though we're complex and have a lot of different parts, the good news is that the Gospel has the power to impact far more than just our relationship with God or our standing with God.  The Gospel should impact all of our lives.  So in this series, we’re looking at different parts of our lives that should be transformed by the power of the Gospel.  Last week, Dr. Wenig shared with us about transformed relationships as an area God wants to heal.  Relationships are currency of life, aren't they?  Almost everything you think of that you do involves relationship of some kind...  
 
Helping people live in the way of Jesus with the heart of Jesus.
 
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TRANSFORMED | The Mind and the Heart and Fits and Starts | Romans 12:2 | Week 3
Speaker: Pastor Larry Boatright
South Fellowship Church
Based in Littleton, CO