Views from The Ridge 06.26.2024

Sunset Ridge is a church that desires to follow Jesus, reach people, and radiate God’s love and hope to all.

This Week

Thursday, June 27, 7:30pm Sunset Camp Worship service

All ages are invited to join our children for a special worship service to close out Sunset Camp. The kids will be sharing some of their giftings and what they have learned throughout the week. You won’t want to miss it.

Sunday, June 30

9am Worship in the Sanctuary (Anthony Miranda preaching: What Would You Do? - Mark 5:21-43 NLT)
10:15am Formation time for all ages

Adult class series: Practicing The Way
Teen formation: The Chosen
Children’s formation: Godly Play

11am Worship in the Chapel (Jess Lowry preaching: Mark 5:21-43 - listen to this month’s worship inspiration on Spotify)

Upcoming

Tuesday, July 2, 9:30am Storytime on the lawn

Thursday, July 4 Office closed

PLEASE NOTE: Men’s Monthly Assembly will not meet in July

Interested in what’s scheduled for our campus at large? Please consider subscribing to Goodness Weekly.

Around Our Community

Sunset Camp is in full swing this week and it has been so sweet to see new and familiar faces playing, learning, and belonging together. We are looking forward to the special worship service they are preparing for Thursday.

In The Storm

Riley Stirman, Preaching Minister, Sunset Ridge Church

An excerpt from Incarnate: the Body of Christ in an Age of Disengagement by Michael Frost.

When John Wesley sailed to Georgia to commence missionary service among natives in North America, he found himself in a small ship in a ferocious Atlantic storm and feared terribly for his life. In his journal he described the scene: "The sea broke over, split the mainsail in pieces, covered the ship, and poured in between the decks, as if the great deep had already swallowed us up. A terrible screaming began among the English."

Being English himself, I've often wondered whether this was Wesley's oblique way of describing his own humiliating terror, the shame made all the more deep by the serenity of a band of Moravian missionaries from the Zinzendorf estate who continued to worship God calmly in the face of seemingly certain death. Astonished by their calm, Wesley approached them:

"I asked one of them afterwards, 'Was you not afraid?' He answered, 'I thank God, no.' I asked, 'But were not your women and children afraid?' He replied, mildly, 'No; our women and children are not afraid to die.' From them I went to their crying, trembling [English] neighbors, and pointed out to them the difference in the hour of trial, between him that feareth God, and him that feareth him not."

This experience had a profound effect on the young Wesley. Coupled with his perceived lack of missionary success in Georgia, it caused him to question his resolve. If his faith made no difference in the face of a life-threatening storm, was it actually faith at all? Almost exactly two years to the day after his encounter with the Moravians he famously journaled his personal crisis:

I went to America to convert the [Natives]; but oh! who shall convert me? . . . I have a fair summer religion. I can talk well; nay, and believe myself, while no danger is near; but let danger look me in the face, and my spirit is troubled. Nor can I say, "To die is gain!"

Wesley is expressing the difference between a faith that one adopts cognitively and a faith that resides in one’s very body. The Moravians were true witnesses to the resurrection as embodied in their composed and tranquil worship. It wasn’t simply that they knew their faith more or better than John Wesley; their faith was an embodied experience. They were carrying the gospel in their bodies, like a living record of life given, life healed, life hoped for.