Views from The Ridge 10.15.25
Sunset Ridge is a church that desires to follow Jesus, reach people, and radiate God’s love and hope to all.
Worship
Sunday
9 AM, Chapel, Acapella
11 AM, Sanctuary, Instrumental
Exodus 20:14
We are going through the Ten Commandments this fall.
Watch previous sermons here.
Discipleship
Sundays, 10:15 AM, Bible Class & Discipleship for All Ages
Studying Exodus 20:14
Fellowship Hall
Adult Bible Class: Open to all
BEMA Podcast Discussion group
Chapel Classroom, Love in Chaos Bible Study, open to women and men of all ages
Roots: Children’s Discipleship through Godly Play
Bible Story Focus this Week: The Ark and the Tent
Key Verse: Exodus 35:29
Room 102, PreK - Kindergarten
Room 122, 1st - 2nd Grade
Room 209, 3rd - 4th Grade
Sundays 10:15-10:45 AM, Room 220, BOYS 5th - 7th Grade, Formation Study w/ Bryan Wolfe
Sundays 10:15-10:45 AM, Room 220, GIRLS 5th - 7th Grade, Formation Study w/ Den Slater
Wednesdays, 5:15 - 5:45 PM, High School Girls’ Sermon Study Group
Room 220, Contact Den to join this group, open to 9th-12th Grade
Wednesdays, 6 PM - 7:30 PM, Teen Alpha Course
Room 220, Contact Den to join this group, open to 9th-12th Grade
Community Connections
Sunset Ridge Farmers Markets hosts workshops every 3rd Saturday, and this weekend we’ll be hearing from James of Clarke’s Greens. Saturday’s workshop is all about urban farming—with a focus on bio-intensive methods, minimal to no-till practices, and chemical-free market gardening.
Whether you’re dreaming of starting your own backyard plot or want to deepen your knowledge of sustainable food production, this session is for you! Come join us to learn techniques that build soil health, increase yields, and bring fresh, nourishing food closer to home.
Sign up for this donation-based workshop here.
Upcoming Community Events
Today, Oct. 15th, 6:30 PM, Sarah’s Heart Remembrance Service, Sunset Ridge Chapel
Every Wednesday, 11 AM - 1:30 PM, Open Studio Painting
EverySaturday, 9 AM - 1 PM, Sunset Ridge Farmers Market, Charis Park
Beyond Sunday
Wellspring of Hope
Taylor Bates, Deputy Director, Sunset Ridge Church & Collective
Recently, I joined a Zoom call with church leaders from around the country who are part of a creative cohort connected to the Flourishing & the Church program. Our goal is to bring imagination and storytelling to the research data emerging from a new survey tool we’ll be piloting this year. The researchers recognize that data alone doesn’t stir hearts—but stories do.
In our first gathering, one theme rose to the surface: Christian flourishing includes learning how to suffer well. Our stories of faith are rarely the shiny ones—baptisms or overnight transformations—but the quiet, daily walks through struggle or seasons of unbearable pain. Many of us on that call shared stories of suffering that had ultimately deepened our faith and our relationships with God and others.
Part of my story feels especially relevant today, on Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day. Seven years ago, my first son, Ellis, was unexpectedly stillborn when I was eight months pregnant. That unbearable experience was somehow made bearable by my faith, my family and community, and this church.
I can still remember how unimaginable the future felt in those early days of grief. Each day was so heavy, and I couldn’t fathom enduring weeks, months, or years of that weight. And yet—here I am.
The night Ellis was stillborn, our hospital room was filled with my husband Hunter, our immediate family, and a circle of Sunset Ridge friends who showed up without hesitation. That room, full of death, was also somehow full of love—people unafraid to witness our suffering—and a divine spark of hope, though I couldn’t see it at that time. That night, Jess and I formed a deep connection when she shared that she and Nathan had also lost a stillborn baby, Ava, thirteen years earlier. Until then, I had never known anyone who had walked this path.
Others tenderly joined me in that space of grief—a nurse who shared with me that she’d also lost a baby decades earlier, and a chaplain named Amparo who slipped her arm through mine as I walked slow laps around the hallway. A simple gratitude practice introduced by my aunt helped me begin to notice small glimpses of goodness each day (though I’ll admit, I was resistant at first). A prayer—“God didn’t cause this, but God is here to walk me through this”—became my daily liturgy. A rainbow my sister-in-law saw on her drive home through a thunderstorm became a mystical symbol of hope.
So many sparks of love and grace carried me through that darkness. Because of my faith, I chose to see them as God’s presence. I could have dismissed them—my grief and physical pain were so consuming that at times I wanted to die. And yet the bits of light persisted, twinkling in the darkness, drawing my curiosity and awakening my imagination for a future that could still hold goodness.
Seven years later, I recognize what I experienced as mystical hope—a hope not tied to any particular outcome. My story included further loss and infertility, so my hope could not depend on having another child. Mystical hope lives deep within all of us; it’s what mysteriously makes suffering bearable.
As Cynthia Bourgeault writes:
“This journey to the wellsprings of hope is not something that will change your life in the short range, in the externals. Rather, it is something that will change your innermost way of seeing. From there, inevitably, the externals will rearrange.”
May you drink deeply from this wellspring of hope—and help others see it in themselves, too.
This evening, we join families around the world in the Wave of Light—lighting candles to honor babies lost through pregnancy and infancy. If you’d like to participate in community, our chapel will host the Sarah’s Heart Remembrance Service tonight at 6:30 pm, a space for families who’ve experienced pregnancy and infant loss to come together to honor and remember their babies.
