Ridgedale Students

Our audio wasn’t working for the first two teachings from HouseCamp, but we were able to get the third!In our final teaching from the week, we wrap up Psalm 27 after hearing night 1 about our need to seek out God as light, and night 2 on how we see God properly. In this final teaching we look to the hope of Jesus available to us all here and now and David’s confidence in claiming that hope for himself.

How do we respond to God’s answer in prayer?Through the posture of yielding we learn to listen and respond in a way that honors God and leads to our flourishing.

Asking is uncomfortable, isn’t it?We fear asking for a variety of reasons. We believe it reveals weakness in us in a society that prizes strength. We believe it shows us to be needy in a culture of self-sufficiency. What we find in the Scriptures is a very different vision of going to God with our need in prayer. Charles Spurgeon informs us that asking is the currency of the Kingdom of God. That we come to the Father in our need and He meets us in it with His abundance in order to form the Kingdom deeply within us. Tonight we have the joy of hearing from DJ Zayed, one of our longtime small group and worship leaders and one of the most beloved people in our community.

Walter Wangerin once said, “Praise and thanksgiving require more than our brains. They want our laughter, our capering bodies, our trembling delight, smiles and the sweet flush of delight-and song. Praise must be sung.” This is the truth we come to in prayer; that God asks for all of us in an expression of joy. Prayer isn’t robotic. It isn’t simply us asking, or confessing, or adoring God. It’s a song our heart, mind, soul, and body sing back to God over our experience of His goodness. This is our topic for week 4 of our Praying the Psalms series.

What do we do with our sin? David was familiar with not meeting the expectations of God and so he writes to us about it in the Psalms. Tonight we look to Psalm 32, 139 and 52 to see how sin works, what God thinks of us in our sin and what we experience in our moment of confession to hopefully move us from a place of fearing confession to freedom in confession.

In our final series of the year we look at prayer as a regular rhythm patterned for us in the Psalms. Tonight we look at the practice of pausing and adoration in prayer from Psalm 8 and many other passages throughout the Scriptures.

In the final week of our series we look at our relationship to the most essential element in supporting life there is; food. How are our meals, not only spiritual in nature, but also meant to form our communities and our joy in a God-ward direction?

We spend a large majority of our lives completely incapacitated by this thing called sleep. Not just this, but we spend a great portion of our waking hours longing for the rest that sleep brings. With so much of our lives wrapped up in rest the obvious question is what is God trying to teach us through the necessity of rest? Join us for week 3 of our series w(HOL)l(Y) Ordinary as we examine the spiritual nature of rest and sleep with our intern Eli Berkley leading the teaching.

Join us for week 2 of our series examining the holiness of every day moments as we discuss the spirituality of work.

Join us for a new series examining the holes in the idea of the sacred/secular divide and exploring the ways we can find God at work in the things of everyday life.

Join us for a concluding Q&R with Chris as we conclude our SEEDS series on relational evangelism.

Is life found in God’s Law or does it actually choke out our life in following it? Tonight we look at our relationship to the Law and life as we seek to dig out the weeds to a thriving faith.

(Note, our recording stopped earlier than the end of the message by about 7 minutes. So sorry for the missing audio!)Why am I still continuing to sin even though I’ve committed to Jesus? Hear from Josh Powell on this difficult subject for apprentices of Jesus as we walk the way of Jesus together.

In this series we look at the nagging questions that impede our growth in discipleship when they go unaddressed.In week 1 we look at God’s wrath and how it isn’t an attribute to be avoided but actually reveals God’s love in a deeper way.

What does real religion look like lived out?In Isaiah 58, Israel comes to God asking why all their religious work isn’t resulting in deeper intimacy. The response? True religion must be converted into lived righteousness.In session 2 we look at the requirements of true religion and our call to convert our work into lived righteousness.

What is God up to at the beginning of His story?In Genesis 1 we see creation, a garden and a people made in God’s image. But what does this image and garden mean for the way we live? As we begin Fall Retreat around the theme of Garden we look at how our lives intersect with the Biblical theme of garden giving us purpose, calling and commissioning to go with God making a world full of His life, beauty and presence.

We end our series with a teaching from Pastor Chris on Ezekiel 37 and the Valley of Dry Bones.

Week 2 of our series features a teaching on Ezekiel 36 from our newest Ridgedale staff member, Danny Hesterly.

Join us for week 1 of a new series walking through the book of Ezekiel and the hope that fills us up as we go to pour out the love of God on a world in need.

In our final week of Messiology we want to take all we've learned and put it into real tangible, missional steps we can live out as a community for the good of others.How do we take a Gospel-fluent message into a culture opposed to it with the nagging fear of rejection and doubts in the back of our mind?This is our focus in week 3 of our series; Messiology.

In week 1 we culturally exegeted the world that we live in missionally, but what is going on in our own hearts that keeps us from taking what we know and converting it into missiological practice? At the heart of apprehension is the issue of ACCEPTANCE. In a flattened, polarized, consumeristic world, the worst thing you can be is different, counter-cultural, concerned with formation over consumption. How do we deconstruct a relativistic worldview?How do we reform what true acceptance looks like?And how do we firm up the assurance we have in God for ourselves and the good of others?This is what we're exploring in week 2 of our series; Messiology.

In this opening teaching we will dive into the mess of the world that we have been missionally called to. What is the culture and who are the people we've been called to? When we look at the world today we see a place that is jammed up with polarization, "You're either with me or against me..." It is growing more and more relativistic, flattening all worldviews into one placid view of the world. It's built toward meeting the needs of a consumer culture that wants to know the product they're buying is proficient and proven to give what they want. But this is not the message of the Gospel...How can we step into the mess of a people who want God their way for their purposes? This is the challenge we pose at the beginning of our series; Messiology.

For House Night 1 we’re examining a process for life and community that maximizes our potential in partnering God to see a move of God in our midst in this new school year. When we Pray Hard, Work Hard, Play Hard, and Rest Hard we set ourselves up to see God do what only He can do, and find ourselves refreshed along the way.

Where has God brought us and what is He bringing us into in the coming here? Check it out here as we wrapped up our final House Night of the school year.

In our final teaching of the semester we look at what the way of Jesus looks like as a community practice.

How do we actually live the way of Jesus? In the first of a two part teaching we will look at what following Jesus looks like in a personal sense through a look at Jesus’ own practice of what we call “spiritual disciplines.”

We live in an age of disconnected spirituality.For many people, spirituality can me anything or nothing at all. We can live deeply "spiritual" lives, but have no evident difference in our life from that of non-religious people. We tend toward a surface-level faith that just adds church attendance to the practices we participate in alongside everyone else. This works up to a point, but it falls apart when we get to a stage in life where the questions we're asking can't be answered by the answers we've sought or been provided. What does following Jesus look like then?Tonight we diagnose the disconnect in our following Jesus by looking at the insufficiencies in our discipleship and the ways we mirror the life of the world knowingly or unknowingly.

What comes from following the Way of Jesus?In a world where we’re constantly looking to the next thing and the potential of a new season we have to ask ourselves the question, “What is the potential in following Jesus’ Way?”Tonight we begin our final series of the school year looking at that exact thought.

Check out this stand alone teaching from our friend Ladarion Simpson!

How are Christians meant to handle disagreements and offense? In this stand alone teaching we will hear from one of our own Zack Naessig on the topic of forgiveness.

In our final week of Life Together we look at the life of the church outside of its community. As the church is deeply formed, what is it formed into and how do we live out this formation-fueled missional life?

What is our life together meant to look like within the Church? Part 1 of 2 will explore this question on ecclesiology.

"I wish we never had to leave (insert student ministry big event here)."Why is there so much hype behind the big events of ministry and so much apprehension about returning to the normal rhythms of our lives? We run toward deep conversations, vulnerability, and unrestrained worship at a camp, retreat or other event, but we withhold ourselves from all of these things in a regular Sunday service or a Wednesday night. Is it because camps are that much better than normal life? What is it?What if it's a fundamental misunderstanding of what "normal life" is meant to look like?

Major apologies but our recording cut out halfway through the second point. We will be happy to email notes for the remaining section if you email [email protected]. If you’d like a print out of the Rule of Life builder we developed you can email the same address!

What is life all about? This question has been asked by innumerable people of thousands of years all in the hope of an answer coming that can make sense of life here and now and lead to deeper flourishing. The answer the Bible offers; “This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God.”How can we know a God who is also described as indescribable? In week 3 of Rooted, we’ll look at the practice of Knowing God.

Does God speak?Most people would say yes, but without a great deal of confidence that He would speak to them. Hearing from God is an essential part of our spiritual life but often goes overlooked because it seems too hard to discern or too rare to expect. But what if that wasn’t the case?Tonight in week 2 of Rooted we will look at the practice of hearing from God through the story of Luke 24:13-35.

How do we start a new year well? For many the answer is resolutions and for others it’s rhythms but when we look to Christian history there are certain practices that deeply root our identity and daily life in the life of Jesus.Tonight we begin by looking to the promise of Matthew 5:8 and the hope found in Exodus 33 and Psalm 37:4 that God does in fact reveal Himself to those who want Him and seek Him out.

Tonight we wrap up our final teaching in the Life series looking at the most important church doctrine that most people have never heard mentioned; union with Christ.

We were made for life in God, but that life comes only as our belief is formed through proximity to Jesus and obedience to God’s commands. In our next to last teaching of the series we look at the journey toward Jesus and the moment the rubber meets the road.

If you’ve ever kept an article of clothing too long or not been able to shake a bad habit, you can identify with the difficulty felt by all followers of Jesus with change and growth. We need to change, we must change, and yet something feels like it stands between us and that desire.Tonight we talk about what theologians have called purgation, what Paul called, “working out our faith,” but what we might call throwing out the old shorts.

As we enter the second half of our series we begin by looking at the practical application of our seeking out life in and with Jesus. He has given us a pathway toward life in what the New Testament calls discipleship.

Our Fall 2024 mid-semester Worship Night on the theme Better. We are blessed to have our good friend Steven Arce teaching with us. Steven and his family are missionaries to Venezuela and have been partnered with Ridgedale for several years.

Our final mini session of Fall Retreat comes from 2 Peter 1:1-4 on who we are, what we’ve been given in Christ and what that means when we return from the retreat.

"What's in this?" It's the logical question we should ask when presented with something new that we're interested in but uncertain of. "What's in the life of Saint?" Tonight in our final full session of Fall Retreat we answer this question by looking at the life of Peter.

What happens when people of uncommon goodness gather together to form a community of uncommon blessing? Check out the Saturday morning session for the answer!

Check out message 1 from RSM Fall Retreat 2024. Our theme is Saints and we begin with a call to live into what God has already said we are.

If Jesus defined His Gospel as the "Kingdom come near," then what does living in the Kingdom entail? He starts His sermon on the mount by clarifying the WHO, but He finishes it with the HOW. Check it out on this week's episode.

Jesus came teaching and preaching, "Behold, the Kingdom has come near. Repent and believe." When we talk about life, we have to look towards its source and what Jesus saw as life and the good news of life is that the Kingdom of God had arrived on the scene. For us to understand life, we must understand the Kingdom of God and its implications on our lives. This is part 1 of 2 looking at the Kingdom of God and our lives.

How do we begin to live into the new quality of life that Jesus offers us? We must begin to see a re-enchanted world all around us with Him at the center.

Check out the post-teaching Question and Response time from week 1 of our series, Life!