Downtown Community Church

Luke Brueggemeyer shares with us a story from church history, explaining to us the necessity of tapping into the lives of saints that have lived before us. Listen to the radical life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and one story in particular that shows how resilient community was a weapon against the evil forces of Nazism.Send us a textSupport the show

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Our fearless leader, Ben Kaempfer, breaks down one of the nine core values that shape how we operate as a church: Spiritual Information + Practical Application.Send us a textSupport the show

Our Executive Pastor, William Colle, shares what the Lord has been teaching him since the recent death of his Grandfather through reflecting on a life best defined as a "long obedience in the same direction."Send us a textSupport the show

What would you have to do for Jesus to call you Satan? When Jesus rebuked Peter in this way, Peter was doing what he genuinely thought was right. In Matthew 16, after a series of miracles and ministry, Jesus asks the disciples who they say he is. When Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God (v. 16), Jesus blesses him and says that on that rock He will build His church. There is no more important question for us to answer than, “Who do you say Jesus is?” Peter finally gets this one right, only to soon become overzealous and get reprimanded by Jesus. As Jesus is telling them how he must die and resurrect, Peter rebukes Jesus and says that he should never die! In Peter’s mind, Jesus being the true Son of God is completely incompatible with him becoming a suffering servant who would die. While this seems very reasonable for Peter, Jesus says to him “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” We face this prob

Hear Luke Brueggemeyer, our Young Professional Discipleship Director, explain how the constant distractions of our daily lives conspire against us having a deeper relationship with our Father. Yet through practicing silent prayer, we fight back against the strongholds of constant noise and stimulation, and reclaim the action of simply "being" with God.Send us a textSupport the show

Kaitlyn Dressel, long-time DCC attender and art teacher at Maclay High School, tells the story of how a call to faith from five years ago led her to take the Gospel message to her workplace through starting FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes) at her school.Send us a textSupport the show

The longer you are a Christian, the easier it is for your external spirituality to exceed your inward fidelity to God. Most of us have experienced a brand of Christianity in people that displayed the externalities of holiness in a way that made us feel judged instead of loved. This sort of approach to Christianity causes us to modify our behavior in order to appear to be  more “Christian.” But Jesus constantly called the Pharisees out for this sort of behavior. In Matthew 15, Jesus confronts the Pharisees for using their written traditions selfishly to break commandments. We see this sort of selfish half-obedience in ourselves when it comes to prayer. Prayer is set apart for God, but if God answered “yes” to every single prayer you prayed last week, how many people outside of you and your family would be positively affected? In this way, we try to leverage the spiritual practice of prayer for personal gain. Jesus turns his attention to the human heart, calling out those who perform lip service to him while th

Jenna Gurklis, our College Woman Discipleship Director, connects our origin story in Eden with John's first letter in the New Testament, and observes us how our sin patterns have remained relatively constant throughout time. But there is a solution, and it comes in humbly trusting in the Way of Jesus over the ways of the world.Send us a textSupport the show

Hear our Worship Leader, Sofia Fernandez, share a story of a local family desperately in need of mattresses, and how our church family (both locally and nationally) became the hands and feet of Christ through generously giving up what they had in order to love their community well.Send us a textSupport the show

Most of us have experienced the moments where we felt very called to something, but as time went on and the situation got difficult, we began to wonder if we were ever called to do this thing in the first place. This may have been expressed in your life through being initially excited about a small group only to find 6 months later that you feel overbooked, overly busy, and drained. Maybe you started volunteering somewhere and the weariness of the work has caused you to no longer feel “called” to it. The story of Jesus walking on water speaks clearly to us as we discern how to proceed into the calling of God on our lives when things get hard and we lose all sense of sureness we used to have. After a long day of ministering to thousands alongside Jesus, the disciples find themselves in the middle of the storm. As a figure is walking towards them, they decide that it is either a ghost or Jesus. Peter shouts, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Jesus simply replies, “Come,” (v. 28-29).

Dylan Nielander, our College Men's Discipleship Director, reflects on how our culture of consumption is dictating our formation. Based on the "liturgies" we partake in every day, are we becoming people more or less like Christ?Send us a textSupport the show

Hear from our Pastoral Project Manager, Ally Frith, on how her friend's boldness in prayer opened up multiple avenues to further her intimacy with God.Send us a textSupport the show

Were the disciples faithful followers, or fallible failures? The answer may shock you.. We can have a visceral reaction to want to protect the character of the 12 disciples. However, a true reading of the Gospels reveals that these men failed constantly on their way to becoming faithful followers of Jesus. In the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand, the disciples are shown to be initially very practical. When Jesus told them to feed the people, they were perplexed. They were perplexed because they knew the level of their supply was not nearly enough to fill the need.  Put another way, there wasn’t enough in their cup to fill everyone else’s cup.Andrew offered 5 small loaves and 2 small fish that were available.  This created the dynamic for a very teachable moment for the disciples to experience.  Simply stated, you are not responsible for filling everyone’s cup (or basket) only for pouring out what’s in yours.Jesus then tells the disciples to have the multitude of people sit down in groups of 50. They h

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Hear from our families director, Delaney Stoney, on how the simple action of attending a kids soccer game impacted a relationship.Music by @SofiaCamille.Send us a textSupport the show

Learn more about our "For The Future" building expansion and why we're excited to have you partner with us during this next season! Learn more at https://downtowncommunitychurch.com/forthefuture Send us a textSupport the show

It is very unlikely that many of us identify the idol of emotions as one of our main struggles. However, we can find this idol in ourselves when we ask questions like “Is my obedience towards God dependent on my feelings?” or “Do I follow Jesus less in a season when I feel disconnected?” In fact, for most of us, our obedience is bound to our emotions. Evidence of this fact is the self-medication of online shopping when we feel frustrated, or settling for a wrong relationship when we feel lonely. Emotions are good indicators of our need, but they turn sour when we medicate ourselves with the idol of emotions.The correction of this is not turning around and completely ignoring our emotions. We can take immense cues from the Psalmist of Psalm 42 of how to hold our emotions in tension with relationship to God. The Psalmist admits that there is a cognitive dissonance between the way he feels and what he believes about God. In the situation of despair that the Psalmist was in, most of us either hide from God and me

Besides just the cheesiness of doing a relationship sermon on Valentine’s Day, this sermon was originally scheduled on another day so as not to rain on the parade of everyone. Yet, here it is. Because all humans are made in the image of God, it makes sense that it is easy for us to idolize another human. To start with the bottom line, relationships were never meant to be used for the fulfillment of our needs, they were always meant to compliment us.  However, when we look to the compliment to become our fulfillment it will always leave us in disappointment.  The reality is that when I need someone, I’m not really loving them for them. I am objectifying them in order to fulfill my own needs. We tend to make two mistakes on this front: either we feel incomplete and look to someone else to complete us, or we believe that we actually are complete and fulfilled in and of ourselves. The message of the gospel, however, tells us something entirely different. All of this is illustrated by the story of Jacob in Genesis

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