Pastor Kyle Bitter

Text: Romans 12:14-21

Watch Service Video

From 2011-2015, ABC produced a TV drama under the title “Revenge.” The show was set in the Hamptons – an extremely wealthy neighborhood on Long Island – and was centered around a woman who had grown up in the neighborhood, but whose family had been falsely accused and forced to leave the area in disgrace when she was a kid. Later in life, she amasses a fortune and the show tells the story of her moving back to her childhood home…to seek revenge on those who had destroyed her family despite her father’s encouragement to forgive and move on. Over the course of the show, viewers watch as this woman befriends her enemies and then manipulates them against one another, using their own selfishness against them as she seeks her revenge and slowly destroys all of their lives. Not really an appealing premise for a TV show in my opinion, but reading the reviews it seems as though many critics found the plot oddly compelling. A phrase that kept coming up in the online reviews I read referred to the show as a “guilty pleasure.” I suppose there’s something appealing about watching someone carry out the kind of vengeance that you might find yourself wishing for even if you know you shouldn’t pursue it yourself. 

Pastor Joel Leyrer

Text:  2 Corinthians 12:7-10 

Watch Service Video

Dear Friends in Christ,  Imagine this.  Ever since you were a little boy or a girl you’ve been fascinated with the city of Paris.  You’ve read everything there is to read on its history, you know the places that interest you the most, and you know exactly what you want to see once you get there. Now you’ve reached a point in your life when you can make the trip, so you board the plane with great anticipation of just how wonderful this long-envisioned vacation is going to be.  It’s a direct flight, so you don’t have to worry about layovers or connections.

Pastor Eric Schroeder

Text: Romans 10:13-17

Watch Service Video

Quite often, the most difficult questions to answer are the ones that begin with the word Why?  For instance, at some point we have probably asked ourselves or other people questions like, “Why is the sky blue?”  Or, “Why is it so cold today?”  Or, “Why do solar and lunar eclipses happen?”  You might know the answers to those questions, but you didn’t always know.  If you do know, it’s because you did some scientific research, and by reading a book or a website or asking an expert, you found out how the world works—that there are a whole lot of cause-and-effect relationships built into God’s creation.

Pastor Kyle Bitter

Text: Romans 10:18 - 11:6

Watch Service Video

With the wintery weather conditions over the past couple of weeks here in southeastern Wisconsin, I’m guessing most of you took the time to watch weather reports on T or look up forecasts on the internet just to see what exactly was coming. Maybe as you were doing that, you happened to see some of the weather forecasts from other parts of the country. I don’t know about you, but I always find it kind of entertaining to see how the warmer parts of the country respond to cold weather. For example, I saw a clip of weatherman from Florida warning people to bundle up and stay indoors because…the temperature might dip below freezing. I was talking to my brother who lives in Atlanta, and he was telling me how traffic in the city is usually paralyzed and school is often called off by a dusting of snow and a little ice. In the middle of a Wisconsin winter, it’s easy to laugh at that kind of stuff, but it also makes some sense. Most people in Florida don’t have a lot of heavy winter clothing…and so temperatures below freezing do present a significant challenge. According to the public records, the city of Atlanta owns just 40 salt trucks to clear the ice from a metro area populated by 6 million people. For comparison, the City of Wauwatosa owns 41…with 100 times fewer people. Having the right tools for the job makes a huge difference when challenges arise in any part of life, whether it’s extreme weather, home repair projects, or just about anything else!