I spent Saturday with an interesting group of people. Diverse in age and background, all were fellow believers in Christ. But they had one thing in common.They had left the Institutional Church. Forever. Some are calling them dechurched. A recent article calls them the Dones and though they started gaining a voice in the 90's, their message is more relevant now than ever. ...
Keep ReadingThis Sunday, Pastor Miguel reminded us in Mark 14:1-11 that Christ is our ultimate gift. Mary's anointing of Jesus displays how He is worthy of our entire devotion and extravagant love, all of which is motivated by His saving grace to us. As we draw nearer to Christmas day, let us be reminded of the precious gift of Christ who took on human flesh to live the perfect life y...
Keep ReadingEveryone values something. When we speak of our values, we mean that there are things we esteem as most important above all. We tend to see these things as indispensable to the way that we think, live, and invest. When speaking of a church's values, we usually mean that there are certain theological positions and practices that outline how we see Christianity working. A ch...
Keep ReadingHere are seven ingredients for healthy sermon listening: 1. Expect God to speak. Look up next Sunday's Bible passage and read it at home during the week. Pray for next Sunday's preacher in the middle of the week. Pray often for yourself, that, by His Spirit, God will grow in you a heartfelt expectation that God Himself will speak to you as His word is preached. If y...
Keep ReadingRecently, a Pastor friend of mine posted several quotes on Twitter from Darrin Patrick's new book, "The Dude's Guide to Manhood", so I decided to give it a look myself. I hopped on Amazon, searched the title and up came this bright yellow book cover with a burly beard silhouette. From the cover alone I was sold! All kidding aside though, as I read Darrin's intro I began to...
Keep ReadingRecently, I finished reading a new book by Michael Reeves, "Enjoying your Prayer Life." Many of you may be familiar with another book written by this author that many of us at HRF have been raving about called "Delighting in the Trinity", by the way, is a must read. While this book is only 46 pages, it has been a very helpful resource that gets to the heart of prayer. I ju...
Keep ReadingLast Sunday, I preached on Mark 2:23-3:6. One of the points that I brought out from that text was that there is only two types of ways to be made right with God - theres religion and there's the Gospel. Here are two videos of Tim Keller sharing the difference between Religion and The Gospel. Religion says "I obey, therefore God must accept me." The Gospel says "I...
Keep ReadingI write this for three reasons: I wanted to recap my first year serving in the Pastoral Residency at Hampton Roads Fellowship. My desire to see men take a biblical path to prepare for Pastoral Ministry by means of a healthy local church. To provide a framework for those who may be discerning a call to the pastoral ministry to consider if God may be calling them to spe...
Keep ReadingPaul Tripp on "How in the World Do People Change Anyway?"....
Keep ReadingWe're excited to announce that we will be preaching through the Gospel of Mark beginning January 5, 2014. The Gospel of Mark is the earlist written and shortest of the four gospels. You can read through the entire book in about 40 minutes. Here are a few highlights that we find in the Gospel of Mark: Mark is very much a tell-it-like-it-is sort of Gospel, and actions...
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