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July 29, 2026 • 1 Minute Read
Looking Ahead
This Sunday we will gather for lunch after service. We hope you will join us and connect with someone you haven’t met yet.
Our text for Sunday is Acts 8:25-40 Take a few minutes this week to read the passage and sit with these questions before we gather: How would you respond if God directed you to leave something — or someplace — great? A place where you knew you were making a difference, and He sent you toward what looked like desolate, empty road instead? The Ethiopian eunuch traveled somewhere between 1,800 and 2,000 miles to worship in Jerusalem — and was turned away at the door because of who he was. He found hope not in the temple, but on a desert road, through the obedience of one man willing to go where he was sent. Where have you experienced (or needed) that kind of unexpected hope? Consider this an intersection — a divine appointment on a desert road that looked like nowhere. Where might God be arranging an intersection in your life this week that doesn't look like much on the surface? See you Sunday.
July 24, 2026 • 3 Minute Read
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Looking Ahead: Acts 8:9-25 This Sunday we're in Acts 8:9-25. Let’s read it today: Acts 8: 9-25 9A man named Simon had been a sorcerer there for many years, amazing the people of Samaria and claiming to be someone great. 10Everyone, from the least to the greatest, often spoke of him as “the Great One—the Power of God.” 11They listened closely to him because for a long time he had astounded them with his magic. 12But now the people believed Philip’s message of Good News concerning the Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ. As a result, many men and women were baptized. 13Then Simon himself believed and was baptized. He began following Philip wherever he went, and he was amazed by the signs and great miracles Philip performed. 14When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that the people of Samaria had accepted God’s message, they sent Peter and John there. 15As soon as they arrived, they prayed for these new believers to receive the Holy Spirit. 16The Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them, for they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 17Then Peter and John laid their hands upon these believers, and they received the Holy Spirit. 18When Simon saw that the Spirit was given when the apostles laid their hands on people, he offered them money to buy this power. 19“Let me have this power, too,” he exclaimed, “so that when I lay my hands on people, they will receive the Holy Spirit!” 20But Peter replied, “May your money be destroyed with you for thinking God’s gift can be bought! 21You can have no part in this, for your heart is not right with God. 22Repent of your wickedness and pray to the Lord. Perhaps he will forgive your evil thoughts, 23for I can see that you are full of bitter jealousy and are held captive by sin.” 24“Pray to the Lord for me,” Simon exclaimed, “that these terrible things you’ve said won’t happen to me!” 25After testifying and preaching the word of the Lord in Samaria, Peter and John returned to Jerusalem. And they stopped in many Samaritan villages along the way to preach the Good News. Simon amazed a whole city with magic. Then the gospel came to town — and Simon believed it, got baptized, and started following Philip everywhere. Sounds like a win, doesn’t it? The man who amazed everyone, called the “The Great One, The Power of God”, seemingly bought into the message Philip is proclaiming. Did Simon truly believe? Luke tells us that he “believed and was baptized”, yet then when Peter comes to town, he gives him a sharp rebuke, a condemnation if you will. This weekend we will look at what is true salvation? Is it enough to simply believe? Somethings to consider: What's the difference between being amazed by something spiritual and being transformed by it? Simon believed and was baptized — yet Peter says his heart wasn't right. What does that tell you about the gap between professing faith and possessing it? Have you ever wanted the appearance of spiritual power, influence, or status more than you wanted an actually changed heart? What’s the difference between attrition and contrition? See you Sunday. Daniel
July 15, 2026 • 1 Minute Read
Looking Ahead: Acts 8:1-25
Stephen is dead. The church is under attack. Saul is dragging believers out of their homes. If you were there, wouldn't you keep your head down? They didn't. Acts 8:4 says the believers who were scattered "went about preaching the word" — not in spite of the danger, but seemingly without a second thought. What made ordinary people, staring at real risk, choose to speak instead of hide? They didn't see themselves as refugees running from Jerusalem — they saw themselves as ambassadors of a King who sent them wherever they landed. Paul puts words to this later: "We are therefore Christ's ambassadors... God making his appeal through us" (2 Cor. 5:18-20). An ambassador doesn't stop representing the King just because the assignment changed locations. That's the question worth sitting with this week: when your circumstances get disrupted, does your identity move with you — or does it stay behind? This Sunday we're in Acts 8:1-25. Looking forward to gathering with you!!
July 8, 2026 • 2 Minute Read
This Weekend at ALG
This weekend we're walking through a passage I've personally found difficult. It's the bold faith and proclamation of the Gospel — but not from an Apostle. It's from Stephen, a man simply "full of grace and power" who ends up on trial for his life. Stephen is falsely accused. People who don't like what he's saying can't out-argue him, so they do what people often do when they lose an argument with the truth — they lie about him before the High Priest. So let me ask you: when someone lies about you with malicious intent, how do you respond? Does your face show joy, peace, contentment — does it "shine like an angel"? Or does it show frustration, bewilderment, anger? That's not a rhetorical question. It's the question this passage forces on us. Most of us won't stand trial for our faith. But all of us have faced the smaller version of Stephen's moment — the mischaracterization, the whisper campaign, the accusation that isn't true but sticks anyway. What comes out of us in that moment says something about what's been put into us long before it. This Sunday we'll watch how Stephen handled that moment — in the synagogue, and in front of the High Priest. What allowed him to show Christ-like character in the middle of his own destruction? Before Sunday, I'd encourage you to read ahead — Acts 6:8 , Acts 7:1-60 and Acts 8:1-3. Don't stop where our text ends. Stephen's story doesn't resolve neatly in a single sermon-sized passage, and reading the fuller arc will change how you hear it Sunday.
July 7, 2026 • 2 Minute Read
Growing Pains: Acts 6:1-7
Growing Pains The Jerusalem church was exploding. In a year or two, it went from about 120 believers to an estimated 20,000. That kind of growth doesn't happen without cracks showing up. Here's the crack we see in Acts 6: Hellenistic Jewish widows were being overlooked in the daily food distribution. Native Hebrew-speaking widows were cared for. The others were not. That's a real problem and no one pretends otherwise. But look at how it surfaced. Not as a direct complaint to the people who could fix it. It surfaced as murmuring — grumbling to neighbors instead of an honest word to the apostles. Scripture treats that murmuring as sin. Not because the concern was invalid. Because of how it was handled. Left to fester, grumbling breeds division. It gives Satan a foothold. The Apostles' Response The apostles didn't get defensive. They didn't dismiss the complaint. They took responsibility and addressed it head-on. They had the congregation select seven men — men of good reputation, full of the Spirit and wisdom — to oversee the distribution. Here's something that stands out: all seven chosen came from the minority group. The very group that had been overlooked. Not because of a quota, rather because the apostles prayed and acted in good faith. The result? The Word of God kept spreading. The number of disciples increased. A problem that could have split the church became the occasion for the church to grow even faster. The Real Issue Isn't Growth. It's Grumbling. Growth exposes what's already there. Every family, team, or church that grows fast will hit friction. That's not the danger. The danger is what people do with the friction. Do they go around each other, or do they go to each other? It's easier to vent to a friend than to talk to the person involved. Easier to carry a complaint than to raise it. But easier isn't better. What starts as a quiet grumble to one person becomes two people, then five, then a fracture nobody intended.
June 23, 2026 • 5 Minute Read
What Actually Makes a Community Holy
What Actually Makes a Community Holy Ask people to describe the perfect community and you'll hear the same words: unity, humility, integrity. We can picture it easily — a group that's honest, where nobody is climbing over anybody else, where everyone pulls in the same direction. The strange thing is how rarely we find it. Most of us can name a team or a church that almost had it, and just as quickly name what pulled it apart. In Acts 4:32–5:16, Luke does something braver than describe an ideal. He shows us a real community — one that genuinely had it, and one that nearly lost it from the inside. In the contrast between two stories, he tells us what holiness actually costs. One Heart and One Soul Luke's portrait is almost startling in its plainness. The early church was "of one heart and soul." They held everything in common. There was no needy person among them, because people sold land and houses so anyone in need was cared for. The engine underneath it was a conviction, not a policy: they believed their lives — and everything they owned — already belonged to God. Once you actually believe that, generosity stops being a sacrifice you grit your teeth through and becomes the natural posture of someone who was only ever holding things on loan. As Paul says in Colossians 1:16, all things were created through Christ and for Christ. If it's all His to begin with, open hands make sense. Barnabas embodies this. He sells a field and quietly brings the money to meet others' needs. No speech, no spotlight — just a man who has stopped clutching what was never ultimately his. The Appearance of Holiness Then comes the story we'd rather skip. Ananias and Sapphira also sell property, but they secretly keep back part of the price while presenting the gift as if it were the whole thing. Peter cuts to the real issue: the land was theirs to do with as they pleased. The sin wasn't keeping some money — it was the lie, the performance of a generosity they hadn't actually committed to. They wanted the appearance of holiness without the heart of it. Both fall dead, and a holy fear settles over the church. It's a hard passage, and the severity is the point. This wasn't a bookkeeping error; it was a community's first encounter with a particular rot — the impulse to look more surrendered than you are. Scripture takes that seriously precisely because it's so quiet and respectable. Achan's secret theft in Joshua 7 brings defeat on a whole nation. Even Moses, in Numbers 20, faces real consequences for failing to treat God as holy before the people. The pattern holds: secret sins fester. We tell ourselves no one is getting hurt, but a body can't carry an infection in one part and stay healthy everywhere else. Why Unity Is the Whole Point Why set these two stories side by side? The answer reaches back to something Jesus prayed the night before He died. In John 17, He asks that His followers would be one — so that the world will know the Father sent Him. Unity isn't a bonus on top of the church's mission; it's a large part of the witness itself. That reframes the threat. We assume the danger comes from outside — hostility, pressure, opposition. But Acts suggests the more lethal threat is internal: deception and self-interest quietly dissolving the one thing that makes the witness believable. Opposition tends to strengthen a unified community. Hidden self-interest eats it from within. The Mind of Christ Philippians 2 gives the alternative: the mind of Christ counts others as more important than yourself — not in theory, but with your actual time, energy, and resources. Jesus, who had every right to grasp, emptied Himself instead. The early church's open-handedness was that same mind working its way out into property deeds and shared meals. That's the call, and it's worth sitting with honestly: Full surrender to Christ — holding nothing back, not even the parts we'd rather keep quietly in reserve. Valuing others above ourselves — enough to actually spend something on them. One purpose — proclaiming Jesus, and refusing to fracture over non-essentials that were never worth dividing over. So a few honest questions to take home: Am I living as if I'm most important, or as if God is? Am I more focused on appearing holy than on actually being His? And who is one person I can encourage or serve this week? A holy community isn't built in grand gestures — it's built by one person choosing, this week, to hold something with open hands for someone else. It comes back to hope, healing, and purpose, and to the confession underneath it all: it's all about Him, all from Him, and all for Him.