Grassroots Church | Thunder Bay, Ontario

Borrowing Hope

Bonita Ledua of Northwind Family Ministries provides an update on the work of her ministry and shares a timely message on hope, gleaning a powerful lesson from the story of Moses and the Israelites at the river Marah, where they stopped to drink water but found they could not because it was bitter. 

What the Centurion Knew

Visiting Pastor Ken Funk shares some insights on the simple truths that the unnamed centurion in Matthew 8 understood and that can serve as helpful reminders in our own faith journeys - regardless of how far along we've come.

Towards Reconciliation

Stories, heart connection and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

Like Me - Learning to Love Through Honour

This week Pastor Keith opens up Romans 12 and the call for us to love as Jesus loved.  To do this, Paul says to outdo one another showing honour to people who who have given us no reason not to like them. We show honour to people who are not like us. We show honour to those who do not like us. And we show honour to those who we really, really do not like. 

Figuring out Forgiveness: Rhythms of Reconciliation

Christians often put too much focus on forgiveness in "our" gospel, while simultaneously not putting enough focus on forgiveness in "our" gospel. Distinguishing self-focused, individualistic forgiveness models from Jesus' relational/transactional model can be challenging, but doing so is essential in order to express and live out authentic, biblical reconciliation. 

Our Images of God: Part 2- Constructive Constructs

This week Steven continues teaching on the constructs of God - presenting the Christian worldview's response to the challenge of comprehending the incomprehensible: Jesus. In John 14 Jesus tells us that if we've seen Him, we've seen the Father. Thus, we can determine a constructive construct of God through what the gospels reveal to us about Jesus.

Our Images of God: Part 1 - Destructive Constructs

We all have an image of God in our head - and none of us get it right. It's a reality we can't escape when trying to use finite language and ideas to describe the infinite. However, there are a few particularly bad constructs that yield destructive results.

Right? Our Collectively Self-Imposed PR Problem

As Christians, we have a history of idolizing rightness at the expense of actually following Jesus and the mission he laid out for us.

Business as Usual? I Doubt It

Phil shares an encouragement for us not to hide behind our doubts and misconceptions. Rather than stay in the comfort of our fishing boat, we can claim the hope that Jesus gave us - and be willing to share it.

Vinegar & Gall Part 2: Resurrecting Grief

This week, we read again the resurrection story and see how most of Jesus’s disciples lost hope in Jesus after he died. Alone among the disciples, only Mary Magdalene decided to face her pain, and she found a basis for hope stronger than death. In this second instalment on exploring God’s goodness, we explore the resurrecting power of grief and its pathway to healing from life’s sufferings.

Vinegar & Gall Part 1: Lifted Up

In the first of our two sermons on God’s goodness, we hear the story of Jesus’s last week in Jerusalem. Riding in on a donkey, Jesus faces down the question of God’s goodness once and for all. In fulfillment of many Psalms, we see Jesus understanding his own final confrontation with death as David’s unstoppable Son rescuing us from a life lost in questioning God’s goodness.

Shifting the Paradigm from Trivial to Timeless: Part 1

Ryan shares part 1 of a two part series on shifting the paradigm from trivial to timeless through focusing on the relationship rather than the task.

Words in the Dark III: Part 10 – Amen

27 sermons on prayer, Psalms, and the presence of God later, we now say Amen! Psalm 33 will help us see the big picture, with its praise for creator God, reminder of the humility we need as humans, invitation to open our hearts to God’s presence, and instruction to desire God above all things. We’ll finish off with the big list of practical to-do’s and a final invitation to pray together with our fellow believers.

Words in the Dark III: Part 9 – Confession

In our final look at Jesus’s prayer as our basic pattern, we finish this part of our exploration of prayer with the healing of sin. Jesus tell us to ask God for forgiveness of our sins, just as we extend forgiveness to others. As a basic prayer of love, confession invites us to fear God properly AND feel the utmost safety in his Presence. Check out Psalm 32. How does David show us the way here? We should be troubled by our sins but not expose ourselves the withering of our souls when we try a...

Words in the Dark III: Part 8 – Petition and Deliverance

As we near the end of our prayer series, we come now to prayers for needs. Jesus’s prayer leads us from adoration to Kingdom praying, and then into our basic physical, emotional, and community requests. David’s Psalms give us these kinds of prayers: “May God arise”, and “God sets the lonely in families”, and “praise God who daily bears our burdens.” Check out Psalm 68 and its invitation for us to order our thoughts around specific needs, our needs, other people’s needs, and the nourishing pre...

Words in the Dark III: Part 7 – Abandonment

“Let Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” As we continue to learn the building-blocks of praying, we turn our attention to prayers of abandonment. Check out Psalm 141 and its prayers of devotion: teach me, set a guard, keep watch. What might it look like for us to learn how to pray “Your will be done.” The LORD’s prayer teaches us to abandon ourselves to God rather than feeling abandoned by him.

Words in the Dark III: Part 6 – Praise

This week, we begin the final leg of our journey into the Psalms, the presence of God, and the life of prayer. Taking a cue from David’s shameless dancing, we explore prayers of praise.  Check out Jesus’s prayer and how it starts with praise “Our Father, in Heaven, Holy is Your Name.” Jesus collects up all of the praises of the Psalms ––of God’s actions and characteristics (his name)––and teaches us how to adore God in a costly way that is more than worth it. Dive into Psalm 145 and see how D...

Words in the Dark III: Part 5 – Contemplation

Before we return back to training in the active phase of prayer, to Jesus’s template of praying, we remind ourselves again of how important it is to expect and aim for making contact with God in prayer. We are not simply asking God for things, we are not simply pouring our hearts out, though we do those things. We are seeking the God who we believe is searching us.

Words in the Dark III: Part 4 – The Inspiration to Pray

“Those who look on God are radiant,” says David in his Psalm 34. After we prepare and concentrate, prayer in the school of David is incomplete without us spending time in repose looking at God, making contact with him in our spiritual senses. It’s in this phase of praying where activity ceases and as one writer describes it, we “allow the Holy Spirit to act in the secret depth of our souls.”

Words in the Dark III – Part 2: Sincerity & Atmosphere

Pastor Keith continues exploring King David's school of prayer. With Psalm 5 and its mixture of lament and honesty, we see how David wanted more than anything to bow down toward God's holy temple. If we want to pray like David, we will come to God in sincerity and create the atmosphere of prayer, embedded in the middle of our life and its conflicts.

Words in the Dark III – Part 1: Recollection

As we kick off our second phase of our prayer series, we enroll ourselves in David's school of prayer. Everything about David leads to God: he notices God, he loves God, and he is never more alive than when he is encountering him. David's style of praying leads him to make contact with God, and that is how we should aim our prayer lives, if we want to develop in David's school of prayer.

Be a Dependent

In our yearly look forward, Pastor Keith opens Isaiah 11 once again and talks through Grassroots' vision and our desire to anticipate God's new creation now on earth as it is in heaven. Keith focuses on the branch of David, delighting in the fear of the Lord with a spirit of knowledge. Biblical knowledge is an encounter, not just information, and so we look to the cross to see just how dependent Jesus lived on God and God's presence in his life.

DON’T do the Math: A New Year’s Message

In our social media, self-image, control-focussed culture we struggle to discern God's call to examine ourselves in light of His mercy, grace, justice, and purposes. Through the messages of the OT prophets, the NT writings of Paul, and the words and life of Jesus, we can break free from patterns of control and consumerism and resolve to live out the love of Jesus in all areas of our lives.

Words in the Dark II: Part 3 – What Simeon Knew

This week, in our continued exploration of the Nativity story, we meet Simeon and Anna––two elderly Israelites who devoted their lives to prayer and waiting. They waited for the long-anticipated return of God. They waited for Israel to be free again to worship and rule with goodness over all the earth. We learn just how strong the Psalms were to inspire hope over hundreds of years of sorrow and suffering, as Pastor Keith offers us more advice on how to prepare to make Dec 24 and 25 holy days.

Words in the Dark II: Part 2 – Zechariah’s Prayer

This week we delve deeper into Luke's Nativity story and see just how Psalm-saturated Zechariah's prayer actually is. With a look into Psalm 72, we see Solomon's prayer, hundreds of years before Jesus, for an heir who would free people to worship God with purity of heart. Solomon prayed that Jesus would help make people whole and poised and marked by peace. Finishing with a focus on Zechariah's hope for his people lost in the shadow of death, Pastor Keith invites us to delve into the Psalms a...

Words in the Dark II: Part 1 – Mary’s Prayer

Kicking off our Advent series on the prayers of the nativity, we follow Mary, Jesus's mother, to the country estate of her elder cousin Elizabeth. Here she composes here nativity psalm, fashioned after Psalm 103 and other Jewish prayers. We find ourselves challenged again to enter into Christmastime prepared and our hearts filled with praises and psalms.

Words in the Dark: Part 12 – The Final Obstacles to Praying: Can God hear YOU?

Finishing off a season of sermons on praying, we take a look at Psalm 139 and its teaching on God's nearness to us. Delving into the Psalms, we find that prayer matters: scriptures tell us, Jesus thinks so, and experience suggests it. Prayer is not something we evolve out of; it is something we mature into and is a significant tool in our mission to help undo death.

Words in the Dark: Part 11 – Obstacles to Prayer Part I

In the first of two parts in our next section on prayer, Pastor Keith talks about God's closeness to us, and how pain in our lives causes us slowly to shift God further away from us, in our perspectives. This shift causes us to ask if prayer really makes a difference, if after all, are we not too small to matter, and if praying really changes anything other than our perspectives.

Words in the Dark: Part 9 – Unanswered Prayer

Ryan Whatley shares his perspective on wrestling with unanswered prayer, the process of healing and moving toward God in the midst of our pain.

Words in the Dark: Part 10 – The Habit of Prayer and the Heart of God

We know what's needed to pray regularly so why don't we? One of the reasons is because our lives don't reflect need for prayer. The pattern of scripture suggests that when we live in pursuit of the things God loves and despise the things he despises, the disorientation that ensues will force us into intimacy with the Father.

Words in the Dark: Part 8 – Obstacles to Prayer

Using Psalm 118, Pastor Keith explores being hard pressed and how most everybody resorts to prayer when desperate. He explores how as we encounter some of the great obstacles to prayer, our default mode is often self-reliance, rather than prayer.

Words in the Dark: Part 7 – Praying with Your Spouse

As we finish off our mini-series on the Psalms and praying with others, Pastor Keith turn to Psalm 45 and discusses the centrepiece of any marriage: prayer. Keith explores how praying with a spouse may be more intimate than sex.

Words in the Dark: Part 6 – Praying with Children

Pastor Keith continues our mini-series on Praying in Community, focusing specifically on praying with children and providing practical advise on how to pray with kids from the Psalms. He looks at the role of the family in the life of prayer, Why God wants us to tell of Him to generations to come and asks what does this mean for our family prayers?

Words in the Dark: Part 5 – In the Presence of His People

This week we begin a small sermon series on praying in community and why communal prayer is so important in developing a prayer life. Pastor Keith looks at how praying with family and friends can guide us into the heart of God even when we cannot get there on our own.

Words in the Dark: Part 4 – By the Rivers of Babylon

This week we open up Psalms 136 and 137 to see the ranges of emotions expressed by the Psalmists and why simple praying opens us up to the heart of God like nothing else. God doesn’t want our pious words without heart. In this sermon we move deeper into the simply human praying that resets us in dependence upon God’s presence, guides us into our feelings, humanity, and desires, and teaches us to live with all of these in losses of life, in joy, trusting that our times are in God’s hands. Turn...

Words in the Dark: Part 3 – Abandoned

Turning to Psalm 22 and Jesus' choice of Psalm 22 for his cross Psalm, we tap into a second powerful theme of the Psalms: God's silence. Although we must come to God with all of our childish needs, we cannot enter into the heart of God with our entitlements and demands.

Words in the Dark: Part 2 – Poor and Needy

As we continue our series on Christian praying, we tap into one of the most powerful themes in the Psalms: being poor and need. Entering deeper into Psalm 23 and 24 we see how God will not allow us to approach him arrogantly. Pride shuts down the pathway to the heart of God. Exploring simple prayer, authentic prayer, and need prayer, we happily leave behind any forms of religious prayer based on arrogance.

The Voice of Creation: Eyes Open

In our second-to-last sermon in this series on the voice of creation, we take a look at Jesus’s response to human pride and the anxious lifestyles borne of self-sufficiency. In his great teaching in Matthew 6, Jesus reminds us to open our eyes and ears to creation and remember from their testimony that we are dependent, needy, and provided for God. In this simple but challenging call to seek God’s Kingdom first, we see just how important relating with God’s community of creation is for the he...

The Voice of Creation: Job Transformed

As we continue our summer series on the voice of creation, we turn to Job’s encounter with the created world. In Chapters 38-42, we watch as Job is transformed by opening his eyes to the creatures as they really are, not as Job and his friends have imagined them. They have a dignity that is completely unrelated to their domination of animals. As Job opens his mind and heart to the world around him, we watch him turn from despair to hope and from anxious patriarch to a warm father.

The Voice of Creation: The Creation Narratives as Our Birth Story

Carolyn Whatley shares this week's message continuing the series on hearing the Voice of Creation. Insights are shared from the perspective of seeing the creation stories of Genesis as a birth story from a loving Father.

The Voice of Creation: Hope and the Groaning of Creation

This week, we continue to explore scripture’s view of nature.  Exploring Paul’s teaching in Romans 8, Pastor Keith continues to challenge us to wake up--and open up-- to the voice of creation.  When we do, we learn that the future hope of bodily resurrection for humanity is the future hope of all species. All species await freedom from death and decay. Non-human nature groans, eagerly awaiting new creation and plays a surprising role in God’s long story––as the people of God learn to wake up ...

The Voice of Creation: Two Voices

This week, Pastor Keith launches a series on scripture’s view of creation.  Opening up Psalm 19, we learn that there are two voices (Torah and creation) testifying to God’s character and drawing us into the wider community of worship. The sun, the Psalmist––and later Jesus––tells us teaches us that God is strong, he is wise, he is joyful, he is abundantly merciful, he loves his enemies and blesses them despite their evil.  Therefore, while Christians should not worship creation, we also shoul...

Transforming Worship 4: Corporate Worship

In this final of four sermons on worship Pastor Jenn Swift speaks about the worshipping community. This is when worship moves completely out of I and into We. Like a massive rock concert, it doesn't matter whether I join in or not, but that doesn't make you insignificant. While God may bless us individually by being part of the body, corporate worship leads us to be forgetful of ourselves and reminds us that we are part of a much bigger community historically, globally, and eternally.  Corpor...

Transforming Worship 3: Public Worship

In this third of four sermons on worship Pastor Jenn Swift encourages us to take our private worship of God public.   We turn our affections to God in as we share love; we turn our hearts to God despite disappointments. And we learn to focus on Him and not constantly demand that He focus on us. With a story about singing a creation hymn loudly at a tourist waterfall destination, Pastor Jenn suggest that having a private life with God without a public life is like having a secret boyfriend or ...

Transforming Worship 2: Private Worship

In this second of four sermons on worship, Pastor Jenn Swift discusses private worship and how a worshipping life without the private sphere is like only going on dates with God every once in a while; or worse, like showing up to the same party every week as God and that's it.  That's be a pretty shallow relationship.  Our common life in worship, on Sunday mornings for example, will be determined the quality of our private lives of worship. Opening our whole hearts to God, these are the quali...

Transforming Worship 1: Worship with our Hearts & Affections

Pastor Jenn Swift introduces a four-part series on worship––private, public, and corporate. Jumping off with Isaiah 29:13 "These people honour me with their lips but their hearts are far from me", we explore how to turn our hearts and affections to God as relational beings, in all our dimensions. Worship starts with the Almighty, and not us, and this leads us to ask "how do You, God, want me to honour you today with my life?" And though we learn through practice what of the three spaces we ar...

Devotion to Jesus Part 2: Contemporary Devotion to Jesus

In this final conclusion to our year with Jesus, we take one more look at devotion to Jesus. His final living apostle, John, abandoned to exile, writes the book of Revelation based on a series of visions with his Lord.  Pastor Keith briefly shares the fate of each of the disciples, looking once more at Jesus’s call to self-sacrificial love.

Devotion to Jesus – Part 1: Ancient Devotion to Jesus

The first of a two part series concluding our year with Jesus. We are left with one compelling invitation: devotion to Jesus. Paul becomes one of the first to realize just how deep the this goes. Starting with Jesus' own claim that he is the bridegroom, Pastor Keith provides three stories from church history of people who have embraced devotion to Jesus as a spiritual marriage.

Intimacy with the Father – and the Idols that Get in the Way

The Resurrected Jesus – Part 5: The Promise of Power and Comfort

When Jesus ascends into Heaven, his Spirit returns (disguised, unseen, powerful) and has been hard at work for more than 2,000 years ever since. As Jesus's promised eternal presence, the Holy Spirit comes in the form of a descending flame. And then all heaven breaks loose. Pastor Keith explores the connection between the Spirit and obedience.