Sermons – Central Church

A Last Message

The final message from Pastor Alan Kinder as Central Church closes.

Bad News, Good News

When it comes to the gospel of Jesus Christ, there is bad news. However, thankfully, there is Good News, as well!

Worthy of the Gospel

Last week’s message dealt with becoming willing to take a risk, risking for the sake of the gospel. This week, we look at just who is worthy of our risk.

Risking For The Gospel

Risk avoidance is not necessarily a bad thing, unless it keeps you from doing things that are essential to our life! Sharing the gospel, as a Christian, is absolutely essential to our life. We apologize for the poor quality this week, our video switcher/streaming device locked up on us and we were unable to get…

The Gospel

The word “gospel” is used so much it may no longer have the meaning, or power, that it is meant to have in our lives. So, let’s unpack what the “gospel” is and how it impacts our lives.

2023 In Review

While faith should be focused on the present, and the future, there is always room for a short look into the past. Knowing where we’ve come from can be vital in determining a future course.

Light of the World

The last message in our Advent series for 2023 is all about Jesus, the One who has come to enlighten everyone. Jesus is the reason for the season, the Light of the World!

The Hope We Need

Rising crime, inflation, wars, hatred, government corruption…the list goes on. Add to all of that the very real personal traumas and losses, physical and emotional suffering; let’s just say that something we all need for today is hope. The issue comes down to this, we need to better define what hope truly is, discover the…

The Joy of the Lord

In this third message from our Advent series we take a look at joy, why we may seem to “lose” our joy, and how to keep the joy overflowing in our lives.

The Peace of God

If there is one thing everyone seems to desire it is peace. Yet, our world seems to always be in conflict. Is there a way for us to find peace in our own life?

Advent 2023 ~ Glory to God

As we enter the Christmas season this year, we will be focusing on Jesus, and how His first advent brought us glory, peace, love, and so much more.

Thanksgiving Requires Constancy

Thankfulness doesn’t come naturally to most of us, we have to work at being sincerely thankful. This week we wrap up our look at thankfulness. The final element of what we need to cultivate in order to be truly thankful is a constancy, a consistency, in seeking the Lord and telling all who will listen…

Thanksgiving ~ Action Is Required

While being thankful is certainly an opportunity to be verbal, it is also essential that we be active! In this week’s message we look at why using wha we have been given is a critical element of our thnaksgiving.

Thanksgiving ~ Thinking Is Required

Thankfulness is an attitude that anyone who professes to be a Christian should show to the world, all the time. However, to be truly thankful, thinking is required!

The Love of God

This last message in our series, What Does God Look Like? is perhaps the most challenging. We have cheapened the word love by overusing it, misusing it, and misunderstanding it so that when we say that, “God is love” we have a clouded view of what that means.

The Omnipotence of God

Salvation

Salvation is a wonderful word, and even more so when it is experienced. In this message, Rev. Wellington Gorham, Jr. brings salvation into the spotlight.

The Perfection of God

We use the word “perfect” for a lot of things. We usually are just comparing things, and declaring something to be better than the other things. When it comes to God, we can’t do that! (Sorry for the very poor audio, we had a technical issue that will be resolved before our next live stream)

The Holiness of God

This week we look at attribute of God that is more challenging than looking at God’s infinitude. Holiness. It should make us tremble a bit as try to dig into this attribute of our God.

The Omnipresence of God

It is not unusual to hear someone ask a simple question, “Oh God, where are You?” Perhaps you’ve asked this same question when struggling with something in your life? There is an answer…

The Grace of God

God’s grace is a favorite topic for many theologians, as it should be. It is also something that every human being experiences every day; the problem is that too many only experience God’s grace partially.

The Mercy of God

Mercy, something that, probably, every human being on the planet desires to experience at some point in their life. The reality is, every human being on the planet experiences God’s mercy, at least partially, every day. With this message we look at how someone can experience the full measure of God’s mercy every day.

The Justice of God

If we spend much time at all in reading the Scriptures, one thing we will have to face is God’s justice.

The Goodness of God

We use the word ‘good’ all the time. We use it so often it is easy to misunderstand what it means, and how it applies to our concept of God. This week we look at God’s goodness, and what it means to us.

The Immensity of God

Last week we looked at the infinitude of God, His state of being that is tied to the infinite nature of the Almighty. Today, we look at another side of His attributes, His immensity; the measureless nature of our God.

The Infinitude of God

If we are going to understand more about God, we have to start somewhere, and the best place to start is with a challenge; the infinitude of God (Infinitude–the state of being infinite).

Dare To Be Unafraid

Fear is often a motivator. However, it is also too often a paralyzer. When we allow fear to paralyze us, especially irrational fear as it involves our mission, we need to do something quickly. We need to dare to be unafraid!

Reconciliation Is Possible

A special message from our outreach facilitator, Jonathan Slade.

Dare the Unknown

The unknown can be very intimidating, unless we choose to dare to bey God and proclaim His truth!

Dare To Be Free

Freedom is always an important topic, perhaps especially so as we prepare to celebrate the 247th anniversary of the founding of our nation. Are you free?

Dare the Unexpected

It has been said that man makes plans, and God laughs. Making plans is not a bad thing; however, we must always be prepared to dare to obey the unexpected changes that God may impose on our plans!

Dads Dare

Being a Dad in today’s society is a tough challenge. It is, perhaps, tougher than ever before in many ways. However, the role of a man in the family (or community) has not changed. Men need to dare to embrace the qualities of Jesus.

Dare the Unreachable

The sad reality is that most people who claim to know Jesus as their Savior never share their faith with anyone else. What might happen if we dared to be the disciples that we are meant to be?

Family Values

Family does matter, and how we value our family reveals a lot about our internal values. We also need to make sure we know who is part of our family.

Time Enough

If there is one consistent thing about being an adult it is this, there never seems to be enough time to accomplish all that we want to accomplish. However, the truth is, there is always time enough to do the things we truly WANT to do. The question is simple, “Are you using your time wisely?”

The Truth About Honesty

Truth and honesty, two things just about everyone wants, at least when others are telling us something. They are, however, sometimes less desired when we are the ones doing the talking… No matter how we look at it, truth and honesty are a mandatory value for a disciple of Jesus Christ!

Moms Are Heroes

Recently, I saw some statistics about how women view their role as Moms. The majority of Moms consider themselves inadequate and ill-prepared for the challenges of motherhood. Let’s be clear, Moms are heroes, and we need to honor them for all they do!

Clear Communication

One of the key ways that people know about who we are, is our speech. The words we use, and how we use them, can be incredibly impactful. The Bible gives us plenty of guidance for how we ought to use our words.

Accepting Responsibility

One thing is clear about our spiritual journey, while we certainly have the Spirit of God indwelling us as believers and we have other Christians beside us, we are still meant to take responsibility for our own journey…

Offering Forgiveness

If love (as mentioned in the first message in this series) is the foundational value for a Christian, forgiveness is perhaps the most often value that gets tested. We must adopt forgiveness as disciples of Jesus.

Valuing Love

We all have them…values. Values are beliefs that we hold to that drive our actions. When our values are in conflict with God, we have a problem. When we have inconsistent values, we are in trouble. This week we begin a new series of messages dealing with values that are consistent with being a disciple of Jesus.

Something Better

As we conclude our series of messages on faith, we come to the same conclusion as the author of Hebrews did, Jesus is “something better” than any alternatives we might come up with.

Experiencing God

Rev. Bob Payne provides a concluding message on Experiencing God.

Faith That Doesn’t Falter

True faith is something that remains firm, unwavering, even when facing challenges, or temptations, pr being faced with the prospect of leaving something behind…

Faith Looks Forward

Faith is not just a one-time “event” in our spiritual journey. Faith is an every day, every moment, part of our spiritual lives. It is especially important that we are looking in the right direction within our faith journey, and that direction is always forward!

Faith Is Tested

While we may not like tests, they are a part of our faith journey…

Faith That Perseveres

Faith is not just a momentary thing for the life of a disciple of Jesus. Faith must be a defining characteristic of anyone who would follow Jesus. Faith must persevere…

Faith That Moves

Faith is not just a theological construct. Faith is far more, and faith ALWAYS acts. In some cases, it is an outrageous move.

Faith to Build

Humans seem inclined to build things. We like building, but if we aren’t careful, we will simply build something we want, and not allow God to tell us what we ought to build.

Pleasing God

One of two people to not go through the portal of death is Enoch. When we read about him in Genesis and Hebrews, one thing becomes abundantly clear, he pleased God greatly! We can learn a lot from him…