Alliance Church

Alliance Church
  • 4.7 (14)
  • Christianity
  • Updated Biweekly

Alliance Church is a Bible-based church in Wisconsin. What is this church all about? It's simple - our vision is to connect the world with God and one another. We're ordinary people who get to be part of the extraordinary work of connecting the world with Jesus. You matter to Him and because of that, you matter to us. This podcast includes Sunday messages from our campus in Appleton, WI. Our primary teachers are Rev. Brian Episcopo, Rev. Brandon Hilstad, and Dr. Dennis Espiscopo.

  1. 4d ago

    If God Can Heal, Why Doesn't He? Two Pastors Answer Honestly

    In this Fire Away Q&A service, Pastor Brian and Dr. Dennis Episcopo sit on stage together (it just so happens to be Father's Day, and Dr. Dennis is Pastor Brian's actual dad) and answer the questions our congregation texts in live. No script, no preselected questions, no editing. Just real pastoral answers to the things people are actually wrestling with.Pastor Brian and Dr. Dennis Episcopo open with a question almost everyone new to faith eventually asks. How do you read the Bible when it feels impossibly large and confusing? They recommend starting in the Gospel of Mark or Luke (Jesus is the point of the whole Bible, so go straight to him), then layering in Proverbs for everyday wisdom, and using a basic study guide like Halley's or Unger's when you get into the Old Testament.The tithing conversation that follows is honest and not soft. Dr. Dennis Episcopo points out that Jesus endorsed tithing in the New Testament and that the principle of percentage giving (10 percent of the gross before anything else) is the only biblical percentage anywhere in Scripture. Pastor Brian shares how multiple people in the church recently told him, unsolicited, that giving sacrificially was the moment everything else in their faith and marriage started to heal.Then the conversation gets harder. If God can heal, why does he allow sickness? Their answer leans on John 9 (the man born blind, "so that the works of God might be displayed in him") and the truth that suffering matures us in ways nothing else does. Pastor Brian adds the line that lands hardest. Suffering is God asking us, am I enough?The parenting question hits anyone in the throes of raising young kids. Family dinners. Annual family only vacations. The marriage prioritized above the parenting. The line they both come back to is that more is caught than taught.They close with the Great Commission in Matthew 28. A disciple is not an egghead loaded with knowledge. A disciple is someone who makes other disciples. The Greek "as you are going" matters. Discipleship happens in the ordinary cadence of real life, not in a special program. And Jesus is with you in it.

    30 min

  2. Jun 15

    Why Your Spiritual Life Feels Stuck (And How to Restart)

    Why does your spiritual life feel stuck right now? You know you are supposed to love God with everything you've got, but it feels more like an obligation than a fire. You sing the songs. You show up. You try to want it. And still, something feels distant.In this sermon, Dr. Mark Harris opens our brand new series Counterfeit Kings by walking us through the only person in the entire Bible of whom it is said that he loved the Lord with all his heart and all his soul and all his very. The Hebrew Shema in Deuteronomy 6:4 to 5 is the most famous text in all of Jewish life, repeated every morning, every night, taught to children before anything else. Jesus said this command is the foundation of every other one. And yet only one person in the whole biblical narrative is named as having fully obeyed it.That person is King Josiah, and the wild part is that Josiah came from one of the most disastrous family lines in Scripture (2 Kings 22 and 23, 2 Chronicles 34 and 35). His grandfather Manasseh was the most wicked king in Judah's history. His father Ammon followed the same path and was assassinated in the palace when Josiah was eight years old. The Bible had been hidden or destroyed. Idol worship, child sacrifice, and every false god imaginable were woven into daily life. And yet at 16, this kid made a decision in his heart to seek God. By 20 he was destroying altars Solomon himself had built 300 years earlier. And a few years later, he found the lost Book of the Law inside the temple and tore his clothes when he realized how far his people had drifted.Dr. Mark Harris pulls four characteristics out of Josiah's story for anyone wanting to love God for real and not for show. Need him. Weed the garden of whatever competes with him in your music, your screens, your scrolling, your habits. Feed your soul on his actual word, not just other people's sermons. And lead others toward him because you cannot help it.Dr. Mark Harris closes by tracing the line that finally lands at Jesus. Twenty five years after Josiah died, the Babylonians destroyed the temple and the palace, and Davidic kingship looked over forever. Six hundred years later, Matthew 1 opens with: the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David. The promise did not die. The true King came, not to defeat a foreign empire, but to defeat hell itself for everyone chained to it who did not even know it.If you are tired of going through the motions, this teaching gives you a path back to wholehearted faith.

    30 min

  3. Jun 8

    Why You Feel So Alone Right Now (And What God Actually Says)

    Why do you feel so alone right now? Most of us, even on our most ordinary day, carry around a quiet fear that we are facing what we are facing by ourselves. And the answer the Bible gives to that fear is one of the most surprising things in all of scripture.In this sermon, Dr. Dennis Episcopo opens our brand new series Counterfeit Kings with the story of a scared, lonely king named Ahaz, three enemy armies marching toward his city, and the prophet God sent to meet him at the waterworks of Jerusalem.The story is in Isaiah 6 and 7. King Ahaz is one of the worst kings in the Bible. He even sacrificed his own son on a pagan altar (2 Kings 16). And yet, when his world is closing in and three nations have lined up against him, God does not abandon him. God sends Isaiah, the greatest preacher of the eighth century, to meet him at the upper pool with one message: you are not alone, but you have to trust me.Dr. Dennis Episcopo unpacks something here that most of us miss. Isaiah brings his son to the meeting. The boy's name is Shear Jashub, which means "a remnant will return." Isaiah is preaching a sermon just by showing up with his child. And then God gives Ahaz a sign that will echo across the next 700 years of history: a virgin will conceive and bear a son, and he will be called Immanuel, God with us (Isaiah 7:14, fulfilled in Matthew 1).Two children. Two names. One message. You are not alone.Then Dr. Dennis Episcopo turns the corner from ancient history into right now. The message Ahaz needed is the same one a lot of us need today. God is with you in the thing you cannot solve. But you have to trust him, because Isaiah 7:9 also says, "Unless your faith is firm, I cannot make you stand firm." Faith is the door God invites you to walk through.And here is where the gospel becomes the only thing that has ever actually worked. Most of us look at "just trust Jesus" and call it too simple. But Jesus told his disciples that following him would cost everything: deny yourself, pick up your cross daily, follow me (Luke 9:23). The fruit of a real Christian is self denial, cross bearing, and loyal trust. Imposters will not pay that price.At the cross, the old you gets crucified, and Jesus rises up to live his life through you. That is why Dr. Dennis Episcopo's life verse is Galatians 2:20: "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." If you are exhausted from white knuckling your way through a season that keeps breaking you, this is the message you needed today.

    29 min

  4. Jun 1

    Why You Can't Stop Caring What Other People Think of You

    How do you stop caring so much what other people think of you? It is one of the quietest, heaviest weights most of us carry, and the Bible has a surprising answer for it. The answer starts with a kind of fear most of us have never actually been taught.In this sermon, Pastor Brian opens up one of the most confusing tensions in all of scripture. On one hand, the Bible tells us over and over not to fear. On the other hand, it tells us to fear the Lord. So which is it? Does God want us to be afraid of him or not?Pastor Brian unpacks the difference between bad fear and good fear, starting with Proverbs 29:25. The fear of man is a snare. It traps us in hypocrisy, in people pleasing, in the exhausting work of curating a version of ourselves that we hope will be liked. It leaves us with the lonely lie that the best we can hope for in life is to be loved but not known.Then he turns the corner. There is a different kind of fear running all through scripture, a holy and healthy fear of the Lord, and it does three things our souls actually need. It protects us from evil, the way a true picture of a just God keeps us from playing with sin (Proverbs 16:6). It empowers us for holiness, because cleansing ourselves and bringing holiness to completion happens in the fear of God (2 Corinthians 7:1, Philippians 2:12). And it fuels intimacy with God, because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowing him, and the friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him (Proverbs 1:7, Psalm 25:14).Along the way Pastor Brian shares the storm on a Colorado mountain that taught him what holy fear actually feels like, the Antique Roadshow teapot that finally helped it click, and the moment from his own childhood when a father's loving discipline kept him from a self destructive choice that nothing else could have stopped. He lands the message in Psalm 130, where the trembling realization that no one could survive God's record of our sin meets the staggering good news that with God there is forgiveness, so that he may be feared. And in Psalm 147, where the same God who delights in those who fear him also commands them to hope in his unfailing love that will never stop chasing them down.The biggest reframe of this teaching is simple. The fear of the Lord is not one more thing to add to your spiritual to do list. It is the posture underneath the whole list. It is how Pastor Brian says you do every other thing God has asked of you. If your walk with God has stalled, this might be the missing link.

    34 min

  5. May 26

    What Is God Actually Like When You Stop Picturing Him?

    What is God really like when you actually stop and ask the question? Not the version of God you grew up with, not the one shaped by your worst memory of church, but the God who actually exists. That is the question this sermon walks straight into.Pastor Paul opens with something most of us never stop to do. He asks you to picture God in your mind. Is he a man? Does he have a beard? Is he disappointed? Is he smiling? Most of us have built a picture of God somewhere along the way, but very few of us have ever held that picture up next to what God actually says about himself in the Bible. And that gap matters, because what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.This message moves into Exodus 33 and 34, where Moses asks God one of the boldest questions in scripture. Show me your glory. God answers in a way nobody expects. He tells Moses he will cause all his goodness to pass in front of him and proclaim his name. Then God describes himself as compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin, yet not leaving the guilty unpunished.Pastor Paul unpacks the tension most of us feel here. How can God be both holy and gracious? Both great and good? Both the God of thunder, lightning, and smoke on Mount Sinai in Exodus 19, and the God who speaks his name in mercy in Exodus 34? Pastor Paul holds these two truths together the way they were always meant to be held, not as a contradiction, but as a paradox that gives the Christian life its power. The greatness of God keeps us from sin. The goodness of God draws us back when we have.If you have ever wondered whether God is loving or angry, present or distant, near or far, this teaching offers a careful, pastoral, biblical answer. Pastor Paul leans on Augustine, A.W. Tozer, and the language of scripture itself to help you see a God who is both impossibly great and unbelievably good at the same time.This message is for the believer who has settled into one side of God's character and forgotten the other. It is for the skeptic who has only met an angry version of God and never the gracious one. It is for the deconstructing Christian quietly asking, who is God really. And it is for anyone in pain right now wondering if God is paying attention.

    32 min

  6. May 18

    Why God Feels Late on the Prayer That Matters Most

    Why does God feel painfully late on the prayer you have been praying for years? The one for the marriage, the child, the healing, the door that still has not opened. If you have ever wondered whether God is even listening, this sermon was made for you.In this message, Pastor Josiah walks through John 11, the story of Lazarus, and asks a question almost no one wants to admit they are sitting in. How do we trust Jesus when his timing breaks our expectations? Most of us have a version of that question quietly running in the background of our lives. We have prayed. We have trusted. We have stayed faithful. And yet the relationship is still in pieces. The diagnosis still came back the way we feared. The child still has not come home. The anxiety is still here.Pastor Josiah pulls three honest, freeing truths out of this chapter. First, delay is not denial. Verse 6 says Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, so he stayed. Not so he rushed. So he stayed. That single word reframes everything. The love of God is not always measured by the speed of his response. Sometimes it is measured by what he is producing in the silence.Second, do not forget who he is. When Martha runs to Jesus, disappointed and grieving, he does not give her a five step plan. He gives her himself. I am the resurrection and the life. Faith is not built on outcomes. Faith is built on a Person. Some of us have become so consumed with what God has not done that we have forgotten who he still is.Third, gratitude comes before the movement. Before Jesus calls Lazarus out of the tomb, he stops and thanks his Father. The stone is still in place. The body is still inside. And Jesus is already worshiping. Pastor Josiah points out that anyone can worship after the resurrection. Mature faith worships while the grave is still in front of you.The sermon lands somewhere most preaching does not dare go. Jesus, knowing exactly what he was about to do, still wept at the tomb. He is not emotionally disconnected from your pain. He is fully God and fully human, and he enters in. Faith is not pretending you are okay. Faith is bringing your real pain to a real Savior who already knows the end of the story.And the end of this story is the gospel itself. Lazarus, whose name actually means God is my helper, was dead, wrapped, sealed in a tomb, with every reason gone. And Jesus stood at the entrance and called him out. That is what Pastor Josiah reminds us he still does today. To every person sitting in their sin, their past, their addiction, their shame, Jesus is on the other side of the wall calling, come out. The barrier is already gone.

    36 min

  7. May 11

    Why You Keep Failing at the Same Things (And How to Stop)

    Why do I keep failing at the same things? If that question has lived in your head, this message offers a different way to think about the fight, and a kind of freedom most people never expect.Most of us assume the battle against sin happens at the moment we are about to do the wrong thing. Pastor Brian walks through a different picture in this sermon, drawn from Paul's instruction to Timothy and Jesus' words in Matthew 5. The real front of the battle isn't where temptation finally wins. It's somewhere earlier, in the soil we let our lives sit in. When we don't see that, we lose the same battles over and over and wonder why nothing ever changes.Pastor Brian opens with a picture you may have heard a version of: a boy on a fence between Jesus and Satan, refusing to pick a side, until Satan smiles and says, "I'm fine with that. I own the fence." From there the message moves into 1 Timothy 6 and 2 Timothy 2, where Paul tells his young friend Timothy to run from anything that stirs up sin and pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace, and a steady kind of courage. Two sides of the same coin. Run from. Pursue toward.The teaching pulls in some of the hardest verses Jesus ever spoke about sin, in Matthew 5, where he tells us to gouge out the eye and cut off the hand that causes us to stumble. Pastor Brian helps us hear the urgency without missing the heart of it. Jesus is not asking us to mutilate ourselves. He is asking us to let him do the kind of surgery on our lives that takes sin's soil out of the picture, even when it costs us friendships, comfort, or things we have quietly come to worship.Then comes the turn most people never see coming. There is actually a fuel for change that starts in the place of failure. The sermon unpacks 2 Corinthians 7:10, where Paul says that godly sorrow leads to repentance, salvation, and no regret, while worldly sorrow leads to death. The two look identical from the outside. They cry the same tears. The difference is what your sorrow is sourced in and where it is leading you. Pastor Brian shares a vivid personal story from his college years, a stolen car, a lie, five hours of dread, and the unexplainable peace of confession, to show what shalom actually feels like when you finally tell the truth.This message is for anyone who feels stuck. Anyone tired of carrying the same regrets. Anyone wondering if Jesus is disappointed in them. Anyone who has ever wondered if real change is even possible. Whether you have been following Jesus for forty years or you are just curious what he actually says about all this, you will find something worth sitting with here.

    37 min

  8. May 4

    Why Some Battles in Your Life Feel Impossible to Win

    Why does it feel like you keep losing the same fight in your life over and over again? Like no matter how much you read, journal, talk to a therapist, or try to fix your habits, the same struggle keeps finding you in the dark? There may be more going on than you have been told.In this sermon, Pastor Brian walks through what happens when you try to live the Christian life as a single front war. Most of us were trained to deal with our struggles on one battlefield at a time, whether that is psychology, biology, willpower, or routines. All of those matter. Scripture honors all of them. But the Bible also tells us there is a deeper layer to the fight, one that involves not just our own sin nature but real spiritual forces of evil.Drawing from Ephesians 6:10 through 17 and Genesis 4:8, this teaching unpacks two errors that C.S. Lewis once warned the Christian against. The first is disbelieving in evil at all, treating spiritual warfare like an old superstition we have outgrown. The second is becoming obsessed with the demonic, seeing a demon under every rock and behind every bad day. Both errors give the enemy more power than he deserves. The healthy posture is alert vigilance. Sober minded, eyes wide open, but with our gaze fixed on Jesus Christ.The message walks through three areas where every follower of Jesus must stay vigilant. First, the pull of worldly power and influence. As Paul writes, our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against rulers, authorities, and the powers of this dark world. Satan moves toward platforms. Jesus moves toward humility. Second, our own sin nature. The best defense against the enemy is not endlessly mapping where he is at work in the world. It is the ordinary, daily pursuit of holiness, walking in obedience to Christ. Third, pride. The verse begins with be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power, not your own. Humility is the gateway to grace. Pride is what blocks it.Along the way, Pastor Brian shares a story about driving, marriage, and what it would feel like to send a runner into a marathon without warning them about the man hiding in the bushes with a stick. He reminds us that evil is most devastating when we call it something else. When the drinking problem is just a bad habit. When the spending problem is just liking nice things. When the anger problem is just how we were raised. Naming the spiritual reality of our struggles is the beginning of being free from them.This is the heart of the gospel. You are not alone on the battlefield. Christ has already won the war, and his victory is the food and drink of the soul. The bread and the cup remind us where our real strength comes from.

    35 min
See All (365)

Ratings & Reviews

4.7
out of 5
14 Ratings

About

Alliance Church is a Bible-based church in Wisconsin. What is this church all about? It's simple - our vision is to connect the world with God and one another. We're ordinary people who get to be part of the extraordinary work of connecting the world with Jesus. You matter to Him and because of that, you matter to us. This podcast includes Sunday messages from our campus in Appleton, WI. Our primary teachers are Rev. Brian Episcopo, Rev. Brandon Hilstad, and Dr. Dennis Espiscopo.

Information

  • Creator
    Alliance Church
  • Years Active
    2019 - 2026
  • Episodes
    365
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Alliance Church
  • Show Website
    Alliance Church

You Might Also Like