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CREATING THE CULTURE OF CHRIST IN MADISON, WI The New Culture Church podcast is packed full of great sermon content from New Culture Church in Madison, WI. Be part of a welcoming community that values real conversations, personal growth, and making a positive impact. Subscribe now to explore life's big questions and find meaningful connections.

  1. Sep 6

    Create the Culture : The Harvest Is Plentiful

    Week two of the fall vision series. Last week was one person, one place at a time. This week is the place: Madison. Nehemiah is cupbearer to the king in Susa, comfortable and far from the trouble, when word arrives that Jerusalem’s wall is broken down and its gates burned. He does four things in order, and they are the shape of the whole message. He gets the information and asks for more. He sits down and weeps. He prays. Then he participates, first by confessing sins that were not personally his, and later by rebuilding the wall. Then Luke 10, where Jesus sends out the 72 and tells them the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest. The first instruction is prayer. The second is to stay put. Do not move around from house to house, because a meal in that world ran course after course, and staying long enough means you have to talk to people. Madison keeps winning lists. Best place to live, best college town. Abbie shares every one of them, then asks who it is best for, and what the makeup of the survey was. The only way to know is to enter people’s stories. She traced how New Culture learned this neighborhood. Doug Hunt had been praying over these blocks for years and kept a binder on the city planning and the redlining and who owned what. He said, these are the people you need to know. That led to Bayview and Neighborhood House, which started with deep breaths and Christmas cookies, and ended up last week with 200 kids getting school supplies when Neighborhood House had lost its biggest donor and most of its staff. She also told on herself about the Doc Martens sitting in her cart for months, and the day Neighborhood House asked out of nowhere whether she was a size eight. As you serve, you are not left behind. So What: The harvest is plentiful. Loving a city is four movements in order: know it, feel it, pray for it, then participate in it. Nehemiah did all four from a palace hundreds of miles away. Now What: Walk your own neighborhood this week and pray for it. Then sign up for an hour at the Good Neighbor Gathering. Scripture References: Nehemiah 1:1-11 (Cupbearer in Susa hears the wall is broken down)Nehemiah 1:4 (When I heard these things, I sat down and wept)Nehemiah 1:6 (I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself)Luke 10:1-12 (Jesus sends out the 72, two by two)Luke 10:2 (The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few)Luke 10:5-7 (Stay in that house, do not move around from house to house)Luke 19:41 (Jesus wept over the city)John 10:10 (Life, and life abundantly)

  2. Aug 30

    Create the Culture : One Person, One Place at a Time

    Week one of a new fall series. Jesus was on a mission to seek and save the lost, and He did it one person, one place at a time. In Luke 8, Jairus begs Jesus to come heal his dying daughter. On the way the crowd nearly crushes Him, and a woman who has bled for twelve years reaches through it and touches His cloak. Jesus stops and asks who touched Him. Peter points out that everyone is touching Him. But Jesus felt one person in a crowd. Verse 47 is the line the message hangs on: seeing that she could not go unnoticed, she came trembling and fell at His feet. Abbie told on herself twice. Once thanking a man on a plane for pulling down her backpack, feeling wonderfully seen, until he offered to get hers too. It was his bag. And once on her own patio studying this message, when her neighbor’s head came over the fence and she caught herself thinking, do you not know I am studying the holy word of God. The Spirit’s question back was better: what if that is not an interruption but an invitation. Then Luke 9. Jesus gives the Twelve authority and sends them out with nothing, two by two. Showing up empty handed means having to receive hospitality, and we are not sent alone. So What: Jesus felt one person in a crowd and stopped. He is never too busy for the one. Now What: Pray for one person a day this week, and treat the next interruption as an invitation before you treat it as an inconvenience. Scripture References: Luke 8:40-56 (Jairus’s daughter, and the woman who touched His cloak)Luke 8:47 (Seeing that she could not go unnoticed)Luke 9:1-6 (The Twelve given authority and sent out with nothing)Luke 10:1 (Sent out two by two)Luke 5:1-11 (The boat, the nets, and leaving it all behind) This Week’s Practice: Midday prayer and intercession. Full nine week plan at newculturechurch.com/reading-plans.

  3. Aug 23

    A Moment Like This : God Keeps Interfering

    Week four closed the Esther series with a guest. John Hunter and his wife Suzanne are missionaries with Youth With A Mission, part of the work this church supports. He is a potter, he is seventy six, and he opened with a map, because he says history has two eyes, chronology and geography. He and Suzanne set out to hitchhike to India in 1972 and got as far as Afghanistan. She came to faith in front of the two great Buddhas at Bamiyan. He came to faith at a house in Kabul. That detour is the message. You set out for India and God stops you in Kabul. His word for it is interference. Esther did not grow up expecting to be queen of the largest empire on earth, and it was not on her bucket list. God jumps in, pulls somebody out of a bad situation, and changes things. John told on himself the same way. He moved his family to Virginia to start a school of evangelism and it collapsed before it opened. What came out of it was a homeschool room with slate blackboards and the book of Esther taught to two of his own kids. Then he handed the room his method for studying a person in Scripture. Influences. Character, internal and external. Contribution. Esther’s influence was Mordecai, whose instruction she took without arguing. Her external character won a pageant she had no say in entering. Her internal character was courage. She did not let the conditions she found herself in dictate her behavior. She also refused to carry it alone. She said yes, then told Mordecai to gather the Jews and fast. John spent years lead climbing with his sons, out on the pointy end of the rope, and somebody below was always holding it. He and Suzanne once stopped at a house in Pacific Grove and told two leaders of a Zen meditation center that Jesus is coming back. Both were saved that night, and the man went on to plant churches. He closed on the part we choose. Who we listen to, and who we let teach us. So What: God interferes on purpose. The plan that fell apart on you is often the door into what He was doing all along. Now What: Take the chart to your own life this week. Name your influences, name your character, and name what you are here to contribute. Scripture References: Esther 2:1-18 (Taken into the palace and made queen of Persia)Esther 4:14 (For such a time as this)Esther 4:15-17 (Gather the Jews and fast for me)Esther 5:1-2 (The golden scepter held out to an uninvited queen)Esther 7:9-10 (Haman hanged on the gallows he built for Mordecai)Numbers 12:3 (Moses, the most humble man on earth)Acts 16:30 (What must we do to be saved)

  4. Aug 17

    A Moment Like This : Placed, Present, Positioned

    Week three in Esther, and Pastor Abbie gave the series its verbs. Placed, present, positioned. By chapter five Esther has been in the palace five years. Not five days. Some of us are standing somewhere we did not choose, asking God whether this is it. Then she puts on her royal robes and walks into the inner court uninvited, a move that could have ended her life. The scepter goes out. And she does not ask. She invites the king and Haman to a banquet, and there invites them to another. Esther is not only beauty. She has brains. She wants the king alone and Haman in the room. Haman leaves past Mordecai, who still will not rise. At home he lists his wealth, his sons, his promotions, his private invitation from the queen, and then says the line that undoes him. None of it satisfies him while that one man sits at the gate. God pours out blessing above and beyond, and the one thing we have not been given becomes the only thing we can see. He builds a gallows and goes to bed delighted. Then the king cannot sleep, calls for the chronicles, and the record lands on the night Mordecai saved his life. We call that a coincidence. See it in completion and make no mistake, God's presence was moving. Chapter seven is the turn, and Esther does not stop at her own safety. Spare my people. Haman hangs on the gallows he built for Mordecai. She risked an earthly palace, which is a small picture of Philippians 2 and of Jesus, who left heaven to join us in our suffering and died to save all people. For most of us risk will not look like moving away. It looks like knocking on an office door, or asking who could come to dinner. And none of it happens alone. The book is named Esther and it ends on Mordecai. We are not the main characters. She closed with her own ten years in Madison. One year was the plan. She barely unpacked, cried on the drive back for five years, and slept on an air mattress long enough that people still call her Air Mattress Abbie. Then a pandemic, and seasons where the place felt more bitter than blessed. Looking back over ten years, the sentence changes. God was here the whole time. So What: God is present in the place He has you. Right here, right now. Now What: Sit with three questions this week. Where am I placed. How can I stay present. Where do I need to get positioned. Scripture References: Esther 5:1-14 (The gold scepter, two banquets, and the gallows Haman builds)Esther 4:15-17 (Fast for me, and if I perish, I perish)Esther 6:1-11 (A sleepless king, the chronicles, and Haman honoring Mordecai)Esther 7:1-10 (Spare my people; Haman hanged on his own gallows)Esther 9:1-5 (The tables are turned)Esther 10:1-3 (The book ends on the greatness of Mordecai)Philippians 2:6-11 (He made Himself nothing, obedient to death on a cross)Luke 3:21-22 (Father, Son, and Spirit together at the baptism of Jesus)Luke 9:1-6 (Take nothing for the journey, and learn to receive)

  5. Aug 9

    A Moment Like This : For Such a Time as This

    Week two in Esther, and Pastor Abbie went straight at the verse everyone quotes. Who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this. It is a beautiful verse. It gets tricky the moment we decide it means one moment. Because when that moment passes, we no longer know how to live or who we are. Two traps sit on either side of it. We spend our lives worried we will miss the moment, or we spend our lives worshiping the one we already had. Esther 3 and 4 turn dark fast. Mordecai will not bow. Haman is enraged and decides that killing one man is not enough, so he plots to destroy every Jew in the empire. Pastor Abbie sat with Haman longer than most preachers do, and the reason matters. Offense left unchecked is dangerous. Our feelings are not bad and they are not to be dismissed, but as we listen we have to tell them where to go. Haman never asked why Mordecai had such a hold on him. We are formed by what we fixate on. He was not yet the villain in chapter three. He got there by choosing the same direction over and over. Then the good news: we are constantly being formed and we are not finished. A diagnosis is not an identity. Circumstances do not define us. Pastor Abbie told her own stories of rooms that were not built for her, of crying in front of a man who told her the trip was for men only, of being 23 and saying she would take whatever leftovers she could get. The exact things she was trying to hide are the things God used. Esther buried her Jewish identity, and that identity became the doorway to deliverance for her whole people. Mordecai never gets a verse named after him and the story does not happen without him. You do not have to be the main character. None of us are. The main character is Jesus. So What: God is forming you through every moment, not only the moments that feel important. Now What: Notice God in your story. Pay attention to the ordinary moments, people, and opportunities He might be using to make you more like Jesus. Scripture References: Esther 3:1-6 (Haman is elevated; Mordecai refuses to kneel; Haman plots to destroy all the Jews)Esther 4:1-17 (Mordecai in sackcloth; the golden scepter and the thirty days; for such a time as this; fast for me, and if I perish, I perish)1 Samuel 17 (Saul’s armor does not fit David; God finds another way to win the battle)Genesis 1:27 (Created in the image of God to bear His image)1 Corinthians 12:12-27 (One body, many members, different roles and the same mission)

  6. Aug 2

    A Moment Like This : What Was I Made For

    We opened a new series in Esther, and Pastor Abbie started where most of us live. What was I made for? Billie Eilish put it in a song and the whole world sang it back. Kelly Clarkson wrote that people wait a lifetime for a moment like this. A celebrity who has arrived by every measure is still asking whether she arrived. So are we. Is this the career I was made for, the marriage, this stage of parenting, this calling? Or is there one day I finally get there? Esther 1 and 2 give us a scandalous palace, a king who discards his queen for disobeying him, and a young Jewish woman swept into twelve months of preparation for a beauty contest she never chose. Pastor Abbie named the harm plainly. Esther is a historical book describing a story, not a prescription. There are things we walk through that God did not ordain and does not want for us. He redeems them anyway. And that is where the thread of Jesus shows up. Jesus never said come and follow this purpose. He never said come to this specific place. He said come and follow Me. Our purpose is less about a moment, a destination, or a place. It is about a person. Esther is the one book that never names God, and that silence is the point. It trains us to look for Him in every detail. For thirty years Jesus was preparing for three years of ministry, hidden and unnoticed. Pastor Abbie only saw her own formation looking backward, in meals around a table and a mom who paid her to read the Bible in a year. The so what is this: Jesus is present with us in the preparation, because He is the person we are preparing for. So What: Jesus is present with us in the preparation, because He is the person we are preparing for. Now What: Look for Jesus in every moment. Practice the Examen this week: replay, reflect, repent, rejoice. Scripture References: Esther 1 (Xerxes’ 180-day banquet in Susa; Queen Vashti refuses to come and is removed; the decree that every man rule his own household)Esther 2:1-18 (The search for a new queen; Mordecai adopts Esther; twelve months of beauty treatments; Esther hides her nationality and is made queen)Matthew 4:19 (Come and follow Me)Luke 2:41-52 (Jesus at twelve in the temple; the hidden years before His ministry)John 2:19-21 (Jesus speaks of the temple of His body)1 Corinthians 6:19 (Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit)

  7. Jul 19

    James : The Prayer of Faith

    In the final week of James, Pastor Abbie brought us to James 5:13-20, the passage her Bible titles the Prayer of Faith. Happy? Sing. Hurting? Pray. Sick? Call the elders and be anointed with oil. James removes every excuse to stop asking God. But verse 15 is not a formula that forces healing on demand. Paul pleaded three times for God to remove the thorn, and the answer was not healing. My grace is sufficient for you, My power is made perfect in weakness. Sometimes the specific prayer is answered now, and sometimes it is not answered until we see Jesus face to face. We live in the in-between, and we keep praying in faith, trusting He is near. The oil points somewhere. Messiah means the Anointed One, so to anoint the sick in Jesus’ name is to come under His lordship and the presence of the Holy Spirit, who heals and binds us together. Confession follows the same grace, because forgiveness comes first. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven lands before confess your sins to each other, so we come to God already held, with no shame. And prayer was never meant to be a secret solo last resort. It is a communal lifeline. Be honest enough to name the need. Be humble enough to ask. You do not have to carry it alone. Scripture References: James 5:13-20 (The Prayer of Faith: sing when happy, call the elders and anoint the sick with oil, the prayer offered in faith, confess your sins to each other, the prayer of a righteous person, Elijah and the rain, bring back the wanderer)Exodus 30:22-33 (The recipe for the sacred anointing oil; consecrate the tent, the ark, and the people)2 Corinthians 12:7-10 (Paul’s thorn in the flesh; My grace is sufficient for you, My power is made perfect in weakness)Matthew 26:36-39 (Jesus in the garden; Father, take this cup from Me)1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances)James 1:22-25 (The doer of the word; the mirror that we walk away from and forget)Ephesians 4:11 (Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers)1 Kings 17-18 (Elijah prays and the rain stops, then returns)

  8. Jul 13

    James : Jesus Is Near

    James 5:7-12 reads like a string of familiar words. Patience. Perseverance. Suffering. The prophets. Job. Pastor Abbie walked us through it verse by verse, and the message underneath the vocabulary is one sentence. Life is more than avoiding pain. It is trusting God enough to stay. Start with who James is talking to. Nathan showed us two weeks ago that James 5 opens with a prophetic warning against rich oppressors. Now the letter turns to the people being oppressed. These are not people with minor inconveniences. They are truly suffering. And James tells them to be patient, the way a farmer waits for the autumn and spring rains. The Greek word for patient here means to be of a long spirit. Slow to anger. Slow to punish. Patient in bearing the offenses and injuries of others. And notice where patience gets tested. Not alone. In relationship. You cannot control another person or the timing of the rain. You can control what you surrender to Jesus. That is what waiting forms in us: people of surrender and trust. Then comes perseverance. The word means to remain. Do not flee the hard, painful thing. Hold fast. And the definition includes a word that stopped Pastor Abbie cold: calmly. Nobody walks through oppression calmly on their own strength. That calm comes from Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit. His breath is in our lungs so we can persevere. Pastor Abbie was honest about the kinds of suffering we carry. Some is unjust, caused by someone else’s hands. Some is unexplained, like Job’s. Her cousin wrote an entire dissertation on Job, and after eight years of study her answer to what it means is still, we don’t know. And some suffering, like praying for healing one mile into a 5K you never trained for, is self-induced. God hands us the tools before the race. Spend time with Me. Get to know My voice. Be in community. James picked the prophets as his example on purpose. They stayed true to God’s word and suffered for it. They confronted kings and empires at the risk of their lives. That is the pull Pastor Abbie named: from a balanced life, which arranges itself so we never have to see injustice, to a kingdom life, which moves toward broken things to bring wholeness. The Lord is full of compassion, a desire to help. When we enter someone else’s pain, we become like Jesus, who left heaven to join us in ours. Even the strange ending fits. Do not swear. All you need is a simple yes or no. Under unresolved pain, we are tempted to manufacture explanations and inflate stories. James frees us to sit in the in-between and say, this happened, and I don’t know why. That answer is allowed. Because here is what we do know. Jesus is near. The pain is temporary. Weeping stays for the night, and rejoicing comes in the morning. This week, stay. Be patient with the people who test you. Enter one person’s pain instead of managing your own comfort. And when you have no explanation, hold on to the one thing that is certain. Jesus is near. Scripture References: James 5:7-12 (Be patient until the Lord’s coming; the farmer and the rains; do not grumble; the prophets; Job’s perseverance; do not swear)Job 1 (Blameless Job loses everything in a day; suffering without explanation)Job 42 (God speaks; restoration and mercy at the end of the story)Matthew 5:12 (Rejoice and be glad; they persecuted the prophets before you)1 Kings 19:4 (Elijah flees for his life and asks to die)Hebrews 4:15 (A high priest who empathizes with our weaknesses)Psalm 30:1-5 (You lifted me out of the depths; rejoicing comes in the morning)

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CREATING THE CULTURE OF CHRIST IN MADISON, WI The New Culture Church podcast is packed full of great sermon content from New Culture Church in Madison, WI. Be part of a welcoming community that values real conversations, personal growth, and making a positive impact. Subscribe now to explore life's big questions and find meaningful connections.

Information

  • Creator
    New Culture Church
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    196
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © New Culture Church
  • Show Website
    New Culture Church