Hope Church PCA

Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem

Sunday Schedule:

9:00 a.m. – Worship
10:15 a.m. – Hope Café
10:45 a.m. – Worship

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2 Corinthians

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Mission and the Messiness of Life

August 29, 2021 |

“Open wide the window of our spirits, O Lord, and fill us full of light; Open wide the door of our hearts, that we may receive and entertain thee with all our powers of adoration and love. Amen.”

Christina G. Rossetti, from Prayers from the Heart by Richard J. Foster

“There was a bird who… perched atop the corner of the world and built three nests. One of gold, one of silver and one of clay…. In the nest of gold she cleansed her coat daily, in the nest of silver she brought back her food. In the nest of clay she laid her eggs. On the day the fires came the nests of gold and silver met in a lucid river rushing to the sea while the nest of clay withstood the heat. Amen. The nest of clay was forged for eternity atop the corner of the world, while the ocean floor was covered in gold, silver, and sand.”

“Via Rail,” by Kaddisfly

“That’s the business of hope: broken things. And days like today make it clear that things are off the rails. We’ve got our work cut out for us. Oh God, there’s a new widow in the world. Our hearts are broken with her and for her. And only a mystery can heal them. Put me to work, Lord. Let me be about the business of the broken until it’s made right.”

“Fare Forward, Thomas McKenzie,” a eulogy by Pete Peterson

The Who Behind the What and the How

January 10, 2021 |

“Readers looking for seven easy steps to cultural influence will have to look elsewhere – because I do not happen to believe that anything lasting is easy.  What we most have to learn about being creators of culture is the very thing we human beings find hardest to learn: everything about our calling, from start to finish, is a gift.  What is most needed in our time are Christians who are deeply serious about cultivating and creating but who wear that seriousness lightly – who are not desperately trying to change the world but who also wake up every morning eager to create.”

Andy Crouch

“Creation was a way for God to spend himself . . . Creation is an act of imaginative love.”  

Cornelius Plantinga

“The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists, as the mother can love the unborn child.” 

G.K. Chesterton

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.” 

C.S. Lewis

The Heartbeat of Hope: Engage the World by the Power of the Holy Spirit

June 2, 2019 |

“There has been a long tradition which sees the mission of the Church primarily as obedience to a command.  It has been customary to speak of ‘the missionary mandate.’  This way of putting the matter is certainly not without justification, and yet it seems to me that it misses the point.  It tends to make mission a burden rather than a joy, to make it part of the law rather than part of the gospel.  If one looks at the New Testament evidence one gets another impression.  Mission begins with a kind of explosion of joy.  The news that the rejected and crucified Jesus is alive is something that cannot possibly be suppressed.  It must be told.  Who could be silent about such a fact?”

Lesslie Newbigin

“In service which Thy will appoints, there are no bonds for me;
For my inmost heart is taught “the truth” that makes Thy children “free;”
And a life of self–renouncing love is a life of liberty.”

Anna Waring

“The hardest task for people who believe in the second coming of Jesus Christ is in ‘living the sort of life that makes people say, ‘Ah, so that’s how people are going to live when righteousness takes over our world.’ The hardest task is simple, persistent faithfulness in our work and in our attitudes – the kind of faithfulness that shows we are being drawn forward by the magnet force of the kingdom of God.”

Cornelius Plantinga

Gracious Offering and Eager Doxology

October 8, 2017 |

“If we are not giving away our money in remarkable portions, we have not grasped (or we are not currently remembering) Christ’s generosity in saving us. Let’s put it even more starkly: you will always give effortlessly to that which is your salvation, to those things that give your life meaning. If Jesus is the one who saved, your money flows out easily into his work, his people, and his causes. If, however, your real religion is your appearance, your social status, your pleasure, and your security, your money flows most easily into those items and symbols . . . To give largely and liberally, not grudging at all times, requires a new heart – an old heart would rather part with its lifeblood than with its money.”

—Tim Keller

“The trouble with being rich is that since you can solve with your checkbook virtually all practical problems that bedevil ordinary people, you are left in your leisure with nothing but the great human problems to contend with: how to be happy, how to love and be loved, how to find meaning and purpose in your life. In desperation the rich are continually tempted to believe that they can solve these problems too with their checkbooks, which is presumably what led Jesus to remark one day that for a rich man to get to Heaven is about as easy for a Cadillac to get through a revolving door.”

—Frederick Buechner

“If Christ were only a cistern, we might soon exhaust his fullness, but who can drain a fountain? Myriads of spirits have drawn their supplies from him, and not one has murmured at the scantiness of his resources. Away, then, with this lying traitor unbelief, for his only errand is to cut the bond of communion and make us mourn an absent Savior!”

—Charles Spurgeon

Getting, Having, and Giving

August 13, 2017 |

“Considering the full sweep of the Christian tradition, one would have to conclude that the most profane word we can utter is that word: mine.”

—William Willimon

“I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc, is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them.”

―C.S. Lewis
Mere Christianity

“The trouble with being rich is that since you can solve with your checkbook virtually all practical problems that bedevil ordinary people, you are left in your leisure with nothing but the great human problems to contend with: how to be happy, how to love and be loved, how to find meaning and purpose in your life. In desperation the rich are continually tempted to believe that they can solve these problems too with their checkbooks, which is presumably what led Jesus to remark one day that for a rich man to get to Heaven is about as easy for a Cadillac to get through a revolving door.”

—Frederick Buechner

Envy: The Joyless Sin

July 9, 2017 |

“Of all the deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.”

—Jason Epstein

“An envier resents; a coveter desires. Of course, an envier may begin his career as a coveter. He may begin by hankering for someone else’s goods, just as Cain may have originally wanted the blessing God gave to Abel. But failed covetousness is likely to curdle into envy: the envier is often a disgruntled coveter.  If the envier can come away with another’s goods, so much the better, but this is an incidental advantage. What the envier really wants is to spoil something – or someone.”

—Cornelius Plantinga

“An envier offers a backward intercessory prayer for his rival: ‘Drain his swimming pool, O God, but fill his basement.’”

—Cornelius Plantinga

Union with Christ: In Christ!

April 30, 2017 |

“Jesus Christ is not to be relegated, like other religious leaders, to history and the history books.  He is not dead and gone, finished or fossilized.  He is alive and active. He calls us to follow him, and he offers himself to us as our indwelling and transforming Savior . . . Once again this is unique. There is nothing comparable to it in the other religions. The Buddhist does not claim to know the Buddha, nor the Confucianist Confucius, nor the Muslim Muhammad, nor the Marxist Karl Marx. Each reveres the founder of his religion or ideology as a teacher of the past.  To Christians too Jesus is a teacher, but even more he is our living Lord and Savior. Phrases claiming this “recur on page after page of the New Testament, and make it clear that it is this intimate and personal relationship of trust, devotion, and communion, which the very heart of the Christian faith.”

—John Stott

“Union with Christ is strong precisely in those places where we in our secular age tend to be weak. It gives us an ability to speak into the void created by our disenchanted, self-centered world, which has only narrowed our vision and caused us to forget who we are.”

—Rankin Wilbourne

“Made like him, like him we rise; ours the cross, the grave, the skies!”

—Charles Wesley

The Big Gulp

August 7, 2016 |

“You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.”― John Bunyan

… not just what is necessary for bare subsistence, but also what is necessary for living a life “becoming” or appropriate to human beings. The point is not to live on crusts of bread with bare walls and threadbare clothes. The point is that a fully human life is lived in a way free from being enslaved to our stuff.― Rebecca DeYoung

“It’s not how much we give but how much love we put into giving.”― Mother Teresa

“We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.”― Winston S. Churchill

“Until we can receive with an open heart, we’re never really giving with an open heart. When we attach judgment to receiving help, we knowingly or unknowingly attach judgment to giving help.”― Brené Brown