Alliance Church

About Alliance Church

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.

Publisher

Alliance Church

Category

religion & spirituality

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

1 Jan 2017

Latest episode

12 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

379 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   12 Oct 2026

   Is Hoarding Money a Sin? Why Saving Isn’t the Problem

   Is it a sin to hoard money? Most of us would say no. Saving is responsible, and helping the poor is a nice thing to do when the budget allows. But what the Bible says about generosity is heavier than that, and in this sermon Pastor Brian walks straight into it.It starts with a Saturday trip to Menards and a question from Pastor Brian's son Elias, who is seven. It becomes a bigger one: who is Jesus shaping us to become? This fall, the answer keeps landing on a word we rarely connect to money. Justice.In Isaiah 1:17, God looks at people who are praying, fasting, and worshiping hard and tells them what he actually wants: seek justice, defend the oppressed, take up the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. Righteousness and justice sit side by side more than fifty times in the Old Testament. Neglecting the poor is not a missed chance at charity. It is a wrong that needs to be made right.Pastor Brian gives two reasons. First, you do not own your stuff. If you cannot take it with you when you die, you are managing it for an Owner who has said what he values. Second, in Matthew 25, Jesus says feeding the hungry and visiting the prisoner are the evidence that we belong to him, not the way we got in. Then he says something staggering: I was there. To neglect the vulnerable is to withhold from the King himself.This is not a guilt trip or a political speech. God does not love the poor more than the rich. Zacchaeus gave away half, kept his job, and Jesus said salvation had come to his house. Proverbs 13:22 calls it righteous to leave an inheritance for your grandchildren. And work is not the curse. Genesis 2:15 puts Adam to work in the garden before sin ever enters. Toil is the curse, making money for its own sake until you feel empty and cannot name why.In Exodus 16, God rains down manna for people who have nothing and still asks them to gather it every morning. Everyone had enough, and whatever anyone kept until morning rotted. Hoarded money does not stink in your wallet, but it starts to rot somewhere in your life. Deuteronomy 15 goes further. Cancel debts every seventh year. Do not be hardhearted or tightfisted. Do not even think, "the seventh year is near, so why bother." Be openhanded. Who lives like that?People who remember. Deuteronomy 15:15 says, remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you. Guilt cannot fuel that kind of generosity. Grace can. Blessed are the poor in spirit, Jesus says in Matthew 5:3, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. If you are middle class in spirit, Pastor Brian warns, you probably will not care much about the poor materially. But if you have been broken over your own spiritual bankruptcy and watched God refill your empty cup, generosity starts to feel natural. And before you get tightfisted with people whose poverty came from their own bad choices, remember why the cross happened at all. We were sinful and unwise too. It ends at the communion table, so we can leave and do likewise.Where has generosity felt hardest for you lately?

2. 

   4 Oct 2026

   Where God Actually Is (And Why You Keep Missing It)

   What does God actually think about Christians who worship vibrantly on Sunday but ignore the vulnerable the rest of the week? It is one of the most jarring questions in Scripture, and Pastor Brian walks the church into it head on. Full seats. Hands raised. Tithes up. Prayer and fasting strong. And God, says Isaiah, cannot stand it. This sermon kicks off a new teaching series at Alliance Church on biblical justice, what it is, who it is for, and why Scripture is so unflinching about it. Pastor Brian opens with Isaiah 1:11 through 17, where God tells his people he hates their offerings, cannot bear their worship, and refuses to hear their prayers. Why? Because they neglected the vulnerable. Learn to do right. Seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless. Plead the case of the widow. Then he gives one of the clearest working definitions of biblical justice we have heard. An expression of God's love, doing what is right for the good of another, especially the vulnerable. The poor. The outsider. The victimized. The powerless. The weak. The needy. He also explains why Christians uniquely see this as justice, not just charity. One, we do not own what we have, we manage it, so misusing it against God's priorities is theft. Two, all sin ultimately offends God, not just a human neighbor. Three, every person reflects the image of God equally, so unequal concern for people different than us is injustice against that image. Then Pastor Brian takes the church to Matthew 25:31 through 46. The sheep and the goats. Jesus hands us the actual script of the most eternally significant moment in our lives. I was hungry. I was thirsty. I was a stranger. I needed clothes. I was sick. I was in prison. And whatever you did or did not do for the least of these, you did or did not do for me. He notes something most people miss. Both the righteous and the perishing say the exact same thing. Lord, when did we see you? Nobody realizes how much the vulnerable mattered to God. Then he lands it in the gospel, where it has to land. The point is not to go home and check a list. The point is to let the cross blow you away. We were the spiritually bankrupt. We were the powerless. We were in prison for our sin. Jesus moved into our neighborhood and gave up everything so that we could become citizens of heaven. The more deeply you receive that grace, the more naturally you spend yourself for the vulnerable. If you have ever felt distant from God, or wondered what Christianity is actually supposed to look like in real life, this teaching from Pastor Brian is a hard, honest, hopeful starting point.

3. 

   27 Sept 2026

   The Reason More Never Feels Like Enough (Even When It Is)

   Why does more money never actually feel like enough? You get the raise, the house, the promotion, the number in the account, and then the goalpost quietly moves again. Pastor Josiah takes on that exhausting cycle head on, using one of Jesus's sharpest parables. And the man Jesus calls a fool in it looks, on paper, like someone we would celebrate. This sermon continues an Alliance Church teaching series on money and generosity. Pastor Josiah opens with what hikers call the false summit. That moment on a climb when you put your head down, push hard for the peak you can finally see, only to discover another ridge behind it. That is how most of us live financially and emotionally. If I could just get there. And then there moves. Then he takes the church to Luke 12:13 through 21. Someone in the crowd interrupts Jesus to referee a family inheritance fight. Instead of settling it, Jesus goes underneath the argument and names three things about the man in the parable that most Christians never see in themselves. One. Greed. More never feels like enough. Ecclesiastes 5:10 says it plainly. Those who love money will never have enough. Greed is not about how much is in your bank account. It is about what has your heart. The antidote is gratitude. Two. Selfishness. Blessings were never meant to stop with you. Pastor Josiah uses a genius illustration from a plumbing disaster in his first home. A concrete pad was pressing down on the pipe, blocking the flow, causing dirty water to back up into his tub. When God's blessing stops with you, the same thing happens spiritually. God moves resources through us, not just to us. 1 Timothy 6:17 and 18 makes it clear. Three. Foolishness. Full barns can still belong to an empty soul. The rich man in the parable prepares for retirement, plans, saves, expands, and then God says, tonight your life is required of you. Then who gets it? Not because he was wealthy. Because he chased what he could not keep while ignoring what he could not lose. He closes with the story of Ali Hafed and the diamond mines of Golconda. A man who sold his content, prosperous farm to chase diamonds elsewhere, died broke and hopeless in Barcelona, while the man who bought his land found the biggest diamond mine in history sitting right in the creek on that same property. The treasure Ali was looking for was already at home. Pastor Josiah lands it in the gospel. The richest thing you can have is a relationship with God, and it is not hidden. Jesus paid the way to that relationship on a cross. Do not spend your life chasing what you cannot keep while neglecting what you cannot lose.

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Apple Podcasts (US)

4.7 / 5

15 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

9 ratings

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