What does it mean to become like Jesus in the day to day pressures of life?
The Sunday teachings of Saint Church explore Scripture, Christian formation, and the historic faith as we seek to follow Jesus in the city of Chicago and beyond. We believe the Christian life is not simply about believing the right things or behaving the right way, but about becoming a certain kind of people—people being formed in Jesus for the renewal of the world.
Rooted in Scripture, historically informed, and culturally conversant, these teachings invite us to retrieve the wisdom of the Christian tradition, become more like Jesus, and play our part in God's restoration of all things.
Saint Church — Becoming Saints Together.
Publisher
SAINT Church
Category
education · religion & spirituality · society & culture
What does it mean to experience peace in a world marked by conflict, anxiety, and fragmentation?
There are many different voices and visions for what peace could mean. Peace could bring to mind our desperate need for global conflicts to cease. Peace could bring to mind the interpersonal struggles and conflicts that might currently surround you. Or peace could mean the deep sense of unease that lingers like a cloud above you.
But what if peace wasn’t something we had to conjure, forge, or even find. What if peace was an invitation that we could enter into today?
This past Sunday, Dr. John Perrine taught on the dense and complex passage of Hebrews 3:7-4:10 that has an invitation for us today. What if we could enter into the peace God has been waiting for us in from the beginning of creation? And what if that peace could become part of our calling to extend God’s peace to others?
2 Nov 2026
Retrieving Baptism (All Saints Sunday)
When you picture a saint, what comes to mind? Perhaps someone extraordinary: a person of remarkable faith, sacrifice, and devotion. We admire their lives, but sometimes struggle to imagine that we might become people like them. What if becoming a saint begins not with something we achieve, but with something we receive?
In 2 Kings 5, we encounter Naaman, a powerful military commander whose success could not conceal his brokenness. When he seeks healing from the prophet Elisha, he is given an unexpectedly simple invitation: go and wash in the Jordan River. Naaman must humble himself and receive what he cannot accomplish on his own. His story offers us a window into the meaning of baptism: a sign of cleansing, new birth, and the sealing of a new identity in Jesus.
Perhaps the invitation for many of us is not simply to be baptized, but to remember our baptism. To remember that we have been washed, made new, and sealed in Christ—and to learn to live out of that identity in the ordinary rhythms of our lives. What might become possible if we stopped striving to achieve an identity and began living from the one we have already received? This is what it means to become saints together.
26 Oct 2026
Retrieving Communion
What are you hungry for? And what if our deepest hunger points to something more than food—to the communion with God we were created to enjoy? In this message, Retrieving Communion, we explore the story of God’s desire to share his life with us, from the broken fellowship of Genesis 3 to Jesus’ invitation in John 6: “I am the bread of life.”
Throughout Scripture, God is at work restoring his table with us, culminating in Jesus offering us himself. At the Lord’s Table, we receive more than a meal; we are invited into deeper union with Christ and the life we were made for.
At Saint Church, we’re learning to retrieve this ancient gift of communion as a way of life—receiving the life of Jesus and learning to share it with one another and the world. Come hungry, join us at the Table, and become saints together.
19 Oct 2026
Retrieving Confession
One of the greatest challenges we think in the modern age is to stop the striving, stop the pushing, stop the churning long enough to ask ourselves:
Is there anything that we need to confess?
This week, we turned to St. Augustine and his classic text on the Confessions to observe how underneath the human heart, there is this restless churning: a churn to consume, a church to comfort ourselves, a churn to control. But Jesus offers us a different invitation in Luke 18:9-14.
It is a simple picture. The image of two people praying in the temple. One a Pharisee, obsessed with the ways they have elevated themselves above the world. And the other a tax collector, who has nothing to offer to God or the world but their simple prayer, “God have mercy on me, a sinner.”
We want to become the kinds of saints who learn to embrace such a prayer.
5 Oct 2026
Retrieving Prayer
What does it mean to pray when we actually believe God is listening? In Genesis 18:16–33, Abraham does something remarkable: he contends with God. He pleads, questions, asks again, and refuses to let go of the possibility that God might act with mercy. This week, as we continued our series Retrieve, we looked at the prayers of the people; recovering an ancient practice of bringing the needs, hopes, griefs, and longings of the world before God together.
28 Sept 2026
Retrieving Scripture
What if moving forward requires us to go back? In a culture obsessed with what’s next, retrieval is the practice of returning to what we’ve forgotten—not to recreate the past, but to recover what might help us become faithful people in the present.
In 2 Kings 22–23, Josiah discovers something that had been lost. What happens next offers a surprising picture of what it might look like to encounter Scripture—not simply as an ancient book to understand, but as a living word that speaks into our lives today. What might we discover if we learned to listen again?
14 Sept 2026
The Forgotten Gospel
What if some of what we've called the gospel isn't actually the gospel?
For some of us, Christianity became something to earn. For others, something to prove. A system to get right. A life we could control. Or a promise that if we believed the right things now, we'd escape the pain of this world later.
But what if the good news is stranger, and better, than that?
On Sunday, John took us into one of Christianity's oldest and most beautiful ideas: union with Christ.
Not simply believing in Jesus. Not merely trying to become like Jesus. But the staggering claim repeated throughout the New Testament is that we are somehow in Christ, and that, in him, an entirely new way of being human has begun.
1 Sept 2026
Who Are You Becoming?
We live in a world constantly asking us to become someone—through what we buy, what we achieve, what we believe, and the people we surround ourselves with. But beneath all of those pressures is a deeper question: Who are you becoming?
In our first teaching at Saint Church, we explore the invitation of Jesus not simply to believe something about him, but to follow him and become someone new in him.
Paul's opening words to the Ephesians give us a different vision of our identity: before we achieve anything, we are already chosen, adopted, beloved, and blessed in Christ. The Christian life begins not with constructing a better self, but with receiving a new identity and allowing our lives to be formed by Jesus.
What if following Jesus isn't primarily about becoming a better version of yourself, but becoming the person you were created to be?
Who are you becoming?
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