Sermon from Sunday – June 15 2025
The Message sent to the church during our 2025 Annual Conference in Dallas
Baptized Into the Presence – Living With the Spirit – June 1 2025 – Today we hear a piece of God’s creation in Genesis and from Matthew 28 when Jesus commissions his disciples. He send them out to make disciples, he tell his disciples to Baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Listen to Michael challenge us to really understand what it means to see that God is present with each of us and that Jesus was sending the disciples out not alone but the promise that Jesus would be with them. God is with you even right now, you are God’s reflection in the world. Listen as Michael challenges us to embrace walking in the Spirit.
The Spirit’s Power – Graduation Day – May 18 2025 – Acts 1 tells of the account of Jesus’ ascension into Heaven. The disciples of Jesus are gathered around him and begin to ask if this is the end? Will he put everything right? He looks into his disciples’ eyes and say, “no.” He tells them that the Spirit will come upon them and that they will have power, this was not the ending for the followers of Jesus but was their graduation day. No longer were they just followers, they were friends, and now co-heirs of God’s Kingdom. Just as it was for the disciples, the ascension of Jesus is still our graduation day where God empowers us to go to the ends of the earth and make disciples.
Bearing Fruit In the Garden of Grace – Sunday May 11 2025 – Mother’s Day – Ezekiel reveals to us a God who offers mercy in the midst of judgement and accountability. God reminds the Children of Abraham that God is the one who takes a fragile sprig from the top of a cedar tree and plants it on the mountain and turn it into a shelter for birds and animals. Jesus in John 15 calls the disciples friends and tells them to abide in him as he abides in the father. We are called to grow in the Garden of God’s Kindom, a messy, disorganized process in which hurts at times but where we always find God’s grace and where we find God at work. Listen this week, remember and hear the invitation to be changed by God.
Abiding In Christ – Living in the Body – Sunday May 4th, 2025 – In John chapter 15, Jesus gives an analogy for the disciples to begin to understand the life of Christian discipleship, the analogy is that of a vine, not a single staulk of spirituality, but an interconnected vine. We are taught to abide in Jesus as Jesus abides in God. Pastor Michael asks the question, what if Christ has already returned? What if instead of watching the clouds for Christ, Christ is here in the church and that the faith we are called to is not a solitary faith, a private faith, but to live as the church in a community that empowers and transforms live? Listen as Pastor Michael asks us to live in the Body of Christ.
Open the Box – Easter Sunday- April 21, 2025 – There is power in words, there is power in the resurrection, but without a witness, without the willingness to “Open the Box” to look into the empty tomb and proclaim it empty, the power of the resurrection cannot come to reality. We must experience the resurrection to encounter its power, we must still speak into life God’s power to overcome death, fear. brokeness, and sin. But it cannot happen without our witness. We are called to still be a truthful witness to a world in need of hope. Do you have the courage to speak life, do you have the courage to proclaim resurrection?
The Other Parade – April 13, 2025 – Palm/Passion Sunday – As we prepare to move toward Holy Week and the passion of the week ahead that leads us to the cross and the tomb, we take a close look at Jerusalem on the day that two parades enter into town. Pilot’s parade enters with power and fanfare and fear while Jesus and his disciples enter in a humble make shift parade that speaks to us the will and desire of God. Listen as Pastor Rowe challenges us to reflect on the way, the spirit, the orientation that we approach our Christian Faith.
Giving Away Our Seat – April 6th 2025 – This communion Sunday, Pastor Michael reflects about how we approach the communion table. This historic meal isn’t about us claiming our seat, about keeping the Kingdom for ourselves, but allowing ourselves to be transformed at the table from keeping to giving. We are building a table that welcomes all and where we give away God’s grace and we give away our seat. Listen as Pastor Michael challenges us to see and ask who needs us to share our faith and our seat at the table.
Bearers of Light – March 23 2025 Light and Darkness are realities of life. We will find ourselves in darkness in life, and it is easy to cry our for God, to ask why we find ourselves in darkness? But what if we misunderstood what are role in darkness is, what if we are called to be the light of God in Darkness? What is were are God’s answer to darkness and evil? Pastor Michael encourages us to reflect on weather we run from into into the darkness to be God’s presence of good in the midst of evil. What does it mean to pick up our cross and follow Jesus? Listen and find the courage to be light.
Coming To Life – March 16 2025 – In this message, Michael asks if our faith leads lo life or to death? Our gospel lesson is Luke’s parable of the Prodigal Son. The father allows the son to walk away and to squander his share of his inheritance, and yet when he finally returns with home of being a slave, he finds his father waiting on the road, waiting to wrap his lost son in his arms and to restore him to his place in the family. This kingdom parable celebrates the process of coming to life. As we journey through this season of Lent, is our destination the cross or is it the resurrection? Jesus came to bring us to life, to set us free, to bring us hope, what have we embraced? listen as Michael delivers this message challenging us to embrace life.
Grace For the Broken – March 9, 2025 – We enter into our Lenton Journey – moving toward Easter, but first the cross. In this sermon, two questions are grappled with? How do you forgive acts of violence? How does forgiveness set us free? We reflect on the true nature of God’s grace that meets us in our brokenness and offers us hope. We also get a glimpse into how God chooses to work in our brokenness to transform the world. We often ask the wrong question; we ask God to remove our brokenness instead of seeing how God works in and through our brokenness. Listen as Michael challenges us to embrace the Grace of God that insists in our lives.
In Need of Grace – Sunday, March 2, 2025 – This Sunday is Transfiguration Sunday. Jesus takes a few of his disciples with him while he goes to be alone with God. While in a time of solitude and prayer, he begins to glow and Moses and Elijah appear with him. As the disciples realize what is happening Peter opens his mouth to suggest building altars for the three when God speaks out with those famous words, “This is my son, my beloved, listen to Him.” Each year we hear these texts, today, Pastor Michael asks the question, for who is the transfiguration for? Was it for Jesus or was it for us? Was Jesus in need of God’s grace? Listen as we explore this question on a deeper level.
A Day Without the Body – January 19th 2025 – Remembering the Film, “A Day without a Mexican,” Michael reflects on two sides of the question, what would our community look like without the Body of Christ, without the Church. Through out the globe, think about what the world would look like without communities of faith rising to the challenge of meeting the needs of our communities. The church has influenced health care, education, food pantries, social revolutions, political responses, peace marches, the list can go on and one. The Church, the Body of Christ is still the prophetic voice of God calling God’s people to speak up and be heard as we champion the marginalized communities that God calls us to love.
Sunday January 12th 2025 – This Sunday, the second Sunday of Epiphany, we examine the Baptism of Jesus. Either we were brought to the waters of Baptism by our families or God called us into the waters of Baptism as adults or youth, either way we had to choose to receive the gift of Grace that God gives to us in Baptism. Michael prepares to lead the congregation in remembering their stories, remembering our choice to choose a life of grace and relationship with God, and choosing our Baptismal and membership vows. As the Thanksgiving over the water comes in the middle of the sermon, Grace prepares to celebrate and choose to live into our Baptismal vows.
Sunday – January 5th 2025 – On the Sunday that the Church celebrates as Epiphany Sunday, Michael looks at the Story of the courage that it took for foreign scholars who came looking for the prophesied King of the Jews, who went to Jerusalem to find it before being sent by Herod to Bethlehem. Michael reflects on what it means to seek God. For Saint Augustine in was light, for Barbara Taylor Brown, it’s about finding God in the dark. Seeking God takes courage, finding God transforms lives. Do you have the courage to seek God in the new year?
Mary’s Witness – 4th Sunday of Advent, December 22, 2024. When we think of God, what can we imagine? Pastor Michael begins this message inviting the listener to search their imagination for who God is, what does God look like in our mind’s eye. He then begins looking at Mary’s witness of who she finds God to be in the Lucan passage that we call the Magnificat. She sees Go as faithful, one who favors her, one who brings down the powerful and lifts up the lowly, the powerless. She sees God as the one who feeds the hungry, when the rest of the world saw scandal, she saw a God at work to save the world. What about us, what can we imagine that God can do through us. Listen as Pastor Michael challenges us to reflect on Mary’s Witness.
How To Get Out of Trouble – Sunday, December 15th 2024 – In Luke 3, John calls out the crowds coming to him, he calls them a brood of vipers and threatens them with judgment. Their response is not to walk away and walk away, but to ask what they needed to do. John’s response is simple, share with those around you, feed your neighbor, care for people, don’t cheat people. It’s easy to think that we are stuck in life, but the road to finding ourselves in God’s grace is rather simple – love. Listen as Michael brings this message by speaking to the children in worship.
Transformed by Expectation – Sunday December 8th 2024, 2nd week of Advent. From Malachi to Luke, this weeks lessons fill our journey and expectation of the coming of Christ as a call to transformation, a call to change. Michael reflects from Egypt to the shaping of Israel in the Promised Land how God has always been at work pushing and shaping God’s children. As we begin a 2nd week of the new church year, do we expect transformation? We are called to be the Levites to our community, to remind them of their spiritual heritage and to lead them in the transformation that comes with a relationship with the mystery of the Divine that we can know as a parent. Are we ready to be transformed and made new in faith?
Checking Our Roots – November 17 2024 – In this season that is so busy, taking time to check in our spiritual health is just as important as taking care of our physical health. What does it take to stay at the table, to stay in ministry during hard seasons. Michael reflects on the importance of first making sure that we have a relationship with God, our Spiritual Father, and that beside relying on the foundation of the relationship, do we see ourselves as just hired hands or as heirs of God’s kingdom. What does it mean to make a shift from a hired worker to family owner. Do we live as if we have a stake in God’s kingdom? What does it mean to live into the Royal Priesthood?
An Invitation to Justice – November 10 2024 – Our country is still coming to terms with the presidential election that feels so important at this time in history in the United States. The reality is that regardless of the results of the election, the work that lay ahead of us as followers of Jesus is great. We are living in a divided nation where people feel unheard. As agents of God, we are invited into this season to embrace our ministry of justice, of reconciling, of having the courage to speak truth to those in power and to continue to be the voice of those who are being overlooked and marginalized .
For the Sake of Joy – November 3 2024. As we celebrate All Saints Sunday for the first time as Grace United Methodist Church in Dalhart, we reflect upon the faithful witness of those who walked before us, for those who were God’s prevenient grace for us, who nurtured and lead us into our Christian journey. We celebrate and remember today those who made the way sacred for us and we give God thanks for their witness in our lives, those who sacrificed for the sake of joy so that we might live into God’s love and grace.
Our Ministry of Sacrifice – October 20, 2024 Reading 1 Kings and from the Gospel of Mark in this Sunday’s worship, we hear the story of two widows. Pastor Michael asks us to take a deeper look at these two narratives, beginning with the widow in Zarephath. She wasn’t waiting on Elijah, she was preparing to die, yet God intervenes through Elijah and her small amount of flour and oil becomes a sacrament that preserves her family’s lives as well as Elijah. The widow offering her last two coins makes a sacramental gift to her community as well. Pastor Michael invited us to take a deeper look at sacrifice, how do we make the ordinary sacred, how do we bring God’s grace into the world.
October 13, 2024 – Lessons on Justice, Talents, and Following Jesus – Michael leads a reflection on Isaiah 1:1-20 and Matthew 25:14-30. In these passages, Michael asks us to reflect on the question is a relationship with God about salvation or Divine justice Can we hear God speaking to us today through the prophet Isaiah, would God approve of the church today? Who is the God we are accountable to? We then reflect on Jesus’ words as he teaches a Kingdom Parable about who God is to us and what we do with these lives. Listen prayerfully and reflect on how your life is reflecting God’s justice in this world. If we live lives of God’s justice/restoration in the world, salvation takes care of itself as we enter into our Master’s joy.
September 15th, 2024 – Wisdom Cries Out, Can We Hear Her? – We have a guest preacher, Rev. Stacey Piyakhun, the co-director for the Horizon Texas Annual Conference Center for Multiplication. Rev. Stacey reflects on how we hear God speaking to us today. Proverbs 1 tells us that God – Wisdom is crying out for us to listen, but we don’t hear her. In a time when we are always connected to information and media and noise, how do we hear God? Through story telling of her own travels, she reflects that Wisdom may be speaking to our face but we may dismiss the voice out of inconvenience. Come along and listen to this witness from our friend, Rev. Stacey Piyakhun.
September 8, 2024 – A Sermon With No Name – Michael digs into the Lectionary readings for this Sunday. From James to Mark, we hear the call to model God’s love of not showing partiality as well as challenging the foundations of our hate and prejudice. A sermon with no name invites us to listen to the scriptures for today, to ask deeper questions, both of God and Jesus, to see Jesus himself growing into his Divine presence. We find that we have permission to not have it all together but to give ourselves permission to grow as we see in Jesus. We also hear how human agency for a friend is the beginning of Jesus’ healing. Listen with an open mind to how these passages speak to you.
September 1, 2024 Finding Our True Religion – Hearing James 1:17-27 and Mark 7:1-23 we hear two perspectives of what authentic faith, authentic religion is meant to be. Religion is simply our practice of how we bind ourselves to God. Pastor Michael reflects deeply on these two passages, reflecting how anger is never a foundation for righteousness and how sin, without a relationship with God, is meaningless. Michael defines sin as the damage our actions cause in relationships. When we want to grow healthier and stronger relationships, when we want to be in relationship with God, then we will begin to practice an authentic faith and religion. Listen as Michael explores the importance of these two passages.
August 18th, 2024 What Would You Ask For? – As King Solomon took over the Kingdom of Israel in Jerusalem from his Father, he has very large shoes to fill. He began his reign making what many considered to be foolish choices, from neglecting the security of Jerusalem, to not building the Temple for God, to taking an Egyptian/foreign bride against the teachings of Moses. Yet Solomon loved God and God commanded Solomon to make a request. Solomon asked for the gift of wisdom to care for his people. What would we have asked for? What are our expectations for God? Pastor Michael preaches this question as we are invited to deepen our faith.
Sunday – August 11 2024. Pastor Michael Rowe shared about his trip to the Philippines. In his message titled, “Seed of Faith” he reflected on the changes seen in our mission partner church in Villaros, Nueva Viscaya. From the start of a shed on the edge of a field to a church packed with life and families growing as disciples, Pastor Michael reflected on Jesus’ parable in the Gospel of Matthew about the Kingdom of Heaven being compared to a mustard seed, the smallest of seeds that grows to the largest of shrubs that provides home and shelter. God can take what the world may see as insignificant acts and gifts, and make miracles that can change the world.
Sunday, July 7th, 2024 – The Grace in Doubt. From Habakkuk crying to God, to Thomas demanding to see and feel Jesus before believing in the resurrection, stories of doubt have always made us uncomfortable, but why? Is it because we mask our own doubt about God? Pastor Michael explores doubt as a real expression of faith and honesty with God. He reminds us that we are in a relationship with a God who is big enough to hold us, even when we cannot hold on to God. He also reminds us that we worship a God who comes back to us to restore us in faith through grace. Listen as we reflect upon growing deeper in love with God.
Sunday – June 23, 2024 – Dreaming God’s Vision – Can we know God’s will for us? Pastor Michael reflects deeply and Biblically on this by taking a journey from our creation stories, from the first man and woman, from God’s covenant with Abram, to the prophet Isaiah, through Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and through Revelation 21’s vision of the coming of God to reside among us. Through surveying the common themes of God’s peace, God’s covenant with us, through Jesus’ teachings, we see that God calls us as partners in creation to live as a blessing to others, to dream toward a Kindom of Divine peace that embraces the marginalized and calls us to be agents of justice and lovers of kindness. Listen as Pastor Michael takes you on a journey.
Sunday, June 16th 2024 – Faith or Fear? – Reflecting on the passage from Numbers where Moses and Aaron send spies to survey Canaan and bring back a report and Luke 7 where Jesus dines at Simon the Pharisees home, we reflect on how fear can keep us from living into God’s vision for us. The Children of Israel allowed fear to keep them from receiving what God promised them and cost them 40 years. Jesus refused to allow fear of what Simon a Pharisee thought to keep him from receiving an act of love from a woman who needed to be set free. People are going to talk, we must resist the temptation to allow fear to stop us. Listen as Pastor Michael challenges us to overcome fear.
June 9, 2024 – Time With God – Too often we think that we have to be alone to experience God and to be in God’s Presence. Michael leads us in reflecting on how we see and encounter God in people as well. By hearing Genesis 18 and Luke 10 passages, we reflect on how Abraham saw God in the three strangers that were passing by. Also we reflect on how Mary attended to God in Jesus while Martha was caught up in the business of hospitality. Matthew 25 reminds us that what we do for the least of these, we are doing for God. Are we too busy in life to spend time with God? This is week 2 in our the Art of Neighboring series.
June 2, 2024 – The Art of Neighboring – Michael introduced a series based from the book, The Art of Neighboring. Michael is challenging the church to look at the 8 neighbors around them as their mission field of getting to know and care for our neighbors. Michael reflected upon Luke 10, the parable of the Good Samaritan, and from Paul’s time in Athens as recorded in Acts 17. As United Methodists, we recognize the presence of God in every human, even those who we may disagree with. As Michael reflects on these two passages, we hear Jesus’s call to prioritize love and mercy over right belief every time.
May 12, 2024- Lessons On Building Up People. Pastor Michael reflects in 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 and Luke 22: 24-32. Paul addresses controversies and complacency over the return of Christ and leaves the Thessalonians with the charge to be about the ministry of building one another up. In Luke 22, Jesus begins to set a standard for what it means to be a disciple and then turns to Peter, in fact calls him out to let him know that he is going to fail, but then prays for him. In this prayer, Jesus reminds Peter that after he fails, always be willing to give the other disciples a fresh start. Listen as Michael reflects on our ministry of building others up and not tearing each other down.
Sunday – May 5th – “Let’s Talk About Faith” Faith begins with a relationship. A relationship with God, as taught by Jesus, is to know God as a Father. Spiritual Disciplines are the practices in which we grow in faith. If a practice is not helping you grow, stop doing it. Michael reflects on the different Spiritual Disciples that have been used by Christians to grow in faith. He looked at the faith of Daniel who went to his knees in prayer, knowing that he would be thrown into the lion’s den, We looked at the faith of Stephen, who could look to heaven in prayer as stones destroyed his body. We looked at the example of Jesus who roots his ministry deep in prayer. Watch and listen as we reflect on the foundations of out faith.
The Soil of Community – April 21, 2024 – The third message in the series, “Rooted in Love”, Michael reflects on Paul’s metaphor of the Church as the Body of Christ. Every part is important and we are incomplete without each person. In Jesus’ farewell words before he goes to the cross, he give his disciples a new commandment, to love one another. We disciples of Jesus who practice our faith in the Wesleyan tradition of the United Methodist Church, believe in the power of what we understand as prevenient grace. This is the sacrificial love that we experience from others. Listen as Michael teaches and reflects on the importance of sacrifice as the greatest act of love and leadership.
On Being Shaped B Living Water – April 14th, 2024 Pastor Michael Rowe preached from John 4, Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan women at the well. Jesus came with purpose to this time and place to meet this woman, it was not an accident, it was not chance, Jesus came to see her, and offer her Living Water. Jesus came and brought the gift of reconciliation. In a day of division in the world. we are called to be transformed by God and to join in the work of transforming the world. This message explores the work of our discipleship of reconciliation. We are called to help the world fall in love with God as we continue to fall in love with God.
Sunday, April 7th – The Reality of Resurrection – The First Message in a sermon series titled, “Rooted In Love,” Pastor Rowe preaches on John 20:19-31, Jesus’ evening appearance to his followers on that first night of resurrection. Even after the morning witness of the empty tomb and Mary’s account of talking with the resurrected Jesus, Jesus finds them hiding in fear behind locked doors. He shows them the marks on the crucifixion then tells them that he is sending them out as the Father sent him. Jesus breathes into them the Holy Spirit and tells them to go and forgive, to set people free. Listen as we hearJesus tell us how to live even in the hardships of dark times.
Easter Sunday Sunrise Service at Rita Blanca Lake Pavilion, March 31, 2024
The Resurrection Is About Us – Pastor Rowe read John 20:1-18. The message reflects upon Mary Magdelene, on Peter, on the other disciples who were trying to figure out what happened that first Easter. For Mary it was Jesus calling her by name and she knew, Jesus came back for Peter after Peter denied Jesus. Easter is about us, how Christ still comes back for us in the mess of our lives and meets us with love and grace.
Sunday, March 24, 2024, Palm Sunday. Pastor Rowe reflects on the differences that the different Gospel accounts reflect as to how the events begin to unfold as Jesus approached the first Holy Week. A question raised is did Jesus have the whole week pre-figured out or was there things unpredicted until they occurred? Can we witness the week with new eyes, not predicting where the week is taking us but can we bear witness as acts of love are expressed through each stage of the week? Can we live with uncertainty and accept the mystery of Holy Week as it unfolds?
Sunday, March 10, 2024
Pastor Michael wrapped up the 6th session on the Foundations of Our Faith, a six week series with questions following reflecting on what it means to live as the Body of Christ in the world. This weeks sermon is on the Foundation of Prayer. Pastor Michael takes the mystery our of prayer and reflected on simply, how we talk to God and listen to God in our lives.