St Joan of Arc, a young woman with no military training, believed she had been chosen by God to lead France to military victory in its long-running war with England in the 1400's. She convinced the embattled crown prince Charles of Valois to allow her to lead a French army to the besieged city of Orlans, where it achieved a momentous victory over the English and their Fre...

Remember in 2004 the movie that came out called "The Passion of the Christ" and how we all acted like weknew full well what the word "Passion" meant in that context? Whatdoesit mean in thatcontext? What was thePassionof the Christ?When we hear about 'passion'we think of feeling strongly about something, i.e. "I have a passion for sports, my wife, andcupcakes" (not necessa...

Periodically, members of our elder board will be writing these weekly emails to minister to the congregation. Enjoy this post from Steve Hannah. WHERE IS THE JOY IN OUR LIVES? They say that moneycan't buy happiness.Yeah, sure.Like we believe that, right?Maybe money can't buy happiness, but it can sure buy the things that bring happiness, can't it?Certainly, the w...

"Oh good...a fundraising email." Nope. Not even close. So often, the spiritual discipline of giving isfundraising disguised as Spiritual Formation. I approach the budget of Rockland from a Spiritual Formation perspective and let others way more gifted than I am crunch numbers. I want to help us all be shaped to be more Christlike through how we handle our money. I don't l...

We grow in Christ when we Worship, Connect, Serve and Give. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. I Cor. 12:7 The Greek word for "common Good" (above) is 'sym-phero', where get our word 'symphony'. The idea being that you can have several people playing instrument solos, but when they all play together, it is even more beautiful. Th...

Spiritual growth happens when we worship, connect, serve and give. When it comes to 'connecting', unfortunately, we have today what I call 'cotton candy' relationships. These are relationships that are just connected enough to make you feel full, but not enough to be healthy. Our relationships need to be deep, biblical connections where we are vulne...

We just had a GREAT Come and Consider class last weekend, and you will be so excited to meet the dozen or so people that will be joining Rockland over the next month! I remember another Come and Consider classwe had about yearand a half ago, and a question came up that I (embarrassingly) couldn't answer very well. The question was: "What do members of Rockland do...

Have you ever read the gospels in chronological order?This website has an example of a reading plan you could follow, but there are many more on the web. Why is this a good idea? In "Four Portraits, One Jesus: A Survey of Jesus and the Gospels", Mark Strauss says: "To Christian believers, the Gospels record the "greatest story ever told," the events of the life, d...

Beencouraged by this email from Lauren Miller, our new (awesome) student ministry associate at Rockland! One truthI have learned in my lifeis that it iscrucialto understand who Jesus is and why He came to Earth. Followers of Christ recognize that Jesus was the perfect example and teacher of how to live our lives during our time here on Earth.But if Christ is called "perfe...

How are your New Years Resolution coming? Are you like me in that you areclaiming the grace of God a littleearly thisyear? Two of the reason why our resolutions and goalsfail is that they are:1) unspecific in their desired outcomes,and2) unclear in their next steps. For example: "I'd like to lose some (unspecific) weight(unclear how to do that)." Here is a better way of...