Posts by Brent Clark
Miss a Little, Miss a Lot
Have you ever been given a task to plan or a project to oversee only to have your best-laid plans go horribly awry? I have. Before I was a pastor, I was in bank operations. I remember a time when I spent months researching and preparing to implement a new system for the bank. After doing everything I thought possible to prepare for the change, everything that could possible go wrong, did go wrong. It took almost twelve months to…
Unity in a Nation of Disunity
As I was reading though my journal this morning, reflecting on yesterday’s message calling us to unity, I ran across my entry from November 9, 2016, the day after the election. While the election may be over, the divisiveness and division is not. I share this now because it seems as appropriate today as it did 9 months ago when I originally wrote it. The Day After an Election November 9, 2016 Congratulations, America. You’ve survived another election. But are…
Why Did I Give Up On God?
Everywhere you look today it seems we are met with more and more reports of churches in decline, people walking away from faith, and people giving up on God. Why this is happening? Unless we are willing to ask what I think can be some very real, but very difficult questions, we will never understand. Does God even deserve a second chance?Would God give me second chance? What would life be like if no one gave God a second chance…
Community Impact – Kid Cafe
Check out this great video highlighting one of our events from summer 2016 called Kid Cafe.
All In: A Waste of Talent
Introduction Happy Birthday, Ashworth Road! It was in this month 45 years ago, November 1971, that 43 people came together for the very first worship services of a brand new church with a desire to reach this growing community of West Des Moines. As we approach this Thanksgiving season and celebrate our 45th birthday as a church, we have a lot to be thankful for: the baptisms this morning, another year of service and missions to our community and around…
All In: Sacrifice
Introduction We are in a series called “All In — Taking Risks, Trusting God, Kingdom Impact.” Every week we are looking at a different aspect of faith and asking the question, “Am I all in?” The first week, Pastor Amy challenged us to look at our priorities: how we live, how we spend our time and our money. Does what we give prominence to reveal the priority of God in our lives? Last week, Pastor Stephen did an incredible and…
What’s the Point of Church
Introduction What do you think comes to mind when most people hear the word church? Your friends, neighbors, coworkers… when they hear the word church, what do you think comes to their mind? What comes to mind when YOU hear the word church? You may wonder why we would ask these questions. Well, we’ve been a series where over the last 3 weeks we have been trying to ask and answer the question, “What’s the point?” This is a question that can wreak havoc in…
What’s the Point of Jesus’ Death
Introduction Last week we began a new series called, “What’s the Point?” The series is built around the idea that if we don’t understand the reason behind something or if we can’t see the value in something, then we are likely to dismiss it. I used the example of Algebra class. Most of us sat in that class learning how to solve quadratic equations, the entire time wondering, “When will I ever use this?” The overarching question we were asking…
What’s the Point of Jesus’ Life?
Series Introduction Are you a pragmatic person? Practical? I say this about myself often. And the curse of being a very practical person is that when I am confronted with something that appears to be a waste of time or pointless, I find it very difficult to muster the motivation to do it or follow through with it. Not long ago, I took a class on global missions. It was for graduate level credit, so it was important that I do well,…
Get Fit Remix: Perseverance
Introduction Today and next week we are doing a very quick series we like to call Remix. Remix is where we look back at some sermon series we’ve done before and see if there was something we felt like we needed to talk about again, a topic we wanted to cover but didn’t get worked into the schedule, or because we thought the topic was of such importance, we just felt like it was good to bring up as a…
Summer School: Anger
Introduction This summer we have been taking a look at what many would think is the fortune cookie of the Bible. The book that doles out nice tidbits of helpful advice on how to live. But as we have looked at the book of Proverbs, I hope that most of us have seen that even though on the surface it appears that the statements help us know how to live, more importantly, they are concerned about who we are as…
Something Worth Giving Everything For
Introduction As we approach the end of July, we approach the end of another ministry year. And this has been a great year. It seems very evident to me that God has been leading us as a church, and God has been blessing our efforts over the last year. It’s not that he owes us because we are something special, but because our desire has been to find where he is working and join him there and to glorify His…