the Cross Orlando

Guest speaker Blake Wright of Resurrection Church in Sanford closes the network values series with 'sincere,' contrasting the Pharisees' flattery in Matthew 22 with Jesus' call to love God and neighbor, a sincerity he lived out through every healing and conversation. Drawing on 1 Timothy 1:5 and the early church in Acts 2:42-47, he describes a sincere church as one that loves one another, serves because people matter to Jesus, and knows it belongs to Christ.

Ben works through Ephesians 2-4 to unpack 'focused,' the third of the network's four core values, following Paul's stacked argument that God moves first toward people while they are still dead in their sins, grafts them together into a dwelling place for God, and prays they would grasp a love that surpasses knowledge. That encounter with the gospel, rather than moral effort, is what propels a church out to live truthful, generous, forgiving lives.

Guest speaker Russ Peterson continues the network values series with 'collaborative,' tracing the word to the Latin for working together and finding the pattern in Acts, where the temple-observant Jerusalem church and the multicultural Antioch church strengthen each other in both directions — Barnabas sent north, famine relief sent back. The Jerusalem Council then models how collaboration survives disagreement: much debate, then silence and listening, and finally shared ground rules the Spirit worked out among them.

Opening a four-week series on the multi-site network's core values, this message takes up 'adventurous' through Hebrews 11 — the Hall of Faith, where at least half the examples are people who died without receiving what they were promised. Faith persists because the God of Abraham is broader and deeper than the grave, as the cross and resurrection show, and that conviction frees a church to take risks in loving its neighbors.

A guest speaker works through Isaiah 5's song of the vineyard: God created, cultivated, and protected Israel as a vineyard meant to bear good fruit, yet it yielded rotten fruit — he looked for justice but saw bloodshed, for righteousness but heard cries of distress. Drawing on Micah 6:8 and John 15, it frames righteousness as right relationship with God that flows outward into justice, and Jesus as the true vine we are grafted into.

Opening a series on the church shared with two sister congregations in Lake Mary and Sanford, this message works through Paul's body analogy in 1 Corinthians 12:12-20, teaching that the church is a cohesive unit of distinct members with reciprocal need: you both belong and are needed.

Closing out the series in 2 Peter, this message works through chapter 3 and its answer to the scoffers who ask where the promise of Christ's coming has gone: God's delay is patience, not forgetfulness. Drawing on Isaiah 40-43 and Romans 2:4, it calls the church to wait for the new heavens and new earth with diligent, peaceful lives and hearts of repentance.

Continuing through Peter's second letter, chapter 2 catalogs the moments God has separated people out — the angels, Noah's generation, Sodom and Gomorrah — and warns of false prophets who play on our passions and promise a freedom that turns out to be bondage. The hinge is verse 9: the Lord knows how to rescue, and the freedom Christ calls us into is liberation rather than rule-keeping.

Opening a three-week look at Peter's second letter, this message walks through chapter 1: God's divine power has already granted everything needed for life and godliness through the knowledge of Christ. Peter's list of virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, and brotherly affection is not a to-do list but a set of dummy lights signaling where we have forgotten what is already true.

The final message in the series on vocation looks at civic and neighborhood calling through the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25), urging us to get in the game with the gifts and resources God has entrusted to us, followed by a conversation with Paul about his work in commercial real estate and his involvement with the Coalition for the Homeless.

Continuing the series on vocation, this message turns to the second arena—church—working through 1 Peter 2, where Peter urges believers to put away malice and slander and be built together as living stones into a spiritual house, a sanctuary founded on Christ the cornerstone, justice, and righteousness. It closes with a conversation with Brandi-Michelle Rhodes on belonging and what members of a church owe one another.

Continuing our series on vocation, we turn to Luke 3 — where John the Baptist tells the crowds, tax collectors, and soldiers to do their everyday jobs justly rather than abandon them — and see how working fairly and well honors the image of God in the people our work touches. Ben is then joined by urban planner Eliza, who shares how her faith shapes the way she designs more walkable, neighborly communities.