What if the parts of your story you'd rather skip past are the exact parts God intends to use? In week two of Preparing for the Kingdom, Matt makes the case that empathy isn't something you import from somewhere else — it's something you learn by going back and telling the truth about your own life. Along the way: Brit Barron having a panic attack in a voting booth, a friend's Pacific Islander tattoos, the psychology of splitting and integration, and Paul writing to a church where two groups genuinely couldn't stand each other. The claim underneath all of it is that Jesus prefers to dwell in diversity — and that we are only ever made alive together. Join us Sundays at Dwell Church of the Peninsula.
What if diversity isn't a program the church runs, but a capacity the church builds? This week we opened "Preparing for the Kingdom" with a conversation between Matt and leadership team member Eunice Nichols about the harm of flattening a person into one dimension — and the slow, graceful work of learning to hold difference without losing each other. Eunice tells two stories twenty years apart, and the second one is the hard one. If Jesus' kingdom is diverse from day one, then belonging is something we practice now. Join us Sundays — and the three-week small group experience starts this week.
Can you actually know God without knowing yourself? In week three of our Rhythms series, Pastor Brian makes the case that emotional health isn't a side quest to spiritual maturity — it's the road in. He traces his own way out of a rugged-individualist masculinity that left no room for friendship or feeling, then walks through the false self Jesus refused to build: I am what I do, I am what I have, I am what others think of me. Along the way there's Thomas Merton on hollowness, a three-word prayer, and four rhythms — silence, trusted companions, discomfort, and courage — that open up what he calls the spacious place. Join us Sundays at George Hall.
Most of us are trying to build an identity — assembling it out of labels, achievements, and the verdicts other people hand us. Guest preacher Nicole Unice suggests we have the direction backwards: a secure identity isn't something we construct, it's something we receive. Working through Psalm 139 and a story about a master potter's apprentice who throws the same small cup 300 times before he's allowed to move on, she makes the case that acceptance is a practice, not an achievement — and that being good at following Jesus was never the point. Part of our series Rhythms, where we're asking what spiritual rhythm Jesus might have for this particular season of our lives. Join us Sunday evenings on the Peninsula.
What if you slowly become whatever you give your heart to? In week one of "You Become What You Love," Matt makes the surprising case that the weirdest book in the Bible — Leviticus, smoked-meat sacrifices and all — is really a manual for reprogramming a people to love their neighbor. Drawing on N.T. Wright, James K.A. Smith, Rob Bell, and a David Foster Wallace commencement speech, he argues there's no neutral setting: we're all worshiping something, and it's quietly shaping who we're becoming. It's funny, a little uncomfortable, and lands on a vision of church as an instrument to love the world rather than a monument to itself. New here or just passing through — come as you are and take a step closer to Jesus with us.
What if the most important thing about you isn't what you believe or even what you do — but what you love? In week two of You Become What You Love, Matt digs into the strangest book in the Bible, Leviticus, and finds a surprising blueprint for reordering a whole society around justice, equity, and love of neighbor. Along the way: Arthur Brooks on why we're wired to love things and use people (and how to flip it), Augustine overthinking his own heart in the fourth century, and the brave, uncomfortable prayer of Psalm 139 — "Search me, God, and know my heart." An honest, occasionally hilarious look at how our loves get out of order, and what it takes to set them right. Join us Sundays on the Peninsula.
What if the thing that shapes you most isn't what you believe, or even how you behave — but what you love? In week three of You Become What You Love, Matt moves from the strange, beautiful equity of Leviticus — Jubilee, welcoming the foreigner, everyone equally near to God — into his own complicated story: growing up in a church that wounded him, and still feeling called to build one anyway. It's a message about orthocardia (right love), the quiet idolatry of confusing our church with Jesus, and what it takes to build a church that's good all the way down — empathy, grace, people-first, truth, justice, service, and Christ-likeness. Honest, funny, and a little tender. Join us Sundays on the Peninsula.
Why can't we see God? Scripture's answer isn't "because he doesn't exist" — it's "because we'd die." In week five of Taste and See, Matt follows the sense of sight into the Bible's surprising third-most-mentioned theme — trees — to ask what it means that we were made to see God, and that learning to see him is the slow work of a lifetime. From the burning bush to a blind man who saw "people like trees walking around," this is a message about a God-bathed world and the eyes to notice it. Join us Sundays on the Peninsula.
We've quietly become a world that's lost touch with touch — consensual, non-sexual, life-giving human contact is now something most of us get in fewer than five places in our whole lives. In week four of Taste and See, our series on a theology of the body, Matt turns to the sense of touch: what 154 studies, the healing stories of Jesus, and an 89-year-old Buddhist teacher all reveal about why our bodies were made to be held. If trauma lives in the body, so does healing — and Jesus, again and again, chooses to reach out his hand. The message doesn't end with a point; it ends with a practice — a whole room turning to greet, and maybe even hug, a stranger. Join us Sundays on the Peninsula.
What if your body isn't a problem to fix but a gift to receive? In this message from our series "Taste and See: Loving God with All Five of Your Senses," Matt turns to the strangest sense of all — smell — and finds it everywhere in Scripture: a God with a "long nose" of patience, a whole barbecue's worth of sacrifice rising as "an aroma pleasing to the Lord," and our most honest prayers gathered like incense into golden bowls at the center of the universe. By way of Pema Chödrön, Ezra Klein, and the science of the nervous system, we sit with a harder truth — that understanding our pain won't heal it, but learning to feel it, with tenderness, just might. The good news underneath it all: God accepts you, your relationship can be repaired, and even a prayer as raw as "I've never believed in you" smells good to him. Join us Sundays on the Peninsula.
What if the wisdom your mind can't access is sitting in your body — waiting? Week one of Taste and See: Loving God With All Five Senses opens the awkward, holy work of healing our relationship to our own bodies. Matt walks through the philosophical machine that taught us to mistrust the flesh, why Jesus might live in your heart while grandpa lives in your bones, and what it means to befriend the part of ourselves we've been trying to silence. We land at the table — bread, wine, taste, see. Join us Sundays in San Mateo, or next week at Beresford Park for Dwell in the Park.
