Community Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) Jefferson City, Missouri

09/13/2026

9/13/2026

09/09/2026

Friends, we look forward to seeing you this Sunday, September 13, 2026, for worship at 9:30 a.m., fellowship immediately following worship, and Sunday School beginning at 11:00 a.m. This week our Scriptures are Genesis 18:1 - 8 and Romans 14:1 - 12. The message is entitled, "Pursue Hospitality." Come join us as we explore the meaning of Christian Hospitality and how it can impact on the world in which we live today.

09/08/2026

09/06/2026

9/6/26

09/03/2026

Friends,
We look forward to seeing you this Sunday, September 6, 2026, for worship at 9:30 a.m. Our Scriptures for this Sunday are Psalm 119:33 - 40 and Matthew 18:15 - 20. The message is entitled "Repentance and Reconciliation." Come join us for worship, fellowship and Sunday School. We have a spot reserved just for you.

09/01/2026

Richard Rohr's meditation for today.

The Cross of Self-Sufficiency

Tuesday, September 1, 2026
READ ON CAC.ORG


In a homily on Matthew 16, public theologian Nadia Bolz-Weber highlights how Jesus’s teaching on “carrying your cross” was not intended to increase the suffering of those on the margins:
In our Gospel text for today, Jesus says that those who wish to follow him must deny themselves, and take up their cross, and those who wish to save their life must lose it.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but these are just the kinds of messages that would never make Jesus an influencer today. He’d never get more than twelve followers these days with that kind of branding….
Maybe like you, I struggle with how this denying ourselves thing is good news. And not just because of how that verse about picking up your cross has been perverted into messages like deny your Queerness, pick up your cross of heterosexuality and follow him. Or deny your dignity and pick up your cross of continued domestic abuse and follow him.
Bolz-Weber understands the cross as that which keeps us from relying on God and one another:
Recently I’ve been wondering: if, when Jesus says deny yourself and follow me, that maybe it’s not about ensuring his followers are doormats. Maybe he’s inviting us to deny the part of us that wants to see itself as separate from God and others.
Deny the self that believes that spirituality should be a suffering avoidance program.
Deny the self that always creates a list of demands.
Deny the self that is so turned in on itself that it cannot see much of anything beyond itself.
Deny the self that says really horrible things to you about you.
Deny the self that pretends you never need help….
Because in the end, one aspect of the whole death and resurrection thing that Jesus promised us, is the death of the false self.
But the death of the false self doesn’t feel good. In fact, Richard Rohr once wrote that “holiness never feels like holiness, it just feels like you’re dying.”…
But no matter how painful, when the unhealthy ideas and habits and identities we rely on are taken away from us, it just makes space for that which is actually real and actually holy….
We offer no me-based solutions here. Then you know what we have to offer instead? Divine foolishness. The kind that says that if you want to save your life you must lose it and if you lose your life you will find it….
The cross is foolishness to those whose own solutions are still working for them, but to the weak and the cynical and the socially awkward and the exhausted … to the divorced and the unemployed and the alcoholics … in other words, to all who are in need of help and rest, Christ crucified (the foolishness of God) is life in a way that our own solutions can never be—in a way that more status, and more degrees and more financial security can never be.

08/31/2026

Just a little Monday afternoon music. Serve The Lord.

Pre-save the album “Here Comes The Church”: https://Tauren.lnk.to/H...

08/25/2026

Richard Rohr's meditation for today.

Releasing Our False Self

Tuesday, August 25, 2026
READ ON CAC.ORG


Richard Rohr appreciates the purpose the false or egoic self serves, while encouraging us not over-identify with it.
Our false self is not our bad self, our inherently deceitful self, the self that God does not like or we should not like. Actually, our false self is quite good and necessary as far as it goes. It just does not go far enough, and it often poses and substitutes for the real thing. That is its only problem, and that is why we call it “false.” Various false selves (temporary costumes) are necessary to get us all started, but they show their limitations when they stay around too long. If a person keeps growing, their various false selves usually die in exposure to greater light.
Our false self, which we might also call our small or separate self, is our launching pad: our body image, our job, our education, our clothes, our money, our success, and so on. These are the functional trappings of ego that we all use to get us through an ordinary day. However, they are largely projections of our self-image and our attachment to it.
When we are able to move beyond our false self—as we are invited to do over the course of our lives—it will feel precisely as if we have lost nothing. While this “moving beyond” almost always entails some suffering, it ultimately feels like freedom and liberation. When we are connected to the Whole, it lessens our need to protect or defend the mere parts. We no longer need to compare and compete. We are now connected to something inexhaustible.
To not let go of our false self at the right time and in the right way is precisely what it means to be stuck, trapped, and addicted to our self. (The traditional word for that was sin, the result of being separate from the Whole.) Discovering the true self is not just a matter of chronological age. Some spiritually precocious young people see through the false self rather early, while some old men and old women are still dressing it up. If all we have at the end of our life is our separate or false self, there will not be much to eternalize. These costumes are transitory and impermanent, useful to us in our development, but also largely created by the mental ego. The false self is what changes, passes, and dies when we die. Only our true self lives forever.
Before we have encountered our true self, our false self is who we think we are. But our thinking does not make it true. The false self is primarily a social construct to get us started on life’s journey. It is a set of agreements made during childhood with our parents, family, neighbors, school friends, partner or spouse, and religion. Jesus might call it an “old w**eskin,” which he points out cannot hold any new w**e (Mark 2:22).

08/24/2026

Richard Rohr's meditation for today.

Recognizing Our True Self

Monday, August 24, 2026
READ ON CAC.ORG


Father Richard describes the characteristics and purposes of the true self in greater depth:
Searching for and rediscovering the true self is the fundamentum, the essential task that will gradually open us to receiving love from and giving love to God, others, and ourselves. We are created in the image of God from the very beginning (Genesis 1:26–27).
You and I (and every other created thing) begin with a unique divine DNA, an inner destiny as it were, an absolute core that knows the truth about our being. This true believer is tucked away in the cellar of our being, an imago Dei that begs to be allowed, to be fulfilled, and to show itself. “You were chosen in Christ before the world was made—to stand before God in love—marked out beforehand as fully adopted sons and daughters” (see Ephesians 1:4–5). This is the true self. Historically, it was often called “the soul.”
Jesus revealed and accepted a paradox in his entire being: Human and divine are not separate, but one! His life shouted it. I wonder why we so resist our same destiny. For most of us, this seems just too good and too dangerous to be true. There is so much contrary evidence! Many clergy fight me on this, even though it is quite constant in the Tradition. Is it because we are afraid to bear the burden of divinity? As Marianne Williamson says: “Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” [1] Maybe we realize subconsciously that if we really believed that we are temples of God (see 1 Corinthians 3:16, 6:19; 2 Corinthians 6:16), then we would have to live up to it.
The true self is the Divine Indwelling, the Holy Spirit within us. I would say that the true self is precisely the divine part of us that is great enough, deep enough, gracious enough to fully accept the human part of us. If we are merely human, we will tend to reject our embarrassingly limited humanity. Think on that!
Paradoxically, immense humility, not arrogance, characterizes someone who lives from their true self. They simultaneously know they are a child of God, but they also know that they didn’t earn it and are not worthy of it. They know it’s entirely a gift (see Ephesians 2:8–9 and throughout the Pauline writings). All they can do is thank Somebody Else, occasionally weep with joy, and kneel without any hesitation.
The true purpose of mature religion is to lead us to ever new experiences of our true self. If religion does not do this, it is junk religion. Every sacrament, every Bible story, every church service, every sermon, every hymn, every bit of priesthood, ministry, or liturgy is for one purpose: to allow us to experience our true self—who we are in God and who God is in us—and to live a generous life from that Infinite Source.

Send a message to learn more

08/23/2026

Who Do YOU Say That I Am