Out of Egypt: Introduction
Ann Arbor Community Church Sermon Podcast
Out of Egypt: Introduction - Rev. Donnell T. Wyche - . Watch our livestream Sundays @ 11:00am - Summary: This sermon opens the fall series Out of Egypt, in which we read Exodus alongside Acts. Exodus is the story of God freeing a people from empire and teaching them to trust; Acts is the story of that same God pouring out the Spirit and forming a new family that crosses every border. Why tell the story of a people held in captivity? Because getting out of Egypt is one thing; getting Egypt out of you is the work of a lifetime. Pharaoh, who is never named in the story, represents...
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Waking Up: Our Vision
Ann Arbor Community Church Sermon Podcast
Waking Up: Our Vision - Pastor Hannah Witte - . Watch our livestream Sundays @ 11:00am - Summary: What happens when we move through life—or even our faith—on autopilot? What does it cost us? Others? In Ephesians, we’re invited to wake up to God’s presence and the beautiful vision God has been unfolding for centuries: a people being transformed by Jesus, learning to belong to one another across differences, and living with freedom, joy, and boundless generosity. Pastor Hannah explores how we can move from simply going through the motions to becoming more awake to what God...
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Prodigal: The Merciful Father
Ann Arbor Community Church Sermon Podcast
Prodigal: The Merciful Father - Pastor Donnell T. Wyche - . Watch our livestream Sundays @ 11:00am - Summary: After three weeks with the younger son and the older son, this sermon turns to the one character in the parable who never gets a name: the Father. The sons are the mirrors; the Father is the point. Jesus tells this story, along with the lost sheep and the lost coin, in answer to the Pharisees’ complaint that he welcomes sinners. They say exclude the lost; Jesus reveals a Father whose heart is a picture of pursuit, with a party thrown at the end. And if “prodigal”...
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Prodigal: The Older Son
Ann Arbor Community Church Sermon Podcast
Prodigal: The Older Son - Pastor Hannah White - . Watch our livestream Sundays @ 11:00am - Summary: In the second week of our Prodigal series, we step into the story from the perspective of the older son. While the younger son’s rebellion is loud and obvious, the older son’s lostness is quieter—comparison, jealousy, entitlement, and a transactional relationship with his father. Jesus reveals that both sons have misunderstood their father's nature, and both are invited home by a father whose love cannot be earned. The father’s words to the older son—“My son, you are...
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Prodigal: The Younger Son
Ann Arbor Community Church Sermon Podcast
Prodigal: The Younger Son - Martha Balmer - . Watch our livestream Sundays @ 11:00am - Summary: Martha Balmer kicks off our three part series sitting in the story of the Prodigal Son, focusing on the experience of the youngest son. Martha brilliantly highlights how the greater the distance one is from God, the more profound the experience of God’s mercy, love, and grace upon return—and consequently the greater one's security in that love, not to mention the greater the love, gratefulness, joy that wells up for God. When entitlement has no place in our hearts, then everything...
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Psalms: Psalm 42 - Gasping
Ann Arbor Community Church Sermon Podcast
Psalms: Psalm 42 - Gasping - Pastor Donnell Wyche - . Watch our livestream Sundays @ 11:00am - Summary: Have you ever been thirsty in a way that water couldn’t fix? Psalm 42 opens with a deer gasping for streams of water and a poet honest enough to admit that their whole self, not just the polished Sunday version, is running dry. In this sermon, Rev. Donnell Wyche explores one of Scripture’s most honest prayers: a lament that moves between despair and hope without pretending either one away. Along the way, we encounter two Hebrew words that deepen our understanding of this...
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Psalms: Psalm 117
Ann Arbor Community Church Sermon Podcast
Psalms: Psalm 117 - Pastor Hannah Witte - . Watch our livestream Sundays @ 11:00am - Summary: Psalm 117 is the shortest psalm in the Bible, yet it carries truth that could transform the way we live. In a world that trains us to hurry, scroll, and stay distracted, Pastor Hannah explores how slowing down before God opens us to the unfailing love and enduring faithfulness that have always been available to us. Through Scripture, honest stories, and moments of quiet, Pastor Hannah invites us to discover that praise isn't something we manufacture—it becomes the natural response to...
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Psalms: Psalm 10
Ann Arbor Community Church Sermon Podcast
Psalms: Psalm 10 - Jonathan Hurshman - . Watch our livestream Sundays @ 11:00am - Summary: In this series, we are inviting the Psalms to speak a prophetic word to us. This week, after witnessing two more murders at the hands of ICE, we sit with Psalm 10, a very honest psalm of lament that calls on God to move in the face of injustice. Jonathan preaches that Psalm 10 instructs us to pray with honesty, to pray for God's action, and to pray banking on hope in God's character. He reminds us that this Psalm is not juxtaposing the good and evil, but rather the oppressor and the...
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Migrant Journeys: Mary, Joseph and Jesus
Ann Arbor Community Church Sermon Podcast
Migrant Journeys: Mary, Joseph and Jesus - Pastor Hannah Witte - . Watch our livestream Sundays @ 11:00am - Summary: Pastor Hannah concludes our Migrant Journeys series by inviting us to sit with Jesus' story of fleeing to another country due to violence and hatred. Christ was a refugee. Through Matthew 2, we follow Mary, Joseph, and Jesus as they flee Herod's threats of violence, placing their story alongside the stories of migrants today. Together, they reveal a Savior who doesn't remain distant from suffering but enters into it himself. If Jesus identifies with the stranger, how...
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Migrant Journeys: The Syrophoenician Woman
Ann Arbor Community Church Sermon Podcast
Migrant Journeys: The Syrophoenician Woman - Pastor Donnell T. Wyche - . Watch our livestream Sundays @ 11:00am - Summary: This sermon continues the Migrant Journeys series by examining Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoenician woman in Mark 7:24–30 and Matthew 15:21–28. Unlike the previous stories in the series, the movement is reversed: Jesus is the one who crosses into Gentile territory, becoming the stranger, while the woman is at home in her own land. Yet despite being on her own soil, she must cross ethnic, religious, political, and gender barriers simply to stand before...
info_outlineThe Wilderness Between - Isaiah 43:16-21 - Pastor Donnell T. Wyche - a2cc.org. Watch our livestream Sundays @ 11:00am - vimeo.com/annarborcommunitychurch
Pastor Donnell reflects on the church’s journey through a six-week vision series by naming the season the congregation now inhabits: a wilderness. Rooted in Isaiah 43:16–21, the sermon draws together the threads of the series, from the Magi’s attentive faith at Epiphany, through centered-set belonging, life across real difference, and freedom. Rather than rushing toward resolution, the message pauses to name the in-between, the space where the old has ended but the new has not yet fully arrived, and where God is still actively at work.
Using a three-phase framework for how real change unfolds, endings, the wilderness, and new beginnings, the sermon situates the church honestly in the middle of transition. Through Moses’ long formation in the wilderness and Isaiah’s word to a people in exile, Pastor Donnell emphasizes that God’s presence is not delayed until clarity emerges. God is not waiting for stability before acting. “I am making a way in the wilderness” is spoken as a present reality, inviting the congregation to pay attention to what is already springing up.
As the church prepares to enter Lent, the sermon offers an invitation to deeper belonging. Membership is framed not as an institutional obligation, but as a shared commitment to walk the wilderness together. The message concludes at the communion table with an invitation to come with open hands, carrying endings, holding uncertainty, and trusting that the God who sets the table is the same God who makes a way in the wasteland.