Pantano fall classes are open for enrollment now!
Beginning on August 29th, we are offering a variety of classes available to take digitally via Zoom. Our classes cover topics such as finances, marriage, parenting, and more! Take a look…
Bible
- Thursday Morning Women’s Bible Study (6 different classes)
- Bible Basics
- Certificate of Bible Mastery
Marriage and Parenting
- Embracing Marriage Together
- Smart Stepfamily
- Prepare and Enrich
- Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts
- Parenting the Love and Logic Way
Personal Growth and Development
- Coping with Anger
- SHAPE
- Discover Pantano
- Financial Peace University
- Certificate of Bible Leadership
You can find the full list of classes with detailed descriptions and enroll by visiting www.pantano.church/classes. If you have any questions about our classes or how to enroll, please contact Liz Kim at lkim@pantano.church.
Glen Elliott
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Every week the opportunity is given to Pastors to prepare sermons. For Pantano, this process begins many months in advance. As Pastor Glen has shared before, sermon topics and basic outlines are typically planned a full year out. As the week approaches for a specific message, the writing process gets more focused. Months of praying about a message, researching, and planning always create more information than anyone could communicate effectively in thirty minutes. As a result, each week, we do not have the time to say every single thing we wanted to express in our time frame. As I prepared my message on “Can we trust the Bible?” a similar process happened. I’m excited to be able to continue the conversation from my message to this blog post!
Trusting the Bible goes beyond just knowing the history behind our scriptures is accurate and reliable. While I believe it is essential to understand the accuracy of God’s word, we live in the heart implications of relating to the Bible. When the Bible speaks on _______, how does that affect me? What does it do to my actions, past/future decisions, and so forth? These questions are tough, and they don’t always have an easy answer. As a result, serious questions can affect our trust in the Bible and our desire to apply it to our lives.
How do we handle questions like:
- Is the God of the Old Testament the same God of the New Testament?
- If Jesus doesn’t mention a topic in the New Testament, is it ok to assume that it’s no longer an issue?
- What commands are cultural, and what are intended for all generations?
These are great questions, and I would encourage you to lean into them and their implications. Some might be tempted to say, “I’ll just trust God and leave that to someone else.” While that approach removes the temporary discomfort of hard questions and situations, it leaves the underlying issue and ultimately creates trust issues. For us to have the best relationship with God, our trust of him and his words need to be the healthiest possible. Below are some suggestions for you to dig into these questions and strengthen your confidence. One final note: I believe that growth is mostly painful, but it is incredible. Even though your questions might cause discomfort and create even more questions, know that you are not alone. God’s promise to never leave or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5) is still true.
Next Steps
- The book I referenced during my message (you can watch it here) that addresses particular issues in scripture can be found here. It’s called “A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament.” We don’t hide or fear hard questions about the Bible’s accuracy. If you want to read it, you can click on the link and purchase a copy. (Click here to see the book)
- BibleStudyTools.com– This is a great resource that has specific resources for reading and understanding the Bible.
- Our Online Campus (Pantano.Online) has an Online Life Group dedicated to asking questions about the Bible in a desire to understand better. An Online Life Group is an excellent option if you’d like to journey with someone (Which I recommend). You can learn more by clicking here.
- If you have a question and would like to talk to a pastor, you can call our office and ask to schedule a time with our pastor on-call. We have a pastor or elder available 24/7. You can call 520-298-5395.
I want to encourage you to dig into the tough parts of our faith in Jesus. It’s ok to ask questions, but we’ll never know if the Bible is accurate, relevant, or trustworthy until we engage it for ourselves. I believe that God is excited to journey with you as you ask questions, seek the truth, and knock on the door to greater faith.
On the journey with you,
Pastor Nick Farr
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Every person, every organization and every church has values. Sometimes we are not aware of them and often they are not clearly articulated, but they drive how we live and shape who we are. Values are the foundational motivations for what we do. They provide our inspiration as non-negotiable guiding principles. They shape what we say “yes” or “no” to. They influence and characterize everything that happens in and through us. They give our church community its unique “flavor.” And for many of us, these values are what we love about being a part of Pantano. So, values matter!
Over the last six months, our leadership team has prayerfully and carefully looked at what we truly value in our church. After lots of healthy discussions and rewrites, below are the newly clarified values of Pantano Christian Church. I doubt that there will be many surprises at what you’ll see. And remember that these values do not replace what we believe (see our Statement of Faith) but are built on those beliefs. We’ll do a deeper dive into these values and their biblical basis in a series that we’ll launch in May. The six main values are in bold type below, followed by short descriptions in italics. What do you think?
We are unapologetic grace givers.
We are all broken, incomplete people in need of God’s grace. We meet people where they are and generously give away the grace we’ve freely received.
What matters most is loving people to Jesus.
Loving God = Loving People. Everyone has value and matters to God. We pursue those who don’t know Jesus to help them write a new life story with him.
Kingdom first.
Being “kingdom first” drives us beyond our own church community. We strive to join God wherever He is at work. Church is who we are, wherever we are.
Radical generosity reshapes our world.
As a kingdom first church, we share our resources and people selflessly.
The Bible transforms how we live and who we become.
The Bible is our primary source for transformation. We move beyond information to practical and relevant application.
Connected people are changed people.
Community is essential to connect with God and others in order to be transformed.
We pray you would consider how each of these values could be shown in your own life.
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