The Church Jesus Dreamed #2

Pastor

Abe Acosta-Newball

Church

Cody Road Seventh-day Adventist Church

Date

May 9, 2026

Before there was a building, a budget, or a bulletin — there was a dream. Jesus stood among ordinary, unpolished people and spoke of something extraordinary: a community bound not by blood or status, but by love. A people who would forgive as they'd been forgiven, serve as they'd been served, and love a watching world into believing something better was possible. Two thousand years later, we still carry that dream. But somewhere between the vision and the version we've built, something can get lost. Programs replace purpose. Attendance replaces belonging. Comfort replaces calling. So this series asks a simple but searching question: What if we stopped asking "How do we do church?" and started asking "What did Jesus actually dream church would be?" Over the next few weeks, we'll go back to the source — not to critique what we've built, but to remember what we were building toward. We'll look at the kind of community Jesus imagined: marked by radical love, unlikely unity, sacrificial service, and relentless hope. This isn't a call to nostalgia. It's a call to recovery — to become, once again, the church Jesus dreamed.